Tuesday, September 26, 2006

PBE4UGO

I just received an email from a friend with a photo of an Ontario license plate. As a former Windsorite, I took notice.

It said:

PBE4UGO

Took me a second.

Then I roared. My kinda guy. This plate was almost as good as the one another Canadian friend of mine has.

Hers says: BSEDER.

I think every license plate in Israel should have SAVLANUT on it...patience.

So, did I ever tell you how, when my two oldest were babies, I signed up for the Open University to learn Arabic? I figured, that in every country you should know how to say, 'Where is the bathroom?' and 'Don't kill me!'

With two little ones, I couldn't take a class, but the Open University was perfect. You study at home and have the name and phone number of a teacher in case you need help. You can also meet once a week, but I wasn't looking for a degree or anything, I just wanted to learn the language.

Imagine my joy when the box of books finally arrived. Yahooooo.

I grabbed my pencil, opened my notebook and turned the first page. IT WAS ALL IN HEBREW!!!

Oy! I never thought of that. Of course the course was in Hebrew. This is Jerusalem. In Israel.

Don't ask!

It looked something like this: אינטה מג'נון (inteh majnun) which loosely translated into Hebrew is אתה משוגה (attah meshuggah) which translated into Enlish means du bist meshuggeh....wait! wait, that's Yiddish! Which means, you're crazy.

Never one to give up, I forced myself to read the Hebrew, understand what they were trying to tell me, and then learn it all in Arabic.

I am happy to tell you that I got an 83 in the first course. And never continued. To this day I don't know how to say, 'Where is the bathroom?' or 'Don't kill me!'

I can say 'Ahahlan'(howdy), 'Ya Eini' (my eyes...holy cow), 'Ya Allah' ( oh my God),and all kinds of nasty things pertaining to a certain part of a woman's anatomy. But never learned the language.

A pity. See, as a former Canadian, I learned to read and write both English and French and feel that a person should speak all the languages of his/her country.

At the time, I searched everywhere for an English/Arabic set of books. I spoke to Waghi, who worked for my husband. I asked everywhere. I mean the British were here for donkey's years, for heaven's sake! Didn't they have a manual or two lying around?

Nope. I guess they didn't need a toilet and weren't afraid of being killed.

I wonder how you say PBE4UGO in Arabic? Hmmmm, the mind boggles.

Have a great day...stay safe...and thanks for dropping in.

2 Comments:

At 10:14 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Well, not being an expert , I'm afraid I can't actually translate PBE4UGO into Arabic. However, for all of those who don't heed THAT license plate, here's one for them...

2L8 !

And, by the way, before I settled on "BSEDER", I toyed with the idea of using, " NEEPHLAH ". Years ago I was told that that word meant, " gorgeous". I never got around to looking the word up in a Hebrew/English dictionary, so, just in case it really referred to a female part, when I got to the License Bureau, I chose a word I personally knew. And, if you keep this strictly between us, the REAL reason I didn't use, "NEEPHLAH" was because if it DID mean gorgeous, and some knowledgeable person saw my licence plate, AND me, the driver, I was afraid that while they were killing themselves laughing, they'd crash into my car and do serious damage.

The Guv

 
At 10:15 PM, Blogger marallyn ben moshe said...

ahhhhhhhhh guv...you are neephlah...it doesn't mean gorgeous...you are that too...it means wonderful!!! teriffic!!!...great!!!...go for it...you are beyond bseder...stay safe

 

Post a Comment

<< Home