Re: picnic

Steg Belsky wrote:
"Well, i only got up to about the 3rd or 4th lesson in the Teach Yourself
Arabic book a few years ago, but i'd assume that your name would be spelled
just Nun-Kaf, without a Yaa in the middle, while "neek" would have a Yaa in
the middle."

and Nik replied:
"Yep.  With the "i" dash for /nIk/.  He told me that if I had that _yaa_
instead of the dash, it would make /nik/."

     Odd... generally speaking, foreign names *are* spelled with a fuller
orthography (the "dashes" such as qasr are rarely used in practice).  I'm
willing to wager that most Arabic speakers would probably write your name
nun-yaa-kaf, unless of course it might conflate with something obscene (as
it apparently does in Lebanese colloquial Arabic).
     I'm unable to find anything in Wehr regarding "niik."  So, my best
guess is that it doesn't exist in MSA.

     The American Heritage identifies the word "picnic" it to a
reduplication of piquer "to pick."  The OED dates the first occurance of
this word ("pic-nic" in English, but referring to a foreign context) to
1748.  It repeats the same hypothesis but also cites Boniface (18..) `repas
où chacun pique au plat pour sa nique (nique taken in the sense of "small
coin")'.

-Chollie

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