ari

are you really proposing that Arabic verbs don't morphologically express modality? i can buy that the maǧzūm doesn't principally express mood—Spanish grammars tend to call it the apocopated form—but the manṣūb is a textbook irrealis/subjunctive

ܚܫ̇ܒ ܐ̄ܢܐ ܕܝܠܦ̇ܝܢ ܟܠܢ ܐܪܡܐܝܬ

the Lebanese pattern is very interesting! would a word like فتى be stressed on the ultima as well?

Four different stress placements for كتبتا 'two women wrote' in Standard Arabic

ˈka.ta.ba.taa (Upper Egypt)
ka.ˈta.ba.taa (Jordan)
ka.ta.ˈba.taa (Cairo)
ka.ta. ba.ˈtaa (Lebanon)

the alter tanakh translation is great though :D

as i understand it they're ⟨ʿalà⟩ and ⟨matà⟩ respectively, although in practice you rarely see this sort of function word transliterated

as in "to raid"? ⟨gazā⟩, like any other /aː/ written with ا.

(the Spanish /g/ is usually a [ɣ~ɰ], so غ is transcribed ⟨g⟩)

marvelous, thank you so much!! i'm coming at this from a very faṣīḥ background so this will come in handy :D

thank you, i'll add it to the list!

finding some Egyptian friends must be the way to go then :D

thank you for the recommendation!

@mattboot.bsky.social @quietstuff.bsky.social @shjsat.bsky.social

does anybody have a favorite reference grammar of modern Cairene vernacular Arabic? i am currently looking through a glass darkly, and would love something voluminous to clear up some lingering doubts

i mean worst case scenario that might get interpreted as nasalization. the spanish system uses ⟨à⟩, e.g. fatà, which i’ve always liked

not to be confused with quesadilla

Higher Persian grammar, for the use of the Calcutta University, showing differences between Afghan and modern Persian, with notes on rhetoric. By Lieut.-Colonel D. C. Phillott, M.A., Ph.D., F.A.S.B., late Secretary, Board of Examiners Calcutta. Translator of the Bāz-Nāma-yi Nāṣirī, etc., and editor of the Persian translation of Ḥājī Bābā of Iṣfahān and of the Qawānīnu 'ṣ-Ṣayyād

owing to the War and the consequent loss of manuscript and proofs at sea and to other unfortunate causes, this work has been unduly long in issuing from the Press. D. C. Phillott, Lieut.-Colonel. Cairo: March 1918

this 900 page grammar of Persian was written by the snarkiest orientalist they could find in Cairo in 1918. apart from the chapter on rhetoric, it covers various systems of timekeeping, weights and measures, as well as "signs and signals" and "bibliomancy, divination, superstitions, etc."

a couple things! a few I-n verbs lose their nun and form their infinitive construct much like I-y verbs do, e.g. נשׁא, לָשֵׂאת. both תֵּת and שֵׂאת would derive from an earlier *tint, *śiʔt (if i understand @bnuyaminim.bsky.social's article correctly). then the final nun assimilates to the -t suffix

nefarious.

now that i think of it, it's vaguely reminiscent of the III-w/y C-stem conjugation in (older) Hebrew: 3msg hēˈqīm → 1sg hăqīˈmōṯī

Ordinal Numerals as a Criterion for Subclassification: The Case of Semitic This article explores how ordinal numerals (like first, second and third) can help classify languages, focusing on the Semitic language family. Ordinals are often formed according to productive deriv....

New #OpenAccess paper on what 'first', 'second', 'third' tell us about the #Semitic family tree, including new evidence for Aramaeo-Canaanite! Note that unfortunately, the names of Ethiopian scholars have been metathesized, something that will hopefully be remedied before the final print version. 🐦🐦

no wonder! do you know if it crops up anywhere outside of Egypt? i don't recall having heard it from any Levantine or Moroccan speakers

another wonderful thing:
some pronominal suffixes get an epenthetic vowel after a CC sequence; if i understand correctly it's:
1) harmonic with the vowel of the suffix and
2) stressed because of the CVCCVCV thing!
e.g., ismáha, “her name”; bintúhum, “their daughter”

i wrote روحت for ruḥt while doing a dictation today. feeling vindicated

apparently the term is "wh-movement"; Cairene is a "wh-in-situ" speech variety. (utterly Anglo)

things that i like about Cairene after a month and a half of study:
- no question-fronting! ⟨ʕamalti ē?⟩ "what did you do?"
- the weird stress pattern on CVCCVCV words (tafaḍḍáli, madrása, il-Qāhíra)
- plene spellings of etymologically short final vowels: كرسيكي,⟨kursīki⟩, “your (f.) chair”

couldn’t remember the details, thanks for the clarification !

not to mention that speaking and teaching to speak ex tempore in full reconstructed Tiberian (three(?)-way vowel length distinction, /ʀ ɣ/ contrast) seems like a nightmare

it seems unlikely? Sinai associates Qurʾānic usage with South Arabian attestations of the term, and the non-merging Sabaic has ⟨ḥrm⟩ "ban" and ⟨ḥrmt⟩ "sanctuary"

إنّ ما يقدر على السكون الدائم ليس ميّتًا،
وفي عصور غريبة حتى الموت يقدر أن يموت.

i'll keep saying [ðˠʊhˈɾɑːn] until somebody stops me

excellent work.