jade's plurk about slang is making me think about this VERY funny story one of my arabic teachers told our class once

so there's this arabic phrase

انا حقا اعترض

that in its full form means "i strongly disagree", and iirc it's not considered at all vulgar

but people in egypt started slangifying it by taking the first letter of each word (there are three words in that phrase), and turning it into an acronym, which when pronounced out loud is said "aHa"

(the capital H being a harsh-sounding h - pharyngealized rather than glottalized, for any linguistics folx)

and THAT short version ended up being seen as a vulgar curse word, on the same level as "fuck" in english

and in arabic textspeak, it was generally written out as "a7a", since the letter for the harsh H sound in its isolated form is ح, which looks a teeny bit like a 7

so

during mubarak's tenure, pre arab spring

media was scrutinized and censored before it could be aired, and aHa was one thing you Could Not say on television

and this dude who was starring in a movie wanted to get around that

so he just

said the textspeak abbreviation, in english, knowing the censors likely wouldn't understand the actual meaning and just let it slide on through

and he was right

أحمد مكى / A7A

Egypt’s deafening three-letter yell - Egypt Independ... there are some interesting articles about the significance of this!

That’s hilarious. Go, That Guy!

a7a quickly became a class in-joke