egyptian night on bbc

I couldn't resist peaking at the tv at 9 to watch parts of the new show on BBC1: "Egypt". When this ended an hour later, another program started on BBC2: "Egyptian Journeys" :) Both of course were mainly about ancient Egypt and the amazing pharaonic monuments. I love anything that has to do with my ancient ancestors, plus I enjoyed the occasional Arabic phrases that were said in the first show. This one was actually telling the story of Howard Carter and how he came to discover the grand tomb of Tutankhamun. I couldn't help but wonder how would it feel when you are stepping in a room that is 3000 years old knowing that the last people to be there were actual ancient Egyptians and that you are going to unearth an untouched pharaoh's tomb? Wow, it must have been amazing. The next episode would be more saddening I guess because it will be all about the plots and rivalries of the English and the French in the post-discovery phase while the Egyptians themselves were subdued under the political tension of 1922 Egypt.

Anyway, the most interesting Arabic phrase that was mentioned is this: the cheif of the workers saying to his men at the start of the digging:

"يالا يا رجالة وحدوه" (yala ya reggala wahedooh) = "come on men, praise the one and only God"

it can sound strange to anyone who knows nothing about Egyptian culture, which makes it an interesting case for linguistic analysis, right? :)

p.s.
someone sent this email to the Corpora list:

"I’m very interested in finding a list of 4-letter English words – and, um - by four letter wordlists, I *don’t* mean what one might perhaps normally associates with such a term!"

talk about contextual assumptions! :)

Mai