Black and white image of Proto-Canaanite alpeh, heth, lamed incised on a clay object

Tracing of the inscription with square script letters on the side. The text above discusses Biblical names, Ahilud and Ahali, both from the time of David.

Often said to be a recent Arabic loanword, אחלה achla 'awesome' is today believed to be the oldest word in the Hebrew language. Here it is inscribed on an 11th or early 10th-century BCE jar handle from Raddana. Wow!

Teadusjulgeolek 21. sajandil: pingest vabaduse ja julgeoleku vahel – Diplomaatia 2024. aasta jaanuaris avalikustati, et Tartu ülikooli Johan Skytte poliitikauuringute instituudis töötanud Euroopa uuringute professor Vjatšeslav Morozov oli mõni nädal varem arreteeritud kahtlustatun...

Teadusjulgeoleku mündi üks külg on kaitsta meie teadmisi välismõjude eest, teine aga luua turvaline keskkond, kus teadlased saavad rahulikult ja murevabalt töötada.

⬇️ Välisministeeriumi teadusnõunik @koutchoukalimar.bsky.social

Working on my best Samuel Johnson impression.

Thanks google very useful

Photograph of a light grey rock fragment inscribed with 22 lines of Nabataean script.

🗿NABATAEAN NEWS🗿

Recently (2024), Laïla Nehmé published four #Nabataean texts from a burial site in north-western Saudi Arabia. Three are very fragmentary, but the fourth is the longest Nabataean text on stone found so far! Two things that stood out to me:
1/6

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).

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:)

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

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

‎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

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...

It me

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...

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…

BES19s 30: A Safaitic dancing scene YouTube video by OCIANA

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-...

pourquoi pas les deux?

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.

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

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...

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

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

delete your account

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...

gonna tell my kids this was Joseph Haydn

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.

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).

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).

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.