4-Cycle Engines

Me: "What do you call the thing that goes between the engine and the axle?"

Salah the Taxi Driver: "That's called the drive shaft, and it goes from the transmission (which takes the motion from the engine and converts it into the different gears that you choose using the gear shift) to the differential, where the spinning motion parallel to the motion of the car is turned into motion perpendicular to the direction of the car, thus making the wheels turn and the car move forward. The motion in the engine is produced by the pistons moving in their cycle: intake, compression, power and exhaust. The speed of the engine is determined by the amount that you push on the gas pedal, and, of course, if you hit the brake, you stop the car. The clutch is used to help you in shifting gears; it works when you push the clutch and the linking mechanisms compress the flywheel, thus disengaging the drive shaft from the input shaft, allowing you to shift gears, and then when you release the clutch, the flywheel comes back into contact with itself and the car is in the new gear that you've put it in, and all the forward energy..."

I didn't understand all of this by virtue of his extremely spirited, extremely fast Arabic explanation. I followed his explanation by virtue of the fact that my Dad knows cars inside and out, and taught me how they work.

But because I was able to follow what he was saying, I learned a lot of good words. Crankshaft, piston, and perpendicular come to mind.

I've repeated this experiment with other taxi drivers, and I've discovered that they're more likely to get excited about an American learning Arabic car parts than an American talking about politics.

So if you're ever in the market for conversation with your Arabic-speaking cab driver, and normal topics of conversation just don't seem to be cutting it, try for the drive train. It might work.