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Imar Koutchoukali

@koutchoukalimar.bsky.social

Science advisor @mfaestonia (all views my own)| PhD @UniTartu | Tweets about late antique South Arabia, linguistics, and politics

177 Followers  |  21 Following  |  17 Posts  |  Joined: 19.10.2023  |  2.3172

Latest posts by koutchoukalimar.bsky.social on Bluesky

Yes, although if I remember correctly comparative ʕan also occurs in Quranic Arabic (ʔinni ʔaḥabtu ḥubba l-ḫayri ʕan ḏikri rabbi, "I preferred the love of niceties over the memory of my Lord"), and not infrequently in Arabic dialects (including Omani Arabic).

26.09.2025 07:11 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

Best wel veel, maar het is dus vrij slecht beschreven!

Ik wil hier overigens nog een Serieus Artikel van maken dus misschien dat ik in dat geval iets meer de diepte in kan gaan over wat er in het Zanzibar Arabisch gebeurt:)

25.09.2025 20:30 — 👍 4    🔁 0    💬 2    📌 0
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The rise and fall of prohibitive ʕan When I was writing my dissertation I learned of Zanzibari Arabic, a relatively obscure and oft-overlooked variety of Arabic. Arabic came to the Zanzibar archipelago by way of migrants from Oman and…

By @koutchoukalimar.bsky.social

25.09.2025 19:38 — 👍 17    🔁 6    💬 1    📌 0
Scheurkalender: zo 7 september - In de eerste week van september vindt op universiteiten traditioneel de opening van het academisch jaar plaats. De oudste universiteit van de Lage Landen is die van Leuven, die precies 800 jaar geleden – in 1425 – werd gesticht. Voorwerp van trots, maar ook van kritiek – toen al.

Scheurkalender: zo 7 september - In de eerste week van september vindt op universiteiten traditioneel de opening van het academisch jaar plaats. De oudste universiteit van de Lage Landen is die van Leuven, die precies 800 jaar geleden – in 1425 – werd gesticht. Voorwerp van trots, maar ook van kritiek – toen al.

Wat vliegt de tijd

07.09.2025 05:25 — 👍 13    🔁 1    💬 1    📌 0

‎𐩥𐩡 𐩯𐩲𐩵𐩠𐩣𐩥 𐩩𐩱𐩡𐩨 𐩬𐩲𐩣𐩩𐩣 And may Taʾlab reward them‭

The University of Jena has a concise dictionary of Sabaic (in German) sabaweb.uni-jena.de/Sabaweb/Root...

The National Research Council of Italy had a database of South Arabian inscriptions, sadly it seems no longer publicly accessible dasi.cnr.it

18.08.2025 15:57 — 👍 8    🔁 2    💬 0    📌 0
Artwork for the podcast A Language I Love Is...

Artwork for the podcast A Language I Love Is...

New ALILI!

To make up for an unexpected podcast pause, Ep. 38 is four languages for the price of one. Imar Koutchoukali discusses the Old South Arabian group, included among them the language of the Queen of Sheba.

Acast: shows.acast.com/a-language-i...
Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/0hty...

18.08.2025 12:40 — 👍 29    🔁 7    💬 2    📌 2

It me

17.08.2025 15:00 — 👍 6    🔁 1    💬 1    📌 0
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What did they write about? : An intellectual history of Timbuktu ca. 1450-1900. No single body of primary sources in the literary heritage of West Africa has attracted as much attention and attained as much celebrity as the fabled manuscripts of Timbuktu.

Elementary education in Timbuktu, as in all its peers, began with writing, grammar, and memorizing the Quran and some devotional poetry, advancing to arabic grammar; classical poetry; studies on the life of the Prophet, and studies on theology
www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/what-did-t...

06.04.2025 18:45 — 👍 9    🔁 4    💬 1    📌 1
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Looked at another way, the Baltic is a Mediterranean of the north - with Sweden as North Africa, Finland as Iberia, Estonia as Italy, Latvia as the Balkans, Lithuania as Greece and Poland as Turkey. Gotland is Crete…

09.03.2025 18:59 — 👍 155    🔁 20    💬 12    📌 4
BES19s 30: A Safaitic dancing scene
YouTube video by OCIANA BES19s 30: A Safaitic dancing scene

An ancient celebration : a dancing scene with a double-reed flute in the black desert some 2000 years ago. BES19s 30: www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8o-...

07.03.2025 13:25 — 👍 15    🔁 5    💬 2    📌 0

pourquoi pas les deux?

26.02.2025 09:29 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

European institutions should act immediately to offer a position to any and all scientists and scholars in the United States whose academic careers are on the line.

25.02.2025 22:09 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0
Post image 25.02.2025 22:06 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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a man with a spoon in his mouth says justice ! ALT: a man with a spoon in his mouth says justice !
25.02.2025 20:55 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Reconstruct abialization and assume the loss of the /k/?

11.02.2025 21:07 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0
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From the AcademicQuran community on Reddit Explore this post and more from the AcademicQuran community

The AMA with @koutchoukalimar.bsky.social on AcademicQuran has begun! Send in your questions now and he will answer them over the weekend!

www.reddit.com/r/AcademicQu...

31.01.2025 21:43 — 👍 2    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 0

I grew up around American Republicans and have been struggling to find another term for the current Republican party, which has a very different platform. I've been using either "nationalist" or "orange". I suppose most people just say "MAGA".
But "Orangist" may exceed them all in hilarity

03.01.2025 06:00 — 👍 2    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 0

This becomes even funnier when you realize a major Orangist was named Cornelis Tromp.

02.01.2025 17:47 — 👍 5    🔁 1    💬 1    📌 0

delete your account

24.12.2024 18:47 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
Inbox | Substack

Decided to go back to blogging, now on Substack.

And my first post: "Is Islam already going a reformation", in which I aruge that the introduction of blasphemy laws, religious violence point at a painful confrontation Muslim communities are having with modernity.
open.substack.com/pub/koutchou...

28.11.2024 14:17 — 👍 3    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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gonna tell my kids this was Joseph Haydn

16.11.2024 19:43 — 👍 3    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

I think it's fair to assume that Sabaic s² was very likely pronounced as a lateral. A nice clue is that in Qatabanic and Hadrimitic we find ks²d for Chaldea.

15.11.2024 16:52 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

Intuitively I'd say it'd be more common cross-linguistically to have at least one hissed sibilant (i.e., s¹ = /s/; s² = [ɬ]; s³ = [ts]) which also solves the problem of the merger of s¹ and s³ in Late Sabaic (although an early Arabic substratum there can not be discounted, complicating things).

14.11.2024 16:45 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

Otherwise, the choice to represent Sabaic s1 as š [ʃ] or s [s], I feel depends on the academic tradition of the scholar: those coming from Hebraistics tend to use ʃ (based on Heb. šīn) whereas those from Arabistics tend to prefer s (based on Ar. sīn).

14.11.2024 16:41 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

I see Benjamin already answered; my thoughts on this is that for Sabaic (and other ESAL) it's basically impossible to prove. Looking at late antique Syriac transcriptions of South Arabian names may give a clue, but we'd also have to account for etymological interference.

14.11.2024 16:39 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

bold of you to assume you won't just doomscroll until 1 30 AM

not based on personal experience

20.10.2023 11:05 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

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