Exploring Time in the Arabic Dictionary: “Hour”

سائِع

root: س-و-ع / form I active participle / definition: abandoned

Do you remember, back in January, when we explored why سنة is longer than عام?

Well, we’re back with the Exploring Time series—and this time we’re taking a deep dive into the Arabic word for “hour”. And it’s more interesting than you might expect…

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Hidden Form V Verbs in the Qur’an

مَخْفيّ

root: خ-ف-ي / adjective / definition: hidden, concealed

Last week, I attended an online talk about developing a writing system for Cypriot Arabic. As a Cypriot linguist who’s studying Arabic, I kind of couldn’t miss it.

I hadn’t realised, though, that it was a “camera-on” event—so I quickly threw on a headscarf and smoothed my eyebrows to look somewhat presentable before flicking open my webcam.

One of the things I learnt was that the letter ع is the only emphatic consonant from Standard Arabic to survive in Cypriot Arabic.

I wonder whether mourning phonemes is illogical. I mean, Arabic emphatics are pretty cool. And have you heard about how they can mask verb forms?

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Root Exploration: ر-ح-م

رَحّال

root: ر-ح-ل / adjective / plural: رُحَّل / definition: nomadic

Every now and then, a wave of embarrassment that I thought had ebbed into nonexistence surges over me once more.

Once upon a time, I received feedback for one of my undergrad Linguistics essays and was mortified to find that the teacher had corrected a phrase I wrote to “monadic predicate”.

And what had I originally written? Nomadic predicate. As if this predicate is roaming around, packing up and re-pitching its tent in the field of syntax.

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10:27, Baghdad, Page 63

مَقْهًى

root: ق-ه-و /noun / plural: مَقاهٍ / definition: café

I can’t help but notice that, beyond my screen, my تبغدد top is drying on the heater upside down. .

I’m normally the most unobservant person—my friends can tell you that. But there are some things, especially in times of stress, that I’ll notice to the point I question my own sanity.

For years, it’s been 10:27.

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Non-Human Nouns, Human Plurals

إنْسان

root: ء-ن-س / noun / definition: a human

I was thinking about the root of the word إنْسان (“human”)—how ء-ن-س is associated with friendliness and familiarity, and how even the dictionary knows that humanity can be lost and corrupted if you muddle its origin (see ء-س-ن).

And the humanness of language is very much what my PhD thesis is about. I’m looking at how we can understand someone’s subconscious perceptions and hopes through something as intentional as literature.

It’s one of those topics that your own humanness gets entangled in, and I wonder if I can get through this chapter without a full-on sob session. Last night, writing about Khaled Khalifa in the introduction, I was somewhere between typing hands, a too-bright screen, cloudy lenses, and teary eyes.

Maybe analysing just confuses the concept of humanity, but maybe that’s another story. Right now, we’re looking at a different understanding of humanness: humanness in relation to grammar.

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Dictionary Finds: رَحَموت

الرَّحْمة

root: ر-ح-م / noun / definition: mercy

I can summarise my PhD progress today by saying that I eventually won the wrestle with page numbers on my running thesis draft.

Of course the developers had to make that difficult, because God forbid someone would want the numbering to start on page 3 rather than page 2, as I’d had it before.

(Here’s an idea: why doesn’t Word just ask me on what page I’d like the numbering to begin?!)

But, at some indistinct point after creating a page break and (shortly) before having a breakdown, I’d managed it. الحمد لله.

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Prepositional Interrogatives: When Does عَمّا Become عَمَّ?

بَوصَلة

root: ب-و-ص-ل / noun / plural: بَوصَلات / definition: a compass

I wonder if it means anything that “time” is ud in Sumerian and öd in Göktürkçe. Then I think back to my friend telling me that the ancient Egyptians associated east with this life and west with the afterlife; and language and culture start feeling as cyclical as day and night.

Inside one of the pyramids I scrabbled into, I recited some lines from The Epic of Gilgamesh in Sumerian because… well, what else are you meant to do in there?

It was empty and had great acoustics, and I thought it added to the *ancient civilisation vibes* pretty well. Just that the Sumerians were situated further north and a little more east.

Cardinal directions aside, let’s compass an important grammar point that you may or may not have wondered about.

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Cairene Bookshops and Un-Expectations

القاهِرة

root: ق-ه-ر / proper noun, feminine form I active participle / definition: Cairo

A few days ago, I was taking refuge from a chilly Cairene night in the warmth of a tiny bookshop when I got to chatting with the two men working there.

One of them kindly gifted me a book he guessed I’d like, and asked me to get in touch after reading it to let him know my thoughts.

And I will, Mostafa, but realistically that will be a long while away as I’ve amassed a terrifyingly-high digital stack of readings to get through first, in order to research for and write this PhD chapter before May dawns.

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Arabic Observations: Retracing and Narrating

بُقْعة

root: ب-ق-ع / noun / plural: بُقَع / definition: stain

Someone noted last night that I often wear white. And a matter of minutes later, sat in that Uyghur restaurant in Central London, an orange stain of noodle sauce had menacingly bloomed on the referred-to dress, front and centre.

It was tempting—in that moment—to question my attachment to white clothing in recent months, but I concluded that noodle sauce would stain clothing of any colour… as proven shortly afterwards by my colleague in his navy blue jumper.

To be honest, I can’t always remember why I start telling certain stories. But at least the concept of stories is relevant to this post’s topic.

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Step-by-Step Arabic Literature Translation #16

حَصاد

root: ح-ص-د / form I verbal noun / definition: to harvest

Last week left me exhausted. So I spent the weekend wearily harvesting whatever grains of energy I’d managed to sow, and trying hard to herd unwieldy guilt into the back of my mind.

I’ve noticed I tend to write step-by-step literature translation posts in times like this. I’m not sure of the reason, but we’ll save our analytical skills for the literary extract instead.

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