Re: The Arabic Abbreviation Dictionary

["Djihed Afifi" <djihedlists at googlemail dot com>]

> I did study these subjects in both English and Arabic, Arabic abbreviations
> never sounded good, neither to me, nor to my friends.

Perhaps it's because you studied both terms, that sounds assisine, and
it could be the cause for you hating one and prefering the other. We
studied the arabic abbreviations *only*, and we never had any problems
with them. We never had a problem saying م م أ  for معلم متعامد و
متجانس. After a while, you get used to it, I know we did nearly sing
them.

I know plenty of friends who studied Maths that style and came to the
west and always had the advantages in Maths courses at uni (but that's
also probably because maths standards in the west are slipping)

> There was a time that I was like you, interested in creating Arabic
> abbreviations but then I realized that none will use them.

That isn't a problem with the notion of Arabic abbreviations
themselves, that's strictly a problem of people not recognising you as
an authority to issue abbreviations. Consensus on things like the
Technical Dictionary help, though admittedly it is not enough, it will
always needs big pushes from the .gov's and educational authorities.

> Let me ask you a question, would you really use these abbreviations when
> talking with your friends? would you really ask your friend "كم ال ذ.د.ع.
> تبعك؟"? would you really do?

I prefer the arabic abbreviations, I always did. Again, beware of the
illusion: because you studied it that way and because you use it that
way daily doesn't mean everybody does.

> Since we're talking about this, since ever, Arabs want an Arabic programming
> language, I read about that all the time in forums, but I never see Dutch
> people, for example, asking for a Dutch programming language.

Please stick to user interfaces. User interfaces and programming
languages are two different beasts. the former are laregly used by
relatively more educated developers, the latter are for the wide
ranging audience in the arab world.

And for the record, you might want to check out French, Dutch,
Spanish, do they use English abreviations as well? hint: they don't -
unless absolutly necessary and absurdly wrong to do otherwise.

But your question itself is close to meaningless when you consider the
differences between English and Dutch on the one side, and English and
Arabic on the other side. The first use more or less the same aphabet,
English and Arabic use different scripts and are opposite in
direction. Which further sets the case for Arabised abbreviations.

At least "Arabised" abbreviations in that they should use the Arabic
script (possibly transliteration can be acceptable, and that's to be
discussed). But to allow for RTL script and LTR script in user
interfaces is just shear lunacy.

> Why do Arabs want to beat the west? Why don't they just join forces together?
> for example, instead of creating an Arabic Perl, we can help developing the
> English one.

Sure, but that's non-sequitur. UI's and Perl are different things.

Perhaps I should rehearse the question again, would you use the
English or French abbreviations? because, you know, not everybody's
second language in the Arabic world is English. Not only that, not
everybody has a second language AT ALL besides Arabic (practically).

Regards,

Djihed



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