(photo of Phoenix above from abcnews.com)
Fortunately, here in Tucson, such massive clouds of choking doom are rare; the summer monsoon flow is usually from the south or southeast--thunderstorms pop up and then the winds blow out from them, often toward the north or northwest, which means that after the high grassland and mountain ranges of SE AZ, they pass over the over open desert and fallow farm fields between Tucson and Phoenix, sucking up all the debris around Casa Grande into the sky as the weather marches toward the 'Valley of the Sun.'
Back to the linguistic point, though...Today's NY Times has this article, entitled "'Haboobs' stir critics in Arizona." Really? There are people 'upset' that the term 'haboob' is used, simply because it's a word of foreign origin?! And, cardinal sin in their eyes--the word is from, gasp, Arabic!? (Here's the letter-to-the-editor of the Phoenix newspaper that was quoted in the NY Times...read it and weep.) I am embarrassed for Arizona...
(Then again, maybe the NY journalist just wanted to capitalize on the 'pick on AZ' sentiment that's been so present in the press over the past couple of years? Granted, there's been plenty of fuel for the fire...)
So...some folks object to 'haboob' because of it's foreign origins....
Hmm. This would mean that 'monsoon' needs to go, because that word, too, (so dear to Arizonans by the way), is--again, gasp--of Arabic origin! And 'hurricane' is also a 'foreign' word...And so is 'tornado!' and 'cyclone' and 'typhoon' and 'tsunami!'
Linguistic xenophobia. Silly...We think quaint, now, the usages in the past of 'Victory Cabbage' instead of 'sauerkraut' in WWI...or 'freedom fries' instead of 'French fries' at the beginning of the Iraq War...
Silly, it might seem, but scary, as well...Ignorance, xenophobia, words...acts?
Besides--let's all enjoy our inner juvenile--'haboob' is just fun to say...
[Incidentally, a few other everyday words from Arabic: algebra, zero, pajamas and khaki.]
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