Friday, May 14, 2010

Setswana Written in Arabic


Yesterday Elmaz and I went into the commercial part of El Gouna and did some shopping. There are so many beautiful things in Egypt I fear I may go home broke, all of my royalty money left behind for the pharoahs.

One thing I bought yesterday were papyrus bookmarks. The man selling can write your name on it in Arabic. I bought some for my small family but I'm thinking of going back and buying more.

Arabic written is beautiful, more like a picture than words. I was suprised that the selling man very easily wrote my husband's name, Lentibile, in Arabic. It seemed to me he was listening carefully to each syllable and the sound it makes so that he could find the correct character in Arabic.


The one to the left is Lentibile, written in Arabic.

Below from left to right is Sidney, Lauri and Amanda.


3 comments:

Lauri said...

Excuse the crazy layout of the photos, the edge of my technoidiot slip is showing I'm afraid.

bonita said...

I've always thought that Arabic is the most beautiful script in the world, a challenge for any Western calligrapher. How lucky you were to find such a shopkeeper. Would you call the commercial part of El Gouna a bazaar? Are you close enough to Cairo to go to its bazaar? Just think of all the new settings and characters you can gather on this trip! How wonderful is that?

Elspeth Futcher said...

These are lovely and certainly make unique souvenirs! Well done.