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Monday, February 26, 2007
# Posted 10:11 PM by Ariel David Adesnik American AC-130 gunships had conducted strikes on Qaeda suspects using an airstrip in eastern Ethiopia.As most people know, "Al" just means "the" in Arabic. There is no capitalization in Arabic, so one can't really say, I think, if "Al" is part of the name of Osama bin Laden's organization, or just a grammatical happenstance. Think of it this way. George Bush is president of the United States, but one can refer to him as "United States President George Bush". What's really strange is something I discovered while reading news reports from the 1980s, also in the Times. Regularly, the reports would refer to the USSR not as "the Soviet Union" but as just "the Soviet" or even just "Soviet", as in "Soviet imprisons well-known dissident." Now that makes no sense. It's sort of like writing that "the United invaded Afghanistan in 2001. In 2003, United also invaded Iraq." Labels: Al Qaeda, Arabic, grammar (8) opinions -- Add your opinion
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