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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   33914 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 29, 2024

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Often the reasoning becomes circular. Israel helps the US against US enemies. The enemies are enemies due to conflicts caused by Israel.

A good alternative approach is that of China. They buy oil from Saudis, Iranians and Iraqis. No trillion dollar wars and yet they have consistently gotten their oil. They even managed to get Iran and Saudi to join BRICS together.

As an aside, I am peeved by people referring to Saudi Arabia as "Saudi", which is a pseudo-Arabic attributive adjective analogous to a more native "Saudian" (e.g. belonging to the House of Saud, its ruling dynasty). This is as if you chose to refer to the USA as "United", or the USSR as "Soviet" - "Nazi Germany even managed to get America and Soviet to join forces".

In Arabic don't they usually shorten it to السعودي (As-saudi - "The Saudi")?

It's more like saying "America" than saying "The United." The alternative would be calling it "Arabia," which sounds rather archaic in English.

That would be surprising to me if true - I'd expect as-Saudiyyah (السعوديّة) just because gendered languages don't usually forget the grammatical gender of an omitted or implied word (and Arabia is feminine). However, I can't claim to be familiar with real casual usage since my only qualifications are a couple of college classes and general language nerdery.

You're right, it should be السعوديّة, the feminine form (from المملكة العربية السعودية - "Kingdom of Saudi Arabia"). This or السعودي (masculine adjective form) is what I usually hear from Arabs in casual conversation.

Well as you gesture it’s how they refer to themselves and to their country “I’m going back to Saudi this week” etc, so it is what it is.

Right, I did notice Arabs doing this in English, but that doesn't do anything to reduce the feeling of wrongness about the English use to me.

I could imagine the reason they do it is a combination of mistranslation (Arabic definite articles distribute over all attributes/modifiers, so "Saudian" Arabia is literally "the Arabia the Saudian"; hence no distinction is made between attributives ("Saudian (...)") and nominalizations ("the Saudian")) and calque (as they famously like referring to things and people by nisbah/belonging epithets, like al-Baghdadi/"the Baghdadian").

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