As a hijack, I was wondering about a bit of Ramadan etiquette.
I formerly had a muslim client who I periodically had meetings with. Normally, I would have a pot of coffee in the conference room, and he would usually have a cup of coffee at meetings, as would I.
When Ramadan rolled around and we had a meeting, I wasn’t quite sure what to do, so I kept it the same as usual. I had the coffee in the conference room, and when I offered him some, he declined based on Ramadan. I didn’t have any coffee either, and just left the coffee sit on the sideboard.
Was this the right thing to do? Should I have not brought the coffee in at all? Would it have been offensive or annoying if I had coffee when he did not?
Billdo, it depends on the individual. You can’t really generalize. Some Muslims don’t care at all if anyone eats & drinks in front of them while they’re fasting. But I once worked with a supervisor from Egypt who made a fuss just because another worker brought a cup of tea into his office during a meeting. It surprised both of us. I guess it would be polite to ask the fasting person whether they mind or not. Many will tell you they don’t care but will appreciate your thoughtfulness.
Jomo Mojo is right as usual. I always appreciate it when people ask me first, and I never have any problem with people eating or drinking in front of me. In fact I think it would be rude of me to ask people to stop eating around me just because I was fasting. Work and life should continue to be as normal as possible.
So to answer Billdo’s question, keep the coffee where it is, don’t offer him any since you know he’s fasting, and ask him if he minds if you have any. If he’s polite, he shouldn’t mind at all.
Just to clarify, I did ask him if he wanted coffee, just as I always did, thinking that not changing my initial behavior was the right thing to do. When he declined, I didn’t have any coffee, figuring that was polite (and I drink enough coffee, anyway, so I can go without for an hour).
As salaam u alaikum wa rahmatulllah to all the other muslims here and may Allah (SWT) accept your prayers and fasting.
I was taught that the “dh” in Ramadhan is pronounced like a thickened form of “th” in “the”. Just add a bit of “z” to the sound. Most of my closest friends are Turkish or Turkish connected, so I hear the straight “z” a lot.
That depends on the dialect. I’m a linguist so I could regale you, or perhaps bore you, with long discussions of how this phoneme (named Dâd) manifests in various countries and sociolinguistic strata, plus the folklore that has accrued around this one phoneme.
But anyway the recognized standard pronunciation of Dâd is a voiced emphatic lateral-dental stop. The difference between it and a regular /d/ is that the back of the tongue is raised while the front of the tongue is lowered. Also, the edge of the tongue contacts the molars on one side or the other. Only for this letter. The Arabs believe that Arabic is the only language in the world that has this phoneme (not quite true, although Arabic is the only widely-known language that has it). They nickname Arabic as “the language of the Dâd”, and the emblem of the Arabic Language Academy of Damascus is a letter Dâd.
Because it’s a lateral, in Indonesia it’s turned into a “dl” sound. Indonesian pronunciation of Arabic is influenced by the South Arabian languages spoken in HaDramaut (South Yemen), where the Arabs who emigrated to Indonesia originated. These South Arabian languages have a whole series of lateralized consonants, which involve pronouncing them while shifting the tongue to the side.
Then there’s the confusion between Dâd and another letter, Zâ’, which explains why it has developed the “dh” or “th” sound that Martin ibn Martin described. There have been whole books written by medieval Arab philologists about these two letters. The word “nadir” comes from Arabic naZîr, ‘opposite’, but medieval Latin got it from a North African dialect in which both Dâd and Zâ’ have the “d” sound. In practically all Arabic dialects, the two letters collapse into one or the other sound: some (like North Africa) make it “d” and some (like Syria) make it “dh” (sort of like English this). It was based on the latter that Persian, Turkish, and Urdu changed it into “z”.
No, that was a different Arabic word, nadîr, which has the regular /d/. It means ‘rare, precious’. It’s the North African dialects of Arabic that render the letter Zâ’ as a /d/ stop sound. As a Turk of Iran, if Nadir Shah’s name had been what you suggest, he would have pronounced it nazîr with a regular /z/. Turkish and Persian do not have any of those emphatic consonants. The same word goes to make up Benazir Bhutto’s name, which means ‘peerless, matchless, without equal’. (be- is a Persian prefix meaning ‘without’, naZîr means ‘opposite, equal’).
I just dropped into this thread out of curiosity (don’t know if I have any muslim acquaintances) and am impressed by your knowledge. Do you think there’s a market for an “Ask the Linguist” thread?
There has already been at least one “Ask the Linguist” thread, though not by me. There are a number of linguists here who are quite vocal (hmmm… goes with the territory?).
Wa Aleikum As Salaam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatu! Thanks, Akhi, and I hope that its going well for you too. May Allah (SWT) bless you and your family and keep you safe and happy, Insha’Allah.
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