Forensic linguistics

One of my colleagues directed me to this story in early December, perhaps as a cautionary tale. He also sends me stories about hashish, and he has no idea that I have a strong research interest economic policy, migration and the narcotics trade in Morocco. In any event, grim. Media here doesn’t shy from showing gruesome pictures of survivors of assault of any kind, including of minors. The headline reads: ‘Moroccan man accused of raping an American arrested in Khenifra’

The 23 year old woman was serving in the Peace Corps as a health educator at a local hospital, and the accused, aged 26, was apprehended by the Royal Gendarme. A private doctor was sent from Rabat to collect forensic evidence.

As unfortunate as this story is, there are some powerful Arabic lessons to be learned. First off these three words taken together, according to translate.google:

السائل المنوي الخاص

mean semen.

However, taken separately, the linguistic rabbit hole of Arabic reveals itself...

According to Hans Wehr:

السائل: fluid, liquid
المنوي: seminal, spermatic
الخاص: special, exclusive, specific

In addition to this learning opportunity, there were comments left by readers. The most recent comment was totally inscrutable to me, but said something about the flip on American meat and Saudi meat. According to a Moroccan friend of mine, the reference to American meat is a tasteless euphemism for the young survivor, and it is not entirely clear why Saudi women come up. Herein lies an example of the difficulty for foreigners of learning spoken varieties of Arabic. Because there is no standard codification of international or regional variations, even native speakers experience difficulty in understanding.


The next commenter tries challenges the newsworthiness of the item by citing metaphorical rapes of Moroccans and Arabs, such as at Abu Ghraib (oh brother, the drama).

The third comment also refers to American meat...
And predictably the fourth once again takes a tit-for-tat approach in justifying the assault as reciprocation for foreign occupiers (military and non-military alike) having raped Iraqi women.

The following comment lauds the writer of the story for authoring the piece in view of the risk to reputation and the general paucity of morals in the area (prostitution, homosexuality, raping of foreign women).

Afterward comes a comment in French that announces indeed no rape had occurred. If anything, the young man was guilty of failing to acculturate his foreign friend to the ways of interaction between the opposite sex in Morocco. Because they were friends and she had visited him before, there could not have been rape, you see.

And then a return to the 'squaring of accounts' response. I have perhaps exhausted the learning opportunity by this point. Take a look for yourself.