إعادة التَّأطير
root: ع-و-د and ء-ط-ر / phrase / definition: reframing
Solitudinous sahoors and attempts at staying up as late as I can handle in my mid-twenties (my failings in which remind me I’m well past my teen years) have been left behind in Ramadan, and my PhD chapter that I abandoned in the second half of the month awaits me with a blinking cursor and more work to do on it than I remember.
Somehow, the video I keep rewatching of a baby goat bleating at a closed door has me thinking “relatable” and I’m not sure I can piece together why. Except for the fact that—perhaps—I’ve been feeling stuck, with a deadline ahead of me and the bleats of panic emanating from the recesses of my soul.
(Side note: we looked at an Arabic phrase for “recesses of the soul” in Wehr Wednesdays #223!)
But today, I processed my feelings towards my May-the-first deadline and realised that, in some strange way, I’m looking forward to it.
Not that the two pieces of work I need to submit are anywhere near ready. Because they’re not, and one hasn’t even made it to the stage of a comprehensive plan. But I’ve started to view the deadline as the gateway to the start of my summer holiday, which has worked wonders for my mindset.
In the two weeks following my deadline, I’ve already got a few things in my calendar: a wedding to attend; a visit planned to see my friend’s new baby; a ticket booked for some Central American film screenings; and a scheduled flight—not to Central America, if you were wondering.
So the coming (and going) of the deadline seems more of an excitement than a stressor. I mean, I will still be unwillingly residing in a state of panic as the deadline approaches, but I’m enjoying the fruits of this reframing at the moment.
In those Ramadan days, though, of trying to drown out the bleats of deadline panic, I did what anyone in their right mind would do when stressed: I started researching yet another extinct language.
(I wonder if I come across as nerdy in real life as I do on this blog…)
What was my pick this time? The Sabaic language.
Sabaic (a.k.a. Sabaean), associated with the Kingdom of Sheba, is a Semitic language that was spoken in the southern part of the Arabian Peninsula.
Sabaic is one of the four Old South Arabian languages, a category that also includes Minaic/Minaean, Qatabānic/Qatabānian, and Ḥaḍramautic. (It seems as though linguists had some unresolved nomenclature-related differences that we won’t delve into.)
Honestly, I didn’t make it too far into reading about Sabaic phonology and grammar (although some of the morphological features did catch my eye) because I was so fascinated by the script. It’s beautiful.
Just look at these Sabaic inscriptions:
If I were tasked with creating my own language, I imagine I’d design a script that looks something like this.
But I think that’s a task I’ll have to save until after my deadline.
!مع السلامة
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What’s cool about this script, is that it is the same abjad script that is the ancestor to the Ethiopic abugida scripts in current use in parts of Ethiopia and Eritrea! It’s interesting to see how scripts develop throughout their histories into what is currently happening, and wonder what might develop later on down the line.
Thanks for this addition! I agree, the development of scripts is super interesting to explore.