6 Responses to A Chicken And Egg Situation In The Hamra Street Festival

  1. “Which came first, the egg (red?) or the chicken?”

    Is egg in Lebanese based on the colour red? In the same way the Arabic word (hello Mariam if you’re reading this!* :D ) for egg is based on the colour white?

    Or is it a pun or something on Hamra street?

    *gutted I missed that thread on languages, it was a cracker. But at the time I was jumping through philosophical and linguistic hoops in order to grasp counterfactual conditional clauses in both Arabic and Lebanese.
    I think it’s resulted in permanent damage too :D

  3. Mariam, I love you! Can you re-read what you just wrote? “What is egg in Lebanese??” Ma32oul?? In Lebanese you say???

    I have no merit validating Lebanese as a language. Coming from you puts this on an entirely different plane!!!

    The beauty of this poster is not only the fact that it’s bilingual; it’s the fact that the Arabic script is used to write Lebanese, not Arabic. And this is the tip of the iceberg. Lebanese lives… and though not written in the Aklian script (yet), Saïd Akl smiles from atop his perch in Aïn ‘Aar…

  4. Steve and Marriam, you make this sound so confusing, the poster is a simple play on words for the expression:

    What came first, \the chicken or the egg?\, the creative input is simply to replace the word egg (Bayda) with the word (Hamra), a play on the fact that both words are also color names (white and red respectively).

  5. Sorry Mustapha … I totally got that. I just thought Steve meant something else that lead me to be confused.

    Anyway, yes LNH sometimes in Lebanese we have different words that what is known to be in the proper Arabic language 3ala kil hal I was simply confused and thought I was missing something.

    Looks like a nice festival .. wish I could be there. All enjoy!