Again enjoyed the presentation. It did miss a slide on the concept of a sprachbund. Languages sometimes influence each other in other ways, than (in-)direct loans. Sometimes languages influence each others phonetics, grammar, expressions, etc without necessarily borrowing words. For example the Bantu languages of South Africa adopted a subset of click sounds from the Koisan languages replacing Bantu phonetic patterns, even for native Bantu words. In the Meso-American sprachbund the word order was moving to SVO. This is especially noticeable in Aztec, because most Uto-Aztecan languages are mostly SOV, like Hopi. Maya influence, I think. It seems to me that while Maltese is descendent from Arabic, but it is outside the sprachraum, and bund that unites all Arabic dialects/languages. This explains the higher rate of divergence.
Really glad you enjoyed the presentation :) I am assuming that you are referring to 10.51, correct? Note that I did not do a deep dive in this matter but rather this is a summary of the collection of notes that I took while reading articles on other topics. I thought that it would be helpful to the non linguists part of the community if I shared these notes with them. Therefore your comment is very much appreciated.
The link between apples and tomatoes in Maltese could be inspired by Italian, where they're called Pomodoro from pomo d'oro. Pomo meaning 'fruit' , and more specifically 'apple'. And oro meaning 'gold'. The di or d' means 'of', so 'apple/fruit of gold'. They were the first to cultivate tomatoes in Europe around 1550. Note that gold and red are related concepts in many languages, especially in Europe. In Germany tomatoes where called Paradeisapfel, meaning 'paradise apple', the Slavic and Hungarian words with the same meaning are calques from German. tuffieħa ta-Adam 'apple of Adam' is unlike the Slavic and Hungarian not an exact calque of the German. So it could be that a Hebrew speaker coined the term. Especially because Adam אדם does not only mean 'soil' in general, but also 'red soil' in particular. Hebrew derives the word for red אדום edom from the root אדם. It would also fit with Semitic wordplay, and be closer to the Italian pomodoro with its secondary meaning, because gold and red are related concepts in Europe. Aramaic, Arabic and Maltese can be excluded, because they all use the root aḥmar for red, which itself derives from ḥarr 'heat', so the colour red in those languages is actually the concept of red-hot. The link between apples and Adam is Roman Christian. Because in Latin apple is mālum, and evil is malus. Since the two are phonetically similar, the Latin speakers linked apples with the lignum scientiae boni et mali 'the tree of the knowledge of good and evil'.
Maltese is a combination of North African and European dialects - specifically Tunisian Arabic and Latin Southern Italian dialects. So it's a language created from a unique combination of unrelated dialects, with vocabulary that became distinct and different enough, both in speech and written words, to warrant being called its own language. However, it does have more Maghrebi-Arabic influenced words and pronunciation in it than Vulgar-Latin influenced words and pronunciation. Despite this, I would personally classify Maltese as an Arabic-Latin language, rather than purely being an Arabic or Latin language.
this is a similar (albeit, I believe Malti is a bit more dramatic) aspect we could do to English itself - however, there lies the fault with humans and their order making systems. English is a germanic language but includes a larger vocabulary of romance (french and latin, especially) words embedded into it which has made English from being similar to Frisian (in the time of Old English) into what it is now. However, similar to Malti (with Arabic), English's majority foundational words and aspects (not the correct term) - basically, things grammar, English's most common words (like hello, for example), etc - are still Germanic in its roots. However, what IS interesting... Is that we see a HUGE contrast within Malti. Due to the nature of one side being indo-european and the other being afro-asiatic, there it gets a bit more complicated. I prefer just having it to Malti is still described as an Arabic language, just due to the nature (like said before) of its grammar rules, etc. If Malti had a pretty 50/50 split in it's language, then different story. Becomes a lot harder, but likely still a statistics game. What WOULD be interesting is how people would write down and 'taxonimise' (if that is the right word) arabic-latin, though. If this happened with a lot more languages, I could see the demand for it. But definitely not with basically one (practically) language.
I go back and forth as to which to focus upon... Should I focus on the granular linguistics of the various words in the Qur'an (Hebrew, Syriac, Aramaic, Ge'ez, Akkadian - maybe even a few Greek terms) in the Qur'an (which are illuminating), or just to focus on the thematic patterns of the Qur'an which can be more easily categorized by a layman?
Depends on what languages you already know, and how many years you're willing to spend on study. For instance you'll need to know German before you even can tackle the Semitic languages.
Although it does not affect the rest of the presentation, I challenge the definition of a language being defined by political boundaries. Most of Sub-Saharan Africa does not follow that definition. The same can be said of the Indigenous languages in Central and South America.
oh yes, languages (by definition) are definitely a very 'Western nationalistic idea' that has slowly been built over the last 300 to 400 years. It is definitely similar to how Noel describes 'dialect continuum' - this can basically be said about everything culturally (human) related; even in Europe (looking at Swizterlands many languages it has taken in due to close proximity) It is really fascinating.
Because in the channel IslamicOrigins, the topic of language change is frequently talked about. As I said in episode 1, this episode may be boring for the linguist (though even TheLinguist enjoyed it :) :) ) but may be good-to-keep-in-mind for followers of this channel who like me have never studied linguistics. Furthermore, as Dr Owens said, the question of whether Maltese is an Arabic dialect or a language in its own right is of interest to the Arabicist because invariably it leads to the question "What is Arabic?", which is the topic of the next episode.
@@letsmapdialects5248 There is no Nigerian Arabic. Putting a name as Owen to a position does not make it correct. Nigeria is a secular state which is mainly Christian. The NIGERIEN nation is different...if this is erased like the previous, I will understand that you are comfortable with disseminating incorrect information.
@@letsmapdialects5248 We have over a thousand languages & dialects. For the Muslims, they will encounter some liturgical scripts in it. But WaZoBia is the amalgamated name given to the three main languages used. (English / pidgen is the lingua franca)...Arabic is not a language spoken there.
Please note that in the slide called "The Assault of the English Language", " tredda' " should be written " treddgħa".
The release of this video did not appear on my notifications!
Very strange.
20:20... Yeah, I was going for "requiem" on that one... or "quies."
Again enjoyed the presentation.
It did miss a slide on the concept of a sprachbund. Languages sometimes influence each other in other ways, than (in-)direct loans. Sometimes languages influence each others phonetics, grammar, expressions, etc without necessarily borrowing words.
For example the Bantu languages of South Africa adopted a subset of click sounds from the Koisan languages replacing Bantu phonetic patterns, even for native Bantu words. In the Meso-American sprachbund the word order was moving to SVO. This is especially noticeable in Aztec, because most Uto-Aztecan languages are mostly SOV, like Hopi. Maya influence, I think.
It seems to me that while Maltese is descendent from Arabic, but it is outside the sprachraum, and bund that unites all Arabic dialects/languages. This explains the higher rate of divergence.
Correction: Aztec was adopting a VSO word order like Maya... Not SVO.
Really glad you enjoyed the presentation :)
I am assuming that you are referring to 10.51, correct?
Note that I did not do a deep dive in this matter but rather this is a summary of the collection of notes that I took while reading articles on other topics. I thought that it would be helpful to the non linguists part of the community if I shared these notes with them. Therefore your comment is very much appreciated.
Loving this series! Thanks!
The link between apples and tomatoes in Maltese could be inspired by Italian, where they're called Pomodoro from pomo d'oro. Pomo meaning 'fruit' , and more specifically 'apple'. And oro meaning 'gold'. The di or d' means 'of', so 'apple/fruit of gold'. They were the first to cultivate tomatoes in Europe around 1550. Note that gold and red are related concepts in many languages, especially in Europe.
In Germany tomatoes where called Paradeisapfel, meaning 'paradise apple', the Slavic and Hungarian words with the same meaning are calques from German.
tuffieħa ta-Adam 'apple of Adam' is unlike the Slavic and Hungarian not an exact calque of the German. So it could be that a Hebrew speaker coined the term. Especially because Adam אדם does not only mean 'soil' in general, but also 'red soil' in particular. Hebrew derives the word for red אדום edom from the root אדם. It would also fit with Semitic wordplay, and be closer to the Italian pomodoro with its secondary meaning, because gold and red are related concepts in Europe.
Aramaic, Arabic and Maltese can be excluded, because they all use the root aḥmar for red, which itself derives from ḥarr 'heat', so the colour red in those languages is actually the concept of red-hot.
The link between apples and Adam is Roman Christian. Because in Latin apple is mālum, and evil is malus. Since the two are phonetically similar, the Latin speakers linked apples with the lignum scientiae boni et mali 'the tree of the knowledge of good and evil'.
I speak Arabic and I can understand maltese
In a recording or in ordinary fast speech?
Maltese is a combination of North African and European dialects - specifically Tunisian Arabic and Latin Southern Italian dialects. So it's a language created from a unique combination of unrelated dialects, with vocabulary that became distinct and different enough, both in speech and written words, to warrant being called its own language. However, it does have more Maghrebi-Arabic influenced words and pronunciation in it than Vulgar-Latin influenced words and pronunciation. Despite this, I would personally classify Maltese as an Arabic-Latin language, rather than purely being an Arabic or Latin language.
this is a similar (albeit, I believe Malti is a bit more dramatic) aspect we could do to English itself - however, there lies the fault with humans and their order making systems.
English is a germanic language but includes a larger vocabulary of romance (french and latin, especially) words embedded into it which has made English from being similar to Frisian (in the time of Old English) into what it is now.
However, similar to Malti (with Arabic), English's majority foundational words and aspects (not the correct term) - basically, things grammar, English's most common words (like hello, for example), etc - are still Germanic in its roots.
However, what IS interesting...
Is that we see a HUGE contrast within Malti. Due to the nature of one side being indo-european and the other being
afro-asiatic, there it gets a bit more complicated.
I prefer just having it to Malti is still described as an Arabic language, just due to the nature (like said before) of its grammar rules, etc.
If Malti had a pretty 50/50 split in it's language, then different story. Becomes a lot harder, but likely still a statistics game.
What WOULD be interesting is how people would write down and 'taxonimise' (if that is the right word) arabic-latin, though.
If this happened with a lot more languages, I could see the demand for it. But definitely not with basically one (practically) language.
I go back and forth as to which to focus upon... Should I focus on the granular linguistics of the various words in the Qur'an (Hebrew, Syriac, Aramaic, Ge'ez, Akkadian - maybe even a few Greek terms) in the Qur'an (which are illuminating), or just to focus on the thematic patterns of the Qur'an which can be more easily categorized by a layman?
Depends on what languages you already know, and how many years you're willing to spend on study. For instance you'll need to know German before you even can tackle the Semitic languages.
Although it does not affect the rest of the presentation, I challenge the definition of a language being defined by political boundaries. Most of Sub-Saharan Africa does not follow that definition. The same can be said of the Indigenous languages in Central and South America.
oh yes, languages (by definition) are definitely a very 'Western nationalistic idea' that has slowly been built over the last 300 to 400 years.
It is definitely similar to how Noel describes 'dialect continuum' - this can basically be said about everything culturally (human) related; even in Europe (looking at Swizterlands many languages it has taken in due to close proximity)
It is really fascinating.
What do you understand by political boundaries? Do you understand the boundaries to be boundaries of the state or the nation?
why is this important to the origins of islam?
A lot of material in episode 1 more directly relevant.
Because in the channel IslamicOrigins, the topic of language change is frequently talked about. As I said in episode 1, this episode may be boring for the linguist (though even TheLinguist enjoyed it :) :) ) but may be good-to-keep-in-mind for followers of this channel who like me have never studied linguistics.
Furthermore, as Dr Owens said, the question of whether Maltese is an Arabic dialect or a language in its own right is of interest to the Arabicist because invariably it leads to the question "What is Arabic?", which is the topic of the next episode.
@@letsmapdialects5248 tbh that still does not have much to do with the origins of islam
@@MONKEYDUDE2701 I hope that episode 3a, which was segwayed from this episode has changed your mind.
Hi Mel, i just got in touch with Dr Parvaneh Pourshariati. She said she is open to talk with you.
Did you mean Nigerien? As Nigerian is not Arabic.
Nigerian Arabic as described by Owens (2010).
@@letsmapdialects5248 There is no Nigerian Arabic. Putting a name as Owen to a position does not make it correct. Nigeria is a secular state which is mainly Christian. The NIGERIEN nation is different...if this is erased like the previous, I will understand that you are comfortable with disseminating incorrect information.
@@Yoruba4U Are you saying that Arabic is not spoken anywhere in Nigeria?
@@letsmapdialects5248 We have over a thousand languages & dialects. For the Muslims, they will encounter some liturgical scripts in it. But WaZoBia is the amalgamated name given to the three main languages used. (English / pidgen is the lingua franca)...Arabic is not a language spoken there.
Something something an army and a navy lol