Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Picture of My Ezzazit Maya Kabir (Big Bottled Water)


Tanya, from Motherwear, tagged me to post about my water consumption in relation to breastfeeding. Even before I had my baby, I carried around a big bottle of water that I drank from all day. The biggest difference since having Ian and breastfeeding is that I need water at night. Still, like Tanya I don't drink as much as I should. The water here is heavily chlorinated and even though we have a filter on our faucet, it doesn't seem to take the taste out. Maybe if I filtered the filtered water through a Brita that would help...Anyway, I stick to bottled water for the most part because of the taste.

I usually drink Baraka (pronounced with short a's and emphasis on the first syllable, the feminine version of famous Illinios Senator Barak Obama's name ) water and thanks to Ahmed, my teacher for the Pre-Modern Standard Arabic class I took at last fall, I can read the label. As a side note, the written and spoken languages in Arabic are different. Different grammar and vocabulary. On top of all that, Written Arabic does not always write the vowels. For example, my Baraka label has 4 letters: b, r, k and tamarbuda (a at the end of a word). It does have the "clues" that tell you the vowel is an "a" sound. A slash above the letter is an "a". A slash below the letter is an "e" and something that kind of looks like our number 9, is an "oo". The Koran has the clues written out as well, but the newspaper, most signs and most other writing does not. The other writing on the label doesn't have the clues, either.

I'll pass this challenge back across the Atlantic to Katy in Canada.

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