🗃️ Hello, hi. The sky is falling. Also, can anyone please help me make out this text? It is from a letter written by a boy in an orphanage in Egypt in 1883. Thank you in advance
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For me those looks like English written in Arabic letters , so the Miss Gordon part seems to be correct. Capsune also seems to be correct but i am not really sure what it means.
I’m slightly confused by the spelling—it looks to me like “Madrasa al-Amirkan” but I’d have expected “al-Amrikani.” Is this an old-fashioned Egyptianism?
It’s a fascinating story. He is neither a Westerner nor Egyptian. He was from Darfur and was enslaved when he was about 4 years old. He ended up in England where he learned to write English and then eventually in Egypt where he was learning Arabic at the time he wrote this letter.
I agree , it’s not how people would normally say this now. I believe it is more of an old fashioned way to say it. If you want the literal translation it is will be “ The Americans” not the American
No you are not misreading it , it is indeed not the right way to spell it. So it is either just a simple misspelling or it could mean something completely different but it’s kind of a long shot
oh! I was assuming it was an Egyptian child—the hand doesn’t have the really obvious tells of a Westerner struggling to make Arabic letters (e.g. when I’ve seen Frenchmen writing Arabic words in the 19C their Arabic handwriting looks like mine—really deliberate and nonfluid)
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Assiut is a city in Southern Egypt.
(my Arabic is pretty rudimentary)
what a fascinating life to be researching...
but what do you make of اميركان rather than امريكان? or am I misreading the handwriting?