Yes, there actually seem to be a number of toponyms based on words for spotted/multi-coloured in that region.
26.02.2026 14:46
👍 1
🔁 0
💬 0
📌 0
Yes, there actually seem to be a number of toponyms based on words for spotted/multi-coloured in that region.
Odd semantic alignment here. Rekem makes me think of RQM and speckledness (etc.), which matches Bared (BRD) (ברוד etc.), but doesn’t align. And Petra then makes me think of Petros (‘Stone’) which aligns with Hejra (حجر), but again doesn’t align.
I love R, but the behaviour of ifelse when you combine scalars and vectors is really unintuitive. E.g., Guess the result of the line behaviour.
ifelse(1 == 2, "Yes", c("Yes", "No"))
Recent work on (re-)dating the Dead Sea Scrolls strikes me as potentially significant (if correct).
Grateful for info on what the general response to all this has been and/or engagement with it.
journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...
P.S. Could someone at @tetraseminar.bsky.social tell me how to register for this. I tried emailing Dr. Hilkens but my email bounced back.
The whole thing baffles me. E.g., see the attached entry from the CAL.
I imagine that this will be superb. Roman Gundacker is an expert on this.
#OCIANA #Top_10_in_2025 : The #OCIANA team inserted more than 1500 new inscriptions into the database. Here are our top ten (with a three-way tie at #10) of the year, just in case you missed them! From Nabonidus to Dahr, let us known what you think!
www.academia.edu/145461821/OC...
Meanwhile, why would we think that mabbūl is a loan? Is it attested in Akkadian?
😀
I wondered about both of these.
We have kufr as ‘pitch’ in Arabic, and no clear cognates in Aramaic aside from in later Jewish Aramaic (and/or in connection with Genesis). Does this have to be a loan?
The main one was below.
He spoke about the loanwords somewhere else, not sure exactly where now.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bBR...
Dear All.
I listened to an interview with Irving Finkel over the weekend.
He claimed that the Biblical Flood narrative contains quite a few Akkadian loanwords. Any ideas what any of them might be? Or whether anyone’s written stuff about them?
Review of Schneider's "The Semitic Sibilants", by yours truly:
academic.oup.com/jss/advance-...
Are you able to send me a pdf? (Have emailed you just now.)
If מִשְׁאֶ֫רֶת (Exod. and Deut. only) is a kneading trough, it’d be nice if it was cognate with שְׂאֹר (‘leaven’). But what’s happened to its sibilant?
Loaned into Egyptian (where its lateral fricative went) & borrowed back? Feels a bit far-fetched, not least because it’s not attested in Egyptian (afaik).
Related to Geez maʕār (*maʕar) and Amharic mar = ‘honey, honeycomb’?
Not sure how much weight I can reasonably put on this text:
As a little treat for you, here's an #ArabicBible Advent calendar 🧵. Every day I'll post a verse from the Christmas story from one of the oldest Arabic Gospel lectionaries, Sinai ar. 72, dated 897 CE (and a few other texts in between). [2nd attempt, I won't be offended if you point out my nonsense.]
Thanks.
Do you have a sense of how exceptional it is? Checking a few at random, I have דְּבֵלָה yielding דְּבֶלֶת תְּאֵנִים, and שְׂרֵפָה yielding שְׂרֵפַת הַפָּרָה.
How come the construct of נְבֵלָה (‘carcass’) is נִבְלַת, and, possibly, of לְבֵנָה is לִבְנַת? I wondered if the constructs preserved an older form, since בְּרֵכָה corresponds to *birkat (e.g., بِرْكَة), but then בְּרֵכָה simply becomes בְּרֵכַת, so I don’t know.
Yes, I’ve often suspected that. Those three root consonants seem particularly conducive to metathesis. I have no idea why.
Probably true. But I still quite like it.
Egyptian ḥmꜣ.t (‘salt’) as a cognate of the West Semitic *milḥ?
Not dissimilar metathesis seems to be reflected in the borrowing of West Semitic *rumḥ (‘spear’) as *murḥ (hence Coptic ⲙⲉⲣ(ⲉ)ϩ).
#Updated on #OCIANA - The first Ancient South Arabian inscription from the Ḥarrah, from Zalaf, Syria! Was it carved by a North Arabian who learned the script or a wandering South Arabian trader? Impossible to know! But its irregularities tell a story.
Find more: ociana.osu.edu/inscriptions...
Egyptian ḥmꜣ.t (‘salt’) as a cognate of the West Semitic *milḥ?
Not dissimilar metathesis seems to be reflected in the borrowing of West Semitic *rumḥ (‘spear’) as *murḥ (hence Coptic ⲙⲉⲣ(ⲉ)ϩ).
A neat Masoretic note on II Sam. 13.
Something like, שׁממה [occurs] three times (ג̇), twice defectively (ב̇ חָסֵר) and once fully (וחד מָלֵא). [Ordered by appearance], [the first is] ותשב תמר ושממה, [the second, which is plene]כי־רבים בני־שוממה מבני, [and the third] נתנני שממה.
Ah yes, true.
If I heard this word, I’d have no idea what it meant.
Huehnergard’s excellent article on Hebrew nominal patterns classifies כֻּתֹּ֫נֶת as a *quttul-t form, which it may be,
but is it better explained in light of the tendency for pre-tonic *u to prompt gemination (עָמוֹק/עֲמֻקִּים), since כֻּתֹּ֫נֶת isn’t geminated in (unstressed) construct forms (e.g., כְּתֹנֶת הַפַּסִּים)?
Idea for paper. List various Modern South Arabian borrowings from Arabic where a lateral fricative is effectively restored, such as in the case of šəmāl ⇒ śēməl(i) = ‘inland/north’.
Entitle the paper ‘The Imputation of Śin’.