[20mm] Scenery: WIP Gedmet Mercedes

[Gunbird]

...or in proper English: Service Mercedes. Yes, a Mercedes service garage.



Using pictures I made in Beirut, freehanded the entire script in one go. I need more lessons, but it is spot on so my home study is actually working. Lots more work to do (another highlight on the blue + weathering, thats for sure  ) Don't expect bullet holes though.

Johan

[oxiana]

Looking good. Arabic is pretty hard to write, especially if you don't know what it is you're writing!

A couple of small thoughts. When writing the letters freehand before painting remember that Arabic is written right to let, and it may help you to do the same - the point is that the letters should flow into each other smoothly. I'd also recommend you draw a guideline so that the bottoms of the letters all go along a straight line. In the text you've written only the round 'U' shape of the last letter (as you look at it, the first letter on the left) should be below this line. Similarly, all the upright bits should be of the same height, and the additional notations above and below the letters.

Mercedes is written like this:

مرسيدس

Gedmet (or gadmat) isn't a word I actually know, but the way you've written it would be pronounced 'khadmat'. ('kh' as in clearing the throat, or a Scottish 'loch'). Not a 'g' or a 'j' though, those are different letters.

Telephone is written lie this:

تلفون

From your picture it looks like you've only put one dot over the letter 't' at the start of the word (ie the last letter as you look at it from left to right, just after the tall upright letter). If that's the case, then you've actually written the word 'nelephone'!

Hope some of this helps, rather than just sounding pedantic -suggestions are only made in a helpful spirit. It's a great little model you've made, and you're pretty brave to tackle such a tricky language!

[Gunbird]

Not pendantic at all mate, no worries, but really?



It's all Lebanese, and 1 thing I've learned from my ex and my local friends that a lot isn't done in the "proper" writing way, same goes for the pronounciation (you should see the annotations she made in my studybooks, every second word has bveen corrected in one way or another). I've been training on the language and the script for a while now, and slowly managing to work from right to left, but my scribbling would propably still not pass kindergarten level  and won't pass that level soon as I'm not going back (home, in a way) next year. Using just MSN makes that a tad hard, and asking locals is no help. Lebanese isn't Syrian and sure isn't Iraqi, and those 2 are the only neighbours I have to ask a bit of info at a time from.

Still, it beats what I sometimes see written of wargames models 



Hmm, now that I look very carefully at the phoneumber, I think I can see the 2 dots now.

I actually like the script and the language, or maybe I can blame that bit on my ex  But at least I'm motivated to add a 5th language to my skills, even if it is for fun.

Thx for the help!