At last, I have found an official name for my blog: Yalla nir’os ya banat!
The old Kesavah Raqs was really just a placeholder and I’m pretty sure that it is NOT proper Arabic grammar, it was just a play on words (Kesavah Raqs = Kesavah Rocks, get it? Ha ha! Apparently I was very proud of myself that day for some reason!)
Anyways, I was watching the new DVD that I bought recently called “Habibi, You Are My WHAT?!” by Leyla Lanty, which is fantastic by the way, and in it she goes over a myriad of Arabic words and phrases, their meaning, etc. I was inspired by many of the words and phrases, and I do truly believe that Arabic is a beautiful language. There was, however, a combination that I wanted to create and I didn’t know what the proper grammar was to do so. You know, what goes where in the sentence. So I decided to email Leyla herself to ask for some help, and she graciously gave me the answers I was looking for.
What I wanted was to say, “Come on, daughters (girls), let’s dance!”, and I knew that “come on let’s dance” was yalla nir’os, and that girls/daughters was banat, but again I didn’t know how to stick them together. My first instinct was to chuck the word “banat” right in the middle so that the whole sentence would match the english version, but I’m glad that I didn’t assume and asked for help. Turns out that in Arabic whenever you’re addressing someone (or a group of someones) directly you need to use “ya” in front of it. So because I’m talking to girls/daughters, I would need to incorporate “ya banat”. Very handy to know!
Leyla also went on to suggest two different ways that I phrase everything together: “Yalla nir’os ya banat” or “Ya banat! Yalla nir’os!”. The first phrase directly translated seems to me to say “Come on let’s dance girls!”, whereas the second is saying, “Girls! Come on let’s dance!”. The second translation sounds to me more like a strict teacher! And yes, although I am a teacher I like to think of most of my classes as being a collaboration of dancers, and not so much me barking at my students. So, to me the first phrase sounded more inviting, and therefore that is the one that I chose.
Ta da – a new name! I love it, and I hope you will enjoy it too. My wish is that whenever you read it you will be inspired to jump up and enjoy the dance, in whatever form that may be!