An analysis of the verb تَهَتْلَرَ in Hans Wehr: ‘to behave like Adolf Hitler’

In the Hans Wehr dictionary, the most widely used dictionary of Modern Standard Arabic in the West, there is a verb that you will hardly encounter in the Arab world: tahatlara – “to behave like Adolf Hitler”.

In this article, we will deal with roots consisting of 4 letters and their corresponding verb forms. Let’s start with the strange verb تَهَتْلَرَ.

The Arabic verb tahatlara (تَهَتْلَرَ)

Let’s take a look at how you can express behave like Adolf Hitler; imitate Adolf Hitler with just one verb in Arabic.

To be honest, I never came across this weird verb in daily talks.

I also have never encountered it in newspapers or books. I quickly checked with my Arabic-Arabic dictionaries and couldn’t find it.

So don’t ask me why the editors of the Hans Wehr’s dictionary have included it. I don’t even want to imagine what “to behave like Hitler” should express.

This “root”, which is of course not an Arabic root, is found in the latest 6th edition (year 2020) of the original German version of the Hans Wehr dictionary:

It is also included in the enlarged 4^th edition of the English version (page 1194)  of Hans Wehr:

Nevertheless, there is something interesting about it: the morphology of the verb.

But that is by no means all. There is another verb from this category that we want to look at now.

The Arabic verb balshafa (بَلْشَف)

Another weird verb found in Hans Wehr is “balshafa” (بَلْشَفَ) – to bolshevize. It also occurs in the II-form “tabalshafa” (تَبَلْشَفَ) – to be Bolshevized.

Quadriliteral roots – which means consisting of 4 root letters – are occasionally used for foreign names or things.

The verb to bolshevize is not commonly used in English today. For those unsure of its meaning, Colin’s dictionary defines it as to align with Communist ideology.

The nature of Arabic quadriliteral verbs

Let’s now take a brief look at this rare species of verb form, which is nevertheless remarkable.

The only difference:

• There are two different radicals in the quadriliteral verb at the position where you would have two identical radicals (with شَدّة) in a triliteral verb.

One of the most common quadriliteral roots is تَرْجَمَ (to translate).

Let’s use this root and compare it to a triliteral II-verb:

Other important 4-root patterns

• The مَصْدَر of a quadriliteral root follows the pattern فَعْلَلَةٌ; occasionally also فِعْلالٌ is used. Thus, a translation is called تَرْجَمَةٌ in Arabic.
• The active participle (اِسْم فاعِل) follows the pattern مُفَعْلِلٌٌ; thus, a translator is a مُتَرْجِمٌ.

Form-I with 4 root letters: What does it express?

Many of these verbs are derived from nouns or constructed directly from foreign words. For example, a few quadriliteral form-I-verbs are derived from famous expressions in Arabic:

• The verb بَسْمَلَ conveys to say “in the name of Allah” (بِسْمِ اللهِ). From this root, the مَصْدَر is an important word for Muslims: the Basmala (بَسْمَلة).
• Furthermore, you can use two letters and duplicate them to express a certain sound: to cough (كَحْكَح), to roar (جَعْجَع), to gargle (غَرْغَرَ).

And there are many words of foreign origin which were Arabized by deriving a quadriliteral root.

So far, so good. But why do we use form II of a quadriliteral root (تَفَعْلَلَ) to express that one behaves like Adolf Hitler?

II-verbs of quadriliteral roots have an initial ت. The conjugation of quadriliteral II-verbs corresponds to that of a strong, triliteral V-verb, which follows in the past tense the pattern تَفَعَّلَ and in the present tense يَتَفَعَّلُ. In our example:

The Arab World and Hitler

When I first arrived in Egypt in 2006, before mobile and online life became popular, I was surprised to find Hitler’s book Mein Kampf (كِفاحِي) available at every newspaper kiosk.

At that time, it was banned in Germany and Austria. After Hitler died, the copyright of Mein Kampf went to Bavaria, which did not permit any copying or printing of the book in Germany. This ban was removed in 2016 when the copyright expired after 70 years.

Mein Kampf was published by Adolf Hitler in 1925/1926. About ten years later, as Hitler plunged the world into chaos, the Arab world looked very different: it was divided between France and Great Britain.

Prof. Stefan Wild, a German Arabist, notes that before World War II, many shops in Syria displayed posters with Arabic slogans that praised Hitler.

Furthermore, the news that Hitler had started a war reached the streets of Aleppo (حَلَب) and Damascus (دِمَشْق), where one could hear a popular verse in the local dialect which said: “No Monsieur, no Mister – Allah in heaven, on earth Hitler!” (ﻻ ﻣِﺴْﻴُﻮ، ﻻ ﻣِﺴْﺘِﺮ – الله ﺑِﺎﻟﺴَّﻤﺎ وَﻋَﻠَﻰ الْأَرْض ﻫِﺘْﻠِﺮ!)

The same happened in Iraq. According to an account of Prof. Shmuel Moreh (سامي موريه), an Iraqi Jew, walls were painted with Swastikas and sayings such as: “Hitler, the protector of the Arabs!” (هِتْلِر حامِي الْعَرَب).

With national movements emerging in the Arab world, Hitler was praised for being an enemy to France and Great Britain.

Arabic translations of Mein Kampf

In the 1930s, parts of Mein Kampf were translated into Arabic by journalists, who published some excerpts in Arabic newspapers.

The German Nazis wanted to translate Mein Kampf officially into Arabic. This was, however, a difficult task.

The Nazi ideology was based on the supremacy of the white Aryan race (جِنْس آري). The Nazis disparaged Egyptians, for example, as “decadent people composed of cripples”. Furthermore, they had to change several expressions which would have otherwise targeted the Arabs as well, for example: anti-Semitic to anti-Jewish.

Despite several attempts before and during World War II, an official translation of Mein Kampf by the Nazis was never published.

Louis al-Hajj (لويس الْحاج), a translator and writer from Lebanon, who later became the editor-in-chief of the newspaper al-Nahar (النَّهار) in Beirut, translated parts of Mein Kampf from French into Arabic in 1963.

Al-Hajj’s translation contains only fragments of Hitler’s 800 page pamphlet.

Nevertheless, Louis al-Hajj’s translation is still the most popular edition of Mein Kampf in the Arab world.