Just a couple of things that happened this week that made me laugh…
Our translation teacher, Dr Ahmed Showki (an absolute legend – he has a street named after him in Alexandria… well, either that or he’s named after the street. I prefer to think it’s the former.) told us to “stop polluting my English with your made-up words”. He realised (well before some of the English students in the group… but they’re from Manchester, so it’s understandable) that there is no such word as “dividitude”, “hugeosity” or “congestionisation”. He’s convinced, though, that “oftenly” is a word and that we really do still use “forsooth” in everyday speech.
Meanwhile, in our Aamiya (Egyptian colloquial Arabic) class, the Arabic word “sheek” came up – it means, surprisingly enough, “chic”. One of the Manchester students who had been daydreaming / asleep / dead asked what it meant, and the teacher replied, naturally enough, that it’s the same in English. At lunchtime, walking down the street outside the university, we spotted said student trying to buy a chicken kebab thingy… and the kebabist (for that is what they are called) trying to understand what he meant by “kebab a la mode”… Oh, the laughs.