What it says on the tin. Daesh is the Arabic language equivalent to ISIS or ISIL. It’s an acronym for the Islamic State, only using Arabic alphabet letters instead of Latin alphabet letters.
How should English language speakers manage this term?
Come to think of it, is the Arabic language alphabet called an alphabet? I bet it isn’t. What’s that called?
/ɡoʊt /ˈfʌkɪŋ /ˈæsˌhoʊlde
I heard it on BBC 4 this morning, they pronounced it Die-esh.
Most American TV commentators pronounce it Dash, whether correct or not.
Although the meaning was obvious, I had to google it as this was the first time to hear that expression.
It’s an alphabet because the letters represent phonemes. Other writing systems use syllabaries, such as the Japanese hiragana and katagana in which the characters represent an entire syllable, or logograms such Chinese.
It is an alphabet and it’s called an alphabet. Why would you bet that it isn’t?
I’m sure it’s correct in the way A Rab is correct.
I don’t know why these people can’t just get simple names.
Really. Familiar or not, the pronunciation seems quite straightforward: die-esh. The first time I encountered this term, I was able to figure out from context that they were talking about ISIS. Actually, I’ve noticed that government officials (ie, Pentagon or State Department people) almost always refer to this group as “ISIL.” Does this mean anything different than “ISIS”?
It sounds closer to an elongated “dash” with a slight stutter in the middle to me. More “open up and say ah” than “never say die”. But here’s an Arabic translator pronouncing it around the 2:30 mark. We don’t quite have that vowel sound in English, apparently. http://www.pri.org/stories/2015-11-17/isis-isil-or-daesh
I was thinking the OP was obliquely asking for the Arabic word for “alphabet”.
Merneith, the Arabic word for “alphabet” is الأبجدية, Romanized as al’abjadia (literally, “the alphabet”, as the “al’” is the definite article).
Interestingly, the Arabic term has been borrowed back into English – abjad is a linguistic term that denotes an alphabet that represents consonants but not vowels.
“Dah” like in “Dot”, followed by “Esh” like in “Mesh”.
For advanced users: for the “Esh”, say it like you were about to say “Resh” and changed your mind half-way.
ISIS = Islamic State of Iraq & Syria
ISIL = Islamic State of Iraq & the Levant
These are merely different translations of the final word in the Arabic name (Al-Dawla Al-Islamiya fi al-Iraq wa al-Sham); al-Sham denotes an area larger than the present nation of Syria, a “greater Syria” encompassing Jordan, Lebanon, Israel/Palestine, and even bits of Turkey. The Levant is a traditional English-language word for much this same region.
DAESH or DAIISH come from various transliterations of the Arabic name.
If so that is pretty damn oblique.
And I am still trying to figure out what the “tin” is. Seems like it must be the thread title but no idea how you get “tin” out of that.
The Arabic letter in question is notoriously difficult for English speakers to pronounce. It involves a constriction of the throat muscles that is very unnatural to us. As a result, we’re forced to use a close approximation, which results in several different pronunciations.
From a British advertising slogan. It means the contents are exactly as described on the outside; in this case in the title.
A more intriguing question, of rather more significance than the pronunciation, is why the members of this motley crew hate being referred to as members of DAESH ?
Personally, if I ruled the world, I would make it a hanging offence for newspapers and media to refer to them as anything other than DAESH … calling them ISIS or IS or ISIL confers a spurious legitimacy on these cut-throat marauders.
“Tin” refers to a can in British. Loosely, “Just what it says on the label!”
I’ve been pronouncing it “Doosh”.
Not sure what letter it is, but in an Arabic self-study book I have it says that the ع ("'ayn") is pronounced using throat muscles that English speakers generally only use for one thing–so if you feel like you’re throwing up, you’re doing it right.