#geez — Public Fediverse posts

#Ge'ez inscriptions along the top: dagəmawi mənelək nəguśä nägäśt zä-ʾityoṗya 'Menelik the second, King of Kings of Ethiopia' (left) moʿa ʾanbäsa zä-ʾəm-nägädä yəhuda 'The lion that is from the tribe of Judah has conquered' (right)

RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:2bgp6ilfohfngg6ehiyqctxt/post/3mk3n2ya6yk2b

MAKE.👏 IT.👏MAKE.👏 SENSE.👏
#AbortionISaHumanRight
#LindseyGraham
#LiveYourTruth
#ComeOut
#GEEZ
#STFU
#GTFO
#TTTH
🖕🙄🖕

Transcription of the #Ge'ez: qəddəst śəllase

RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:5ap4d3goxphqsmt2xzse27f2/post/3ma7l7irip22t

New paper on ordinals

This blog post is now a paper, which came out unexpectedly soon: ‘Ordinal Numerals as a Criterion for Subclassification: The Case of Semitic’.

Abstract: This article explores how ordinal numerals (like first, second and third) can help classify languages, focusing on the Semitic language family. Ordinals are often formed according to productive derivational processes, but as a separate word class, they may retain archaic morphology that is otherwise lost from the language. Together with the high propensity of ‘first’ and, less frequently, ‘second’ to be formed through suppletion, this makes them highly valuable for diachronic linguistic analysis. The article identifies four main patterns of ordinal formation across different Semitic languages. Together with innovations in the lowest two ordinals, these can be correlated with more and less accepted subgroupings within Semitic as a whole. Concretely, they offer support for the widely accepted West Semitic, Northwest Semitic and Abyssinian (Ethio-Semitic) clades as well as the recently proposed Aramaeo-Canaanite clade and provide new evidence for the further subclassification of Abyssinian that matches other recent proposals. However, no evidence was found to support the debated Central Semitic or South Semitic groupings. Given the accurate identification of accepted subgroupings and high level of detail, this approach holds promise for the classification of other language families, especially where other linguistic data are scarce.

Enjoy!

#Akkadian #Amharic #AncientSouthArabian #Arabic #Aramaic #GeEz #Hebrew #linguistics #ModernSouthArabian #news #ProtoSemitic #Ugaritic

West Virginia deploys over 300 #NationalGuard troops to #DC on #DictatorDon's say-so.

Remember his #Jan6 claim that only Nancy #Pelosi had the authority to call up the Nat'l Guard to protect DC?

#Geez, I don't know if #MAGAts are more gullable or more stupid for believing his bull$#!+.

New publications and podcast

Busy year for publications (think that’s it for me this year):

Semitic *ʾilāh- and Hebrew אלהים‎: From plural ‘gods’ to singular ‘God’ (Open Access)

Abstract: The Biblical Hebrew word אלהים‎ is plural in form. Semantically and syntactically, however, it can be plural or singular. The stem of this noun can be reconstructed as * ʾilāh-. As already noted by Wellhausen, this looks like a broken plural of *ʾil-, the Proto-Semitic word for ‘god’. This article takes Wellhausen’s observation and uses it to explain the plural morphology of Hebrew אלהים‎. I argue that *ʾilāh- should be reconstructed with redundant plural suffixes in some parts of the paradigm. This reconstructed paradigm is preserved virtually unchanged in Archaic Biblical Hebrew. The reconstructed paradigm also explains the almost complete replacement of *ʾil- by *ʾilāh- in Aramaic and Arabic and allows us to reassess the reasons for the association between the lexeme ‘god’ and plural number. Consequently, earlier suggestions that see אלהים‎’s plural number as a reflection of pre-Yahwistic polytheism or as a marker of abstractness are no longer tenable.

The varying size of the Sodom coalition in Genesis 14 (in FS Tigchelaar; email me for a PDF)

Trying my hardest to find something that might interest newly retired KU Leuven professor Eibert Tigchelaar, I used some Dead Sea Scrolls and other Second Temple literature as well as other textual and linguistic evidence to seek for order in the number of kings on Sodom’s side in Gen 14. Turns out that this closely aligns with other indications of different layers in this fascinating chapter: one about a local raid, one that may be a reworking of a lost epic, and a third one building on the combination of the first two. If you understand Dutch (or want to practice!), also check out this brand new episode of Timo Epping’s Oudheid, all about this question.

#AncientSouthArabian #Arabic #Aramaic #Bible #Canaanite #GeEz #Genesis #Hebrew #Hosea #linguistics #news #Phoenician #ProtoSemitic

The Linguistic Politics of Ethiopian Philosophy:
Navigating Tradition, Modernity, and Globalization between Ge’ez, Amharic and English

Fasil Merawi (Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia)
Jonathan Egid (SOAS University of London)

July 10, 2025, 2:15 pm (CEST)
Cultural Campus, Aula & Live Stream

https://www.uni-hildesheim.de/glophi/2025/07/07/the-linguistic-politics-of-ethiopian-philosophy-fasil-merawi-jonathan-egid/

#africanphilosophy #amharic #Ethiopia #geez #linguistics
#politics

Leiden Summer School 2025

The program for this year’s Leiden Summer School in Languages and Linguistics is up. Besides the Caucasian, Chinese, Language Description, Language Documentation, Indo-European (I/II), Celtic, Indology, Iranian, Linguistics (I/II), Mediterranean World, and Russian tracks, here’s the line-up for Semitic this year:

• An introduction to Arabic paleography and epigraphy (Ahmad Al-Jallad)
• Comparative Semitics (Marijn van Putten with guest lectures by me and maybe others)
• Rabbinic Hebrew (Martin Baasten)
• Classical Ethiopic (Martin Baasten)

Registration opens soon! The Summer School will run from July 21st through August 1st.

#Arabic #GeEz #Hebrew #linguistics #news #ProtoSemitic #Rabbinic

The Semitic languages show a regular correspondence of p in some languages and f in others. For instance, ‘mouth’ in Akkadian is p-ū; Biblical Hebrew pe; Biblical Aramaic pūm; Ge’ez ʾäf;1 and Classical Arabic fam-. (Modern South Arabian should have an f too, but has replaced this word.) This sound is uncontroversially reconstructed as Proto-Semitic *p, as in *p-ūm ‘mouth’.2 Traditionally, the change of *p to f was taken as a diagnostic feature of the South Semitic languages.

[p] to [f], a plosive changing into a fricative, is an example of lenition. Lenition is a common type of sound change, so we tell our students, so it makes sense that *p is the older sound and it changed to f. So far, so good.

While preparing my first couple of classes for Comparative Semitics this year, I suddenly wasn’t so sure about this anymore. Two things bother me:

1. The examples of p > f I know about are all part of a larger change affecting other plosives too, like Grimm’s Law (Proto-Indo-European *p, *t, *k, *kw > Proto-Germanic *f, *þ, *h, *hw and related changes) or Aramaic and Hebrew BGDKPT-spirantization. Is just p turning to f really so common? How about just f turning into p?
2. Most scholars don’t accept the family tree above anymore. In the current model, the changes look more like this:

Now we need three or four separate instances of *p > *f—just as I’m starting to doubt how common that change is. Huehnergard & Rubin (2011), who argue for this second family tree, explain this as an areal change that spread through contact. But what kind of a contact scenario should we think of here? Did f spread from Ancient South Arabian (if those languages even had it) to all its neighbours? It’s not like we see enough other shared contact features to confidently posit a South Semitic language area or something.

Looking at Afroasiatic, things don’t get better:

• Berber has f, not p
• Cushitic has f, not p
• Egyptian has p and f, but we don’t know which one corresponds to Semitic *p (if either)
• Chadic: same as Egyptian, to my knowledge
• (I’m not sure Omotic is Afroasiatic, still reading up on this)

So if we posit Proto-Semitic *p, either we need two more independent cases of *p > *f (Berber, Cushitic),3 maybe more (Egyptian? Chadic?), or we reconstruct *f for Proto-Afroasiatic and say Proto-Semitic changed *f to *p. At which point, why not cut out the middleman and keep *f, then change it to *p in East and Northwest Semitic? Just two changes instead of the minimum of six you need otherwise.

So, are there any good arguments to reconstruct Proto-Semitic *p—or should we press *f and leave behind this relic from theories that believed in a South Semitic subgrouping?

1. Probably influenced by Cushitic, but we can still take it as related to the other Semitic words. ↩︎
2. In my opinion, the only word known so far with a superheavy syllable, exceptionally permitted because the word is monosyllabic. ↩︎
3. I’m also really starting to doubt that Cushitic is one family. So maybe make that four (Berber, Beja, Agaw, East/South Cushitic). ↩︎

https://bnuyaminim.wordpress.com/2024/11/07/froto-semitic/

#Afroasiatic #Agaw #Akkadian #Ancie #Arabic #Aramaic #Beja #Berber #Chadic #Cushitic #Egyptian #GeEz #Hebrew #linguistics #ModernSouthAr #Omotic #ProtoSemitic

"safety manager", "safe space", "crisisteam", "zwaarwegende besluiten" die "democratisch tot stand komen".

Ze hebben het hier dus over een liedjesfestival.

#eurovisie #songfestival2025 #geez

bron: nos.nl

Ge'ez oder ፊደል (Fidäl) #geez

Happy to share that my article "Faulty Indictment in a Man-Made Era," previously published in #Geez #Magazine, has been accepted for display by the #NYC Climate #Writers Collective for exhibition in the #Climate Imaginarium on Governors Island this summer.

I posted the full text of the #article on my #blog a while back; please enjoy!

https://arielkroon.ca/faulty-indictment-in-a-man-made-era/

#ClimateChange #Anthropocene #Guilt #ClimateJustice #solarpunk

PS A huge thank-you to @HollySchofield for sending this my way

SOLD! For £4,445 / $5,600 / 316,000 Ethiopian Birr

Emperor Haile Selassie's Ge'ez-inscribed silver fly whisk, yesterday at Sotheby's https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2024/royal-noble/haile-selassie-i-emperor-of-ethiopia-a-caucasian

Anyone know where it is going? #haileselassie #ethiopia #geez

Earlier this year, I had two fun conversations with the team of the then newly-founded Kedem YouTube channel, which popularizes scholarship on the Ancient Near East and the Hebrew Bible. The first video was published yesterday. We talk about the concept of a language family, what languages constitute the Semitic language family, where Semitic comes from geographically and linguistically, how we can reconstruct earlier ancestors of the attested languages, and a few things this kind of reconstruction tells us about Proto-Semitic.

Stay posted for my second video with this channel, to be released sometime next year, on the different modern and—especially—ancient pronunciations of Biblical Hebrew.

https://bnuyaminim.wordpress.com/2023/12/30/video-intro-to-the-semitic-language-family/

#Afroasiatic #Akkadian #Amharic #AncientSouthArabian #Arabic #Aramaic #Beja #Berber #Chadic #Cushitic #Egyptian #GeEz #Hebrew #linguistics #Moabite #ModernSouthArabian #news #Omotic #Phoenician #ProtoSemitic #Tigrinya #Ugaritic

I hate to stay this but game development teams are getting so large actually making players sit through credits is becoming a ridiculous. Some of these credits are rolling upwards of 30 minutes plus!
#gaming #rant #credits #geez

While reviewing proofs for an article that should appear soon, it struck me that the shape ordinal numerals like ‘third’, ‘fourth’, ‘fifth’ take in Semitic provides some evidence for subgrouping that I don’t think I’ve seen before. Quick recap: most scholars today accept something like the following family tree for Semitic, as compellingly presented by Huehnergard & Rubin (2011).

I’m generally skeptical about West Semitic as a group because I think everyone’s favourite West Semitic innovation, the *qatala perfect, may be a retention from Proto-Semitic. But among some other innovations (I particularly like relative/demonstrative *θū > *ðū), this subgroup is supported by the shape of the ordinals. Akkadian has a *CaCuC– pattern, as in:

• Old Babylonian šaluš– ‘third’, rebu– < *rabuʕ– ‘fourth’, ḫamuš– ‘fifth’
• Old Assyrian rabū-t-um ‘the fourth (f.)’, rabū-ni ‘our fourth witness’, ḫamuš-ni ‘our fifth witness’

In West Semitic, the normal ordinal has a different, *CāCiC- pattern, as in:

• Classical Arabic θāliθ-, rābiʕ-, ḫāmis-
• Ge’ez śaləs, rabəʕ, ḫaməs
• Mehri (Modern South Arabian) śōləθ, rōbaʕ, ḫōməs
• probably also Sabaic θlθ, rbʕ, ḫms; Ugaritic θlθ, rbʕ, ḫmš…

In the rest of Northwest Semitic, one trace of this pattern might be found if the consonantal spelling tltʔ in Daniel 5:16 (Biblical Aramaic) stands for *tālítā ‘as the third one’ (Suchard 2022: 224). Otherwise, Aramaic and Canaanite have a different pattern: *CaCīC– followed by the nisbe suffix, which has a special shape in Aramaic. Examples:

• Biblical Hebrew šlīšī, rḇīʕī, ḥămiššī (probably influenced by šiššī ‘sixth’, itself a new formation for expected **šḏīšī)
• Syriac tliṯoy, rbiʕoy, ḥmišoy

So, we have three patterns: *CaCuC-, *CāCiC-, and *CaCīC–īy/āy-. Which one is oldest and which ones are innovative?

Interestingly, Ge’ez and Modern South Arabian both have a special set of numerals that specifically refer to periods of time like days:

• Ge’ez śälus, räbuʕ, ḫämus
• Mehri śīləθ, rība, ḫayməh

In the article I’m proofreading, I argue these can all be reconstructed as *CaCuC-. This also matches Biblical Hebrew ʕāśōr ‘tenth (day)’ and may be related to dialectal Arabic names for the days of a the week like ʔaθ-θalūθ and ʔar-rabūʕ (borrowed from Sabaic???). This matches the Akkadian pattern for the normal numerals, which also happens to be attested with reference to a period of time in Old Assyrian ḫamuš-t-um. It’s more likely for an old formation to be preserved in a specialized use like referring to numbers of days than for something specific like that to be generalized for ordinals in all contexts. *CāCiC– also has an obvious origin, as this is the productive pattern for active participles and we can imagine a kind of shift from ‘being third’ as a participle to ‘third’ as an ordinal. So in terms of innovations, this looks like:

1. Proto-Semitic: *CaCuC- (preserved in East Semitic/Akkadian)
2. Proto-West-Semitic: innovates *CāCiC-, preserves *CaCuC- for counting days etc.

*CaCīC–īy/āy– is so restricted that it is most attractive to see this as a late innovation shared by Canaanite and Aramaic. If so, that would support Pat-El & Wilson-Wright’s (2018; paywalled?) argument on other grounds that these two families form a subgroup within Northwest Semitic.

1. Proto-Aramaeo-Canaanite or Aramaic and Canaanite as an areal grouping: innovate(s) *CaCīC–īy/āy-, cleans up *CāCiC– with remarkable efficiency

An intermediate *CaCīC– pattern without the nisbe suffix added might be attested in Biblical Hebrew šālīš, which not only means ‘one-third (of some unknown measure)’ but is also a military rank that has traditionally been explained as the ‘third man’ on a chariot besides the primary warrior and the driver.

This pattern also forms fractions in Aramaic, as in Imperial Aramaic rbyʕ and Syriac rbiʕ-t-o ‘quarter’. So maybe we should see the pre-Aramaeo-Canaanite development as a shift from still very active-participle-y *CāCiC– to more productively adjectival *CaCīC-, with the extra adjectival nisbe suffix being added later for good measure. Maybe that last step took place after the ordinals had started to shift in meaning to fractions (which are nouns, not adjectives), giving something like *rabīʕ–īy– an original literal meaning like ‘quarter-y’.

In conclusion, an ordinals-based family tree ends up looking like this:

https://bnuyaminim.wordpress.com/2023/11/03/ordinal-numerals-as-shared-innovations-in-semitic/

#Akkadian #AncientSouthArabian #Arabic #Aramaic #GeEz #Hebrew #linguistics #ModernSouthArabian #ProtoSemitic #Ugaritic

Pro-tip: do not cut yourself on the inside of your finger with the edge of the aluminum foil. Most especially, don't do it right in the crease of a knuckle. #ow #ouch #geez