In our game we walk a fine line between getting a new word either "Lost IN Translation" (as incomprehensible input) or "Lost THROUGH translation" (as not meaningful and unmemorable). Our goal is that a word with be BOTH understood AND remembered as meaningful communication. As I dropped Senda off a work, she almost earned another point, but then she just barely lost it as she was closing the car door by translating the word.
You see, as we pass through the gate of the military base we have to take out our ID's, so we started talking out that unnamed accessory where I keep my money and identification. Senda pointed to it and said:
"That is a مِحْفِظَة."
Of course, I had trouble hearing both of the H's clearly, so I didn't catch the te-marbutah at the end, and at first I wondered if this was only an object used by men for holding their cards and money. "No," Senda clarified that either gender can use this object, and now I see that it is in fact a feminine object.
-- (Mnemonic: It sounds closest to the Chicano Spanglish phrase "mi jefe fatha," like my bossy father, or in English a little like "my heavy father," and we know to drop the "v" because there is no "v" in Arabic and you can't say a "v" right before an "f" without a vowel.
-- (To visualize this, I imagine having an old Father wearing some kind of black ethnic robes and a black hat--for the DARK "TH" sound--sitting at a subway station in New York playing a Zither for donations while his wife collects the money into her "miHfaXa(h)," a.k.a. mi-ha-fa-thah in mainstream transliteration. Mi jefe fatha, poor soul, thinks he's the boss, but really, his wife holds the power of the miHfaXah.)
I like this image for thinking "fatherly" at first glance at the word on the brown back of the object, but really feminine inside the word:
