Qifa Nabki
News and commentary from the Levant
Arabic dialects
Inscriptions in the Desert
I’ve written an essay for The New Yorker‘s Culture Desk about the fascinating research of Ahmad Al-Jallad, a scholar of Semitic linguistics and ancient epigraphy. The first few paragraphs of the piece are below, with a link to the rest on the magazine’s webpage. Some readers may also be interested in a piece I wrote about … Continue reading
Translating Disney’s Frozen into Arabic
See below for an excerpt from my latest piece for The New Yorker, on Disney’s translation of its hit musical Frozen into Modern Standard Arabic. We’ve discussed this subject before on this blog. If you’re interested in reading earlier discussions, check out the following comment sections: The Death of Arabic is Greatly Exaggerated Divided Societies After reading the New … Continue reading
Qifa Nabki 
And the people say…