A QUEST AMONG THE BEWILDERED
Today I learned some very interesting etymology. When I was 5 & first getting interested in learning English, I noticed that the English word “magazine” means a periodical with various articles in it, and my well-known Russian word “magazin”, which sounds pretty much exactly the same, means “store”. What the fuck is this shit!!!! I shouted, killing like 4 people with my bare gaze. Since then, I have dedicated my life to casually picking up facts about languages, and, without expending any direct effort, osmosing somehow the answer to this question, eventually.
Well, sirs, my strenuous wait is over! The Russian “magazin” comes from the Arabic “makhzan”, which means “store”. My god, this is some shit, you are already screaming. But there is more. The English word “magazine” ALSO comes from “makhzan”, derived from the implication that a storehouse contains a wide variety of goods, and a “magazine” contains a wide variety of different little bits of writing and pictures. Raaaag!
Other Russian words that come from Arabic are “tsyfra” (which means “number”, from the Arabic “sifr”, which I am sort of sure means “zero”); “kanat” (which means a cable or rope, from “qanaat”); and “sunduk” (meaning a large box like a trunk or chest, from “sunduuq”). This word “sunduuq” has also bled into every other language ever – the Swahili “sandaku”, Turko-Tatar “sandik”, and I’m pretty sure Urdu, though I can’t remember the word right now.
Oh globalization! You sure did start like in about the 10th century. In one thousand years they will marvel at how the Russians call group sex “grupovuha”.
By the way, the Indian Ocean is the best ocean, and has had the most number of adventures on it. It has had such adventures as those of Sinbad the Awesome; Zheng He the Non-Fictional… a Chinese eunuch from the Ming dynasty; and Abdur Razzaq, a Persian ambassador to 15th-century India. I don’t know much about these people, but I know that they were not pricks like Vasco da Gama. My GOD I HATE YOU VASCO DA GAMA.
What are we talking about? Oh-
I’m going to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. That’s what this blog is about. I’m going there because I like to see things where people’s problems are bigger than mine. The only honest & morally acceptable way to make yourself feel better is to see something which is bigger than you: this can be a bear, a pandemic, or a diseased bear, or the distance to M31, the nearest galaxy. Trust me.
It is far away.
I have helped you!
ci·pher /ˈsaɪfər/ –noun
1. zero.
2. any of the Arabic numerals or figures.
3. Arabic numerical notation collectively.
4. something of no value or importance.
5. a person of no influence; nonentity.
6. a secret method of writing, as by transposition or substitution of letters, specially formed symbols, or the like. Compare cryptography.
7. writing done by such a method; a coded message.
8. the key to a secret method of writing.
9. a combination of letters, as the initials of a name, in one design; monogram.
–verb (used without object)
10. to use figures or numerals arithmetically.
11. to write in or as in cipher.
–verb (used with object)
12. to calculate numerically; figure.
13. to convert into cipher.
Also, especially British, cypher.
[Origin: 1350–1400; ME siphre
OH MAN YOU ARE COOL.