On Fri, 1 May 1998 22:46:25 -0000, Adrian Midgley wrote:
>Jebel Tarik is referred to in Samuel Delany's novel "Babel 17".
>It is the large - mountainous - starship commanded by Tarik.
>
>It lurks in a narrow part of a dust cloud, and there are enemies and
>conflict involved.
This may come as a shock to some of you, but some of the most
cherished words in the vocabulary of a maritime nation are in fact
Arabic in origin:
Frigate (Forqata)
Admiral (Al Amir (of sea)(prince of the sea = Amir al Bahr)
Corvette (can't write the Arabic equiv.)
Then there are the more known ones of chemistry (chemia) and algebra
(al Jabr); and the lesser know ones in the sky: Al Nadir, Zenith and
Altair (star names that went on to become famous computers!).
Ahmad
________________________________________
Dr Ahmad Risk
http://mednetics.org
home: +44 1273 724866
work: +44 1737 240022
fax: +44 1737 244660
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