The Benefits of a Foreign-Language Tattoo
Even when it goes wrong, body art in another tongue can be a good thing. An <a href="http://www.objectsobjectsobjects.com">Object Lesson</a>.
My yoga instructor’s eyes lit up as he bared his forearm. “Look!” In the dim candlelight of the yoga studio, I squinted at the place he’d indicated. There was a tattoo, but not of anything recognizable, at least not to me.
“What is it?” I asked uncomfortably.
“Salaam!” he said. “It means ‘peace’ in Arabic!”
As a professor of Arabic, I get regular requests to verify tattoos, or to admire the ones people already have. This was one of those times.
I looked again, and sure enough, there were the four Arabic letters that make the sounds “s,” “l,” “a,” and “m”—the letters needed to spell “peace.” But they were disconnected, which explains why I couldn’t read it: Arabic must be written like cursive, each letter attached to the next,
