Posted by Omid (169.139.177.35) on October 31, 2003 at 08:47:07:

In Reply to: And now for something completely different... Capital letters in Arabic posted by Misagh on October 30, 2003 at 21:54:06:

Dear Misagh,

to the best of my limited knowledge of Arabic first there are no capital letters but however the letters can have different emphasis when writting a certain way. i.e. Kaf and Nun are Kun or "BE" (the letters B and E joined and knit together...) also, as im sure you know most of the letters are written a different way depending on if they are at the beginning, end, or middle of a word.
I read somewhere that Nasr'din Shah could not totally understand Baha'u'llahs tablets so he had to bring in the religious people to read it and interpet it for him. That speaks for itself.
Baha'u'llah's style of Arabic was not classical, it was more imagery related and had a sufi/mystic twist to it. When the Beloved Guardian translated the works, he translated perfectly. From Arabic to English is no easy task, the word "servant" as you pointed out in some places is capitalized. I dont think there are any rules in Arabic regarding how to emphasize certain words or letters. But I think when Baha'u'llah refers to himself as "S"ervant he may mean servant to the king, i.e. one of his subjects or "s"ervant to God im not sure...The tablet also as you pointed out could have been speaking for Badi, in way that one may interpret that it was directly written by Badi and given to the king. Im commenting here without having read that tablet in a long time. If I may also point out that "Abd" is one word for servant and "khadem" is another word, these are the only two that I am aware of at the moment, both have slightly different meanings and are used in different ways in different places when spoken or read.

I also heard that Baha'u'llah's words have 72 meanings...WHOOAA...hope i helped.

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