Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #semitic

Most recents (9)

@amanpour @kajakallas Canned meat distributed by the #Ukrainian #Nazi A. #Gramanchuk with fascist symbols such as the shield of the Ucronazi collabrs and the colors of the OUN-UPA, on the label it says: "#meat of Russian-speaking #babies"
Alluding to dead children in #Donbas
@amanpour @kajakallas Thread 19
FROM: #Marin in #Nazi -funeral #Ukraine | Mar 7, 2023
TO: #Kotsyubaylo eliminated | Mar 7, 2023
- when the #Americans visited the positions in #Avdiivka, he said that he was feeding the tamed #wolf "the #bones of #Russian-speaking #children.
Read 70 tweets
Some thoughts on the Proto-#Semitic word for 'woman, wife' on this #InternationalWomensDay.

The broad outlines of the reconstruction are clear, since many different languages have pretty similar forms. The stem must be something like *ʔV(n)θ-(a)t-. 1/11 Image
This *-(a)t- is the feminine suffix. From the same consonantal root, we also find some other words: #Arabic ʔunθā 'feminine', #Amorite(!) /taʔnīθ-um/, predictably bizarre Modern South Arabian forms like #Jibbali teθ, etc. (for Ancient South Arabian, see below). 2/11
Reconstructing the main word runs into three problems. From right to left:

1) *-at- or *-t- in the suffix?
2) *n or no *n?
3) *a or *i in the first syllable? 3/11
Read 11 tweets
More of an article outline than a thread, but tweeting about an idea is more fun than looking up which 19th-century German already published it. So: a thread about the h in ʔĕlōhīm/allåhå/ʔilāh- etc. ‘god’, and why the #Hebrew word is morphologically plural. 1/20
Proto-#Semitic for ‘god’ can be reconstructed as *ʔil-, without *h. This is clear from #Akkadian il-, #Ugaritic i͗l, Hebrew ʔēl, maybe some others. Those last two are used both as common nouns and as names, uppercase-G ‘God’, ‘El’. 2/20
Meanwhile, there’s this other form, which reconstructs as *ʔilāh- (unchanged in Classical #Arabic). This is the basic word for ‘god, deity’ in Arabic and #Aramaic, e.g. Biblical Aramaic ʔĕlāh, #Syriac aloho/allåhå. 3/20
Read 20 tweets
Examples of appropriation of #Arabic toponyms
List will name #Palestinian villages, place names depopulated before or in 1948, followed by #Israeli settlements with toponyms derived from names of destroyed #Palestinian villages:

#Lubya
Depopulated July 1948 (Bean in #Arabic)
#Lavi (Kibbutz); founded 1948 (Lion in #Hebrew)

#Al-Kabri ( Western #Galilee) depopulated on May 21st 1948
#Kabri (Kibbutz); founded 1949

#Alma (#Sadad district)
Depopulated on October 30th, 1948
#Alma (#moshav ) founded in 1949

#Biriyya;
Depopulated on May 2,
-, 1948

#Amqa (#Acre are)
Depopulated october, 1948
#Amka (Moshav) founded 1949

#Sajara (Lower #Galilee);
Depopulated: July, 1948
#Tree in #Arabic
#AynZaytun (Western #Galilee)
Spring #Olives in #Arabic
#Ilaniya (Tree in #Hebrew)+ #EinZeitim (kibbutz) Spring olive
Read 21 tweets
Without weighing in on the #Hebrews controversy, it is worth considering that there is a long history of individuals and communities labeling themselves and others as Hebrews or Jews. A thread. 1/21
Already in the 3rd-4th century, Eusebius of Caesarea distinguished between Hebrews and Israelites; Hebrews were the original people of God, and their true ancestors, the real Hebrews, are the Christians; the Israelites, and by extension the Jews, are the corrupt descendants. 2/
This has been studied in exquisite detail by Aaron Johnson. See also Denise Kimber Buell's seminal work on ethnic reasoning in early Christianity. 3/ ImageImage
Read 24 tweets
Short? thread on III-y verbs in #Aramaic:

Based on #Hebrew and #Arabic, we reconstruct a slightly irregular paradigm for the prefix conjugation for Pr-Cntrl-#Semitic, where the 3rd radical is lost word-finally:

imperfect *ta-bniy-u 'you build'; but
imperative *bni 'build!' 1/7
In Arabic, the *-iyu of the imperfect contracts to -ī, while the imperative adds i- before the cluster:

imperfect *ta-bniy-u > tabnī
imperative *bni > ibni

Cf. @PhDniX's article on triphthong contraction in Arabic: 2/7 academia.edu/32715681/The_d…
In Hebrew, *-iyu contracts to -ɛ̄, while the short *-i is lowered to *-e and then lengthened:

imperfect *ta-bniy-u > tiḇnɛ̄
imperative *bni > bnē

Cf. my article on these verbs here: 3/7 academia.edu/37673891/A_tri…
Read 7 tweets
(1/3) Hodie in li historie: ante 41 annus, #Malta devenit un totmen índependent state pos que li forties #britannic lassat it in 1979. Recentmen it devenit un membre del #EU. Un land composit ex micri insules, it hat esset sub li dominion de mult altri

#Occidental #Interlingue Image
(2/3) landes, quel vide se clarmen in li lingue #maltés quel es un branche del lingues #semitic (#arabic) ma con mult paroles foren ex #italian e recentmen #anglés. It es videt anc in li religion, quel es por li pluparte #catolic malgré li radicas del lingue. E mem plu curiosi Image
(3/3) es que hay un 'land' ligat con Malta quel simultanmen existe ma ne existe: li Soveran Órden Militari de #Malta, expulset del insul de #Francia in 1798, it possede null terres, ma have alquant international reconossentie, sede se in Roma e have mem su propri passaportas. Image
Read 3 tweets
Time for some #Semitic geekery concerning 'hollow verbs'. These are verbs which have a vowel (usually long) where strong verbs have their second radical consonant, like #Arabic qām-a 'he stood up', ya-qūm-u 'he will stand up', #Hebrew qām, yā-qūm (same meanings). 1/9
It's controversial whether these hollow verbs already had this shape in Proto-Semitic. The alternative is that they originally had the consonant *w or *y as their second radical, but that this dropped out in various languages, causing vowel contraction. 2/9
I think the forms like ya-qūm- are Proto-Semitic, where they developed from even earlier forms like ya-qwum-. But because other forms (like Arabic and Hebrew qām-) show irregular correspondences between different languages, Proto-Semitic retained a consonant here IMO. 3/9
Read 9 tweets
"The feminine endings *-ay and *-āy in Semitic and Berber" is finally out in BSOAS. It's an article I'm rather happy with; very technical and linguistic, but I'll try to give a summary here. #semitic
cambridge.org/core/journals/…
academia.edu/37112479/The_f…
Berber and Semitic clearly have a shared common ancestor; usually called Proto-Afro-Asiatic. A macrofamily that is difficult to reconstruct, but at the same time the parallels are so striking that it cannot be a coincidence. One of these parallels is the feminine formation.
The general feminine ending is *-t in both Berber and Semitic; Semitic also points to a by form *-at (which becomes the regular form in Arabic). It has long been recognised that Berber and Semitic share this. Besides this in both languages we find a different feminine ending.
Read 14 tweets

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