19th Century Libyan Wolves
Giuseppe Haimann’s Cirenaica (Tripolitania) published in 1886 is mostly a travel account, with extensive lists of eastern Libyan flora and fauna given in Latin without their Arabic equivalents, but may otherwise leave a clue about the Arabic dialect of the time:
Fra gli abitanti delle città ed i beduini non esiste troppa simpatia ; i cittadini temono i nomadi, che considerano come feroci ; El bedaui keif el dib (i beduini sono come il lupo), era il ritornello che ci ripeteva ognuno dal Pascià fino all’ultimo cammelliere.
” Between the inhabitants of the city and the bedouin, there aren’t many good feelings ; the city-dwellers fear the nomads, whom they think fierce ; el bedaui keif el dib (“the bedouin are like the wolf”) was the refrain which we repeated from the Pasha to the last camel-rider. “
Besides the sentiment, the interesting thing about this phrase is whether Haimann is transcribing an actual [d] in the word dib “wolf” ذيب, or simply not indicating a pronunciation [ð] of the letter dhal. Assuming that Haimann heard the phrase from a city-dweller, is this a piece of evidence for the merging of the Arabic interdentals with the dentals by citadin speakers in late 19th-century Benghazi? The transcription of another word, cadi, pronounced today /gāð̣ī/, is equally inconclusive with regard to the ض (but his c probably indicates a qaf).
However, the writer also mentions the pronunciation of a “soft g” in Cyrenaica, but doesn’t indicate whether that includes speakers from the city as well. So no conclusion with regards to the qaf of Benghazi at that time.
And, for some reason, he records “orange” as portugal with [p] …
On another note, of anthropological humor is his account of how the Bedouin greet each other :
È curioso il modo col quale i beduini si salutano. Allorchè incontrano per via o vanno a visitarsi nelle tende, dopo l’indispensabile salem aleikum e l’altrettanto inevitabile risposta : aleikum es salam, si abbracciano e si baciano più volte, mettendosi reciprocamente la testa ora a destra ora a sinistra sulle spalle, con un modo cadenzato e regolare ; poi comincia un fuoco incrociato di as’halak (com’è il tuo stato?) as’lonak (com’è il tuo colore, la tua salute?) e ripetono questa interrogazioni molte e molte volte, senza aspettare la risposta.
Of interest is the way the Bedouin greet each other. When they meet on the way, or go to visit each other in tents, after the necessary salem aleikum and the equally inevitable answer : aleikum es salam, they embrace and kiss each other several times, putting their heads now to the right now to the left shoulder, in a rhythmic and regular manner ; then begins a cross-fire of as’halak (how are you?) as’lonak (what is your color, your health?) and they repeat these questions over and over, without waiting for a response.
les plus châtiés des arabes
Almost every Arabic speaker will tell you that his or her dialect is the best, or the closest to the ‘eloquent Arabic Language’, the assumption being that the dialects are imperfect or degenerate forms of Classical Arabic. However, they are almost all wrong, because the Libyan dialect is actually the most eloquent and closest to the original language of al-Hariri, al-Mutanabbi, and the prophet Mo.
But don’t take my word for it, this was proved as early as the 13th century by the Andalusi-Maghrebi traveller Muḥammad al-‘Abdarī, who wrote an account (al-Riḥla al-Maġribiyya) of his travels through North Africa on the way to and and from the Hijj. Passing through Barqa (Cyrenaica, near modern-day Benghazi), he had the opportunity to chat with a few Bedouin. He instantly realized the pureness and correctness of their language, more pure than even the Arabs of the Hijaz:
و عرب برقة من افصح عرب رأيناهم و عرب الحجاز ايضاً فصحاء و لكن عرب برقت لم يكثر ورود الناس عليهم فلم يختلط كلامهم بغيره و هم الى الان على عربيتهم. لم يفسد من كلامهم الا القليل … ولا يخلون من الاعراب الا ما لا قدر له بالاضافة الى ما يعربون
“Les Arabes contemporains de Cyrénaïque sont parmi les plus châtiés des Arabes que nous ayons vus. Ceux du Hedjâz sont également châtiés, mais, chez ceux de Cyrénaïque, il vient si peu de gens que leur langage ne s’est mêlé d’aucun autre. Jusqu’à maintenant, ils maintiennent leur arabe. De leur langage, il n’est que peu qui se soit gâte et ils ne manquent à la fléxion que dans une proportion infime par rapport à ce qu’ils fléchissent.”
There you have it, and from a medieval writer, which means is it true.
Unfortunately, I think al-‘Abdarī was too concerned with seeking out purely-speaking Arabs to provide really good notes on the dialect of Cyrenaica at that time. The few things he mentions, though, accord with what is known about Eastern Libyan Arabic today, i.e. the presence of imāla (only in Bedouin dialects) and the nunation of feminine sg. and pl. imperfect verb forms. He otherwise comments on their use of rare and odd words, but doesn’t record much, lexically.
[ Larcher, P. 2001. "Le parler des Arabes de Cyrénaïque vu par un voyageur Marocain du XIIIe siècle." Arabica 48/3, pp. 368-382. ]
ngrams and the history of islam
Google’s new Ngram Viewer allows you to compare frequencies of words or phrases in printed books (only in certain languages, for now) from essentially the beginning of the printed books era, until now.
You can’t yet search in Arabic (do they have an Arabic corpus?). But you can, for example, learn that before about 1840, there were few “Muslims”, and many “Mohammedans“. You can then correlate this with the dramatic increase of references to “Allah” starting around 1840 to learn that the Mohammedan religion must have given way to an Allah-centered Islam right about that time.
(For whatever reason, references to “Mohammedans” increase slightly from 0 starting in about 2005).
more to come
My MA thesis (and degree program) are finally finished! For the thesis, I researched connections (loans, calques, stylistic influences) between Sogdian and Avestan in the context of Zoroastrianism in Central Asia.
The SOAS program was thoroughly enjoyable; also had the chance to sit in on the Historical Linguistics seminar of the newly PhD’ed Lameen.
I now intend to return to updating this blog. Many thanks to Language Hat for the tip of the cap and encouragement!
writing academic english
Hans Reichelt, in the Preface of his Avesta Reader: texts, notes, glossary and index, Strassburg 1911:
Finally I beg the reader not to criticize my English two severely. I have only written the book in English because I was specially requested to do so by the Parsees who do not understand German.”
Ha.
[update!] The above reason for writing a book on something relating to Zoroastrianism in English is apparently common. Thus Henrik Nyberg in his Manual of Pahlavi, Wiesbaden 1964:
If I send forth this new edition of the Hilfsbuch [his 1928 German grammar of Pahlavi] in English, it is solely in order to facilitate the use of it to our Zoroastrian friends in India, who, as a rule, do not understand any other European language. I apologize to British readers for a foreigner’s English.
a response to “the cosmopolitan tongue”
John McWhorter’s article “The Cosmopolitan Tongue: The Universality of English” in World Affairs is a clear, cleverly written piece considering what the simultaneous growth of a global language and the death of many endangered languages imply, and what value preserving the vitality of such languages has. Nevertheless, in respect to the latter question, he leaves out some important points, while bringing up other ones for no clear purpose.
In – I think – support of his thesis that learning a new language is difficult, McWhorter points to Arabic, many varied dialects of which exist, as evidence that one cannot learn a a simple, standard ‘Arabic’ and then expect to be able to speak to any nationality of Arab. This presents a problem to those who are trying to be able to communicate with the Arab world. It’s a good point, and one that needs to be realized more often, but isn’t evidence that learning new languages is complicated, simply because ‘Arabic’ has been falsely constructed to be a single language when it simply is not.
McWhorter also seems to be a supporter of the argument that attempt to learn a new language as an adult is nigh-impossible. He states “Even with good instruction, it is fiendishly difficult to learn any new language well, at least after about the age of 15.” I detest this way of thinking, because it is wrong and cynical. It first of all depends on one’s goal in learning a new language: reading, speaking, etc., but this is unstated. In that one cannot become a fluent speaker of Russian at the age of 28 and call himself a native speaker, this is true, but in no way is it impossible to become fluent in a new language at an older age. I myself didn’t begin study of a second language until after the age of 15, and have, since then, studied 9 and attained various levels of proficiency. The attempt being “fiendishly difficult” depends on a number of things, among them the quality of instruction, time devoted, and ability to use/practice the target language. It is detrimental to the study of language when people are cynical about it.
Another problem, which to my thinking is the more grave, is that McWhorter seems to treat – almost trivially and sarcastically – the complex grammatical constructions and syntax of many endangered languages. He cites two endangered languages as examples:
Other languages can put concepts together in ways that make them more fascinatingly different from English than most of us are aware they can be. In the Berik language in New Guinea, for example, verbs have to mark the sex of the person you are affecting, the size of the object you are wielding, and whether it is light outside. (Kitobana means “gives three large objects to a male in the sunlight.”)
In the Central Pomo language of California, if one person sits, the word is—get ready—‘cˇháw. The mark at the beginning signifies a catch in the throat, and what the raised little h requires shall not detain us here, but rest assured that it’s a distinct challenge to render if you grew up speaking English. But if more than one person sits, it’s a different word, naphów. If it’s liquid that is sitting, as in a container, then the word is cˇóm. The whole language is like this.
He goes on to say that “Learning small indigenous languages tends to be a tough business for people raised in European languages: they tend to be more like Berik than like French,” which, while perhaps true, misses the most important point about the documentation of endangered languages. Indeed, it is because different languages have different vocabularies and grammars that they are interesting, from the point of view of their preservation. It is vastly interesting to find out why light conditions matter to Berik-speakers, or why the Piraha language may or may not be recursive; how language is used reveals how groups of human beings, like us, perceive, process, and relay information about the world through speech, organize time and space, and interact with their environment. McWhorter fails completely to address this point, instead discussing how language death doesn’t imply cultural death, and so on.
Additionally, those who support attempts to preserve endangered languages as spoken and living are not, for example, trying to implement Berik as the language of France; they want the Berik people to continue speaking their own language rather than a global language such as English. Those who want to keep 6,000 different languages alive don’t want to have Central Pomo supplant English as the world’s lingua franca. For French schoolchildren, this isn’t a problem of learning an unrelated and different language, because no one is trying to make them do that.
But, English makes a great global, or even universal, language, McWhorter points out. Its grammar is easier than those Romance languages, its orthography easier than that of Chinese, with its “daunting writing system,” and no ridiculous, silly, difficult sounds like “the notorious trilly rˇ sound in Czech,” and, I imagine McWhorter would add, the Arabic ‘ayn, and the tones and clicks of Xhosa. One needs to be on guard here against making value judgments about languages, and about being one who thinks that English is a superior language (a position that I am strongly against). Having expressed these views, I fail to understand how McWhorter can describe himself as “someone who has taught himself languages as a hobby since childhood…”
As an afterthought, I should point out that English isn’t completely genderless: it retains gendered pronouns and vestigial gender marking for inanimate objects. On another end-note, Latin didn’t undergo language death, in the way McWhorter describes it in analogy to reading Vergil in Latin the way we could possibly in the future read Tolstoy in (dead) Russian. Namely that Latin didn’t undergo language death by being supplanted by other languages, strictly speaking, in all places, but that Latin speakers evolved into first regional Latin-dialect-speakers, and then medieval and modern Romance language-speakers.
بهاء الدين زهير ٢
لا تَطَّرِح خامل الرجال فقد تَضْطَرّ يوماً الى ارادتِهِ
فاللينُ في البُرْدِ مُحْتَقَرٌ خيرٌ منَ اليُبسِ عند حاجتِهِ
Spurn not the mildest man on Earth:
Who knows but someday you may need his aid?
Cloth of soft texture is of greater worth
than rougher stuff, when robes are to be made.
- Baha’ al-Din Zuhayr
(translation: E.H. Palmer, The Poetical Works of Baha Ed-Din Zuheir, 2 vols., Cambridge 1877, p. 34)
comments on a Libyan descriptive grammar
A Short Reference Grammar of Eastern Libyan Arabic (Jonathan Owens, Harrasowitz 1984) is lucid and thorough, giving many examples to explain grammatical constructions, and approaching Arabic grammar from a relatively unique point-of-view. In my opinion, it is an example of how to write a sensible grammar of spoken Arabic, written by a scholar who has much experience in describing lesser-used Arabic dialects. Before discussing that, however, a few criticisms about the method used to detail said grammar are in order.
Rather than being a descriptive grammar of an Arabic dialect, the book is more accurately a grammar of an Arabic ideolect, that of Mr. Salah Busafha (“a 25-year resident of Benghazi who comes from Sulug, a small town about 50km to the south”), to be precise. It is this that I primarily have a problem with. As certain locutions and vocabulary (as with any language) are unique to the speaker, one cannot know offhand whether or not they can be used in general. That is why you compile a grammar based on data collected from numerous informants, so that uncommon locutions can be tested.
Thus it may be because of the book’s single informant that we get statements such as “There are passive participles with no active verbal equivalent. Mabṣūṭ ‘happy’ but no buṣaṭ” (i.e. we get a passive participle formed from a verbal root which doesn’t otherwise exist). But compare the widely used phrase baṣaṭnā bīk ‘we are happy because of you,’ which definitely does use the root b-ṣ-ṭ to form an active verb. A broader sampling of native speakers would have helped to iron this out as either a false example or show that a new development has occurred between the time of the book’s publishing and now (because indeed a grammatical study such as this is a synchronic study, but who ever based an experiment on a single data point?).
The other thing is that he insists on listing upwards of ten or fifteen “patterns” for broken plurals. Well, a “pattern” is useless if you can’t put a word into it and get something meaningful in return. You don’t impress anybody by making up countless useless patterns. If someone gives you a singular noun in Arabic, there is no way for you to know what its irregular plural is. Would you say that ḥadīqah ‘garden’ has a plural in ḥadīqāt? You’d be wrong. What about aḥdāq, huduq? No. It’s ḥadāʾiq. In Latin, if someone gives you an a-declension noun and tells you to find the genitive plural, you can, every time. That is a pattern. Guessing twenty times isn’t. Now, if you were to discuss the Arabic broken plural problem from the perspective of plural formation, especially with a historical slant, that would be different.
Sadly, it is the only complete grammar of any type of Libyan Arabic which exists in English, but is a good resource for those wanting to compare with other dialects or get started on learning Libyan Arabic as a spoken language.
on mohammedans and conversion
Sometimes, when you photocopy a journal article or book chapter, particularly when you’re scanning two facing pages of a book at once, you get the final page of the preceding article. This can’t be helped, but every now and then results in a lonely concluding paragraph of interesting material.
Yesterday, I photocopied a short article from the 1933 volume of a now defunct journal entitled The Moslem World (‘a Christian publication on the doings, political, social, and literary, of the Mohammedans’). As it happened, the isolated half page of the preceding article was more noteworthy than the article I intended to read. It so well encapsulated stereotypes of early 1900s American Southerners that it had to be posted. I have no idea what main body of the article was about, but the final page began:
“In envisaging this possibility of Mohammedanism becoming a black spot upon the American horizon it should not be forgotten that Islam today is making more converts in the world at large than any other religion.”
And continued:
“And now here are these American Negroes in the Near East, getting into their blood this conception of a triumphant faith which stands for social equality and which countenances polygamy. If these blacks remain in the Levant and grow in numbers, their presence foreshadows, sooner or later, first petty annoyances, and then disconcerting trouble for American diplomats and Consular officers. If these converts return to the United States, the ardent spirit of the neophyte and the sermons which they will preach make me shudder at the consequences which I see in store for America and particularly for the Southern States, not that I do not have the highest respect for the many Mohammedan friends whom I have made during these last twenty years [of travel in the Middle East], but because I am convinced that principles which are so admirably suited to the Levant would work incalculable mischief in my country.”
The author also provides us with a nice syllogism:
Major premise: “the Moslem faith is particularly strong among backward peoples.”
Minor premise (as implied above): the ‘Moslem’ faith is strong among the Levantines.
Conclusion: the Levantines are backward peoples.
Further circular reasoning: the Levantines and the Mohammedan religion are suited to each other.
He does get two things right, curiously, that Islam was (and still is, kinda) the fastest growing world religion, and that new converts are often the most extreme in philosophy and interpretation.
الشاعر بهاء الدين زهير
Abu al-Fadl Baha’ al-Din Zuhayr (1186-1258), was an Egyptian poet born in Mecca. He become famous for his ghazals (short, metered, rhyming couplets) and panegyrics (most of which failed to gain him political standing), often used colloquial spoken forms (referred to as Middle Arabic), and was also a calligrapher of note. He was once referred to as the “grand master of peculiar lovers,” owing, perhaps, to his ghazals on odd love topics, for example, the below:
السُمْرُ لا البِيضُ هُمُ اَولَى بِعِشْقٍ و احَقُّ
و اِنْ تَدَبَرْتَ مقا لِى مُنْصِفاً قُلْتَ صَدَقْ
السُمْرُ في لَونِ اللَّمَا البِيضُ في لَونِ البَهَقُ
“O ne’er despise the sweet brunette!
Such dusky charms my heart engage.
I care not for your blondes; I hate
The sickly tint of hoary age.”
Or, upon receiving a tasty gift:
يا حَدَرَا الموزُ الذى اَرْسلته و لقد اتانا طيباً من طَيِّبِ
في رِيحِهِ او لَونِهِ او طعمِهِ كالمِسْكِ او كالتبْرِ او كالضَرَبِ
و افَتْ بِهِ اطْبَاقُهُ مُنَضَّداً كانَّهُ مَكَاحِلٌ من ذَهَبِ
“The bananas you sent were delicious, in short,
like the sender they seem of the very best sort:
of their perfume and color and flavor you’d say
that like musk or gold or like honey were they.
While the dishes as full as they ever could hold,
seemed piled with collyrium-boxes of gold!”
( Translated with better rhyme and wit than I am capable of by E.H. Palmer, in The Poetical Works of Baha Ed-Din Zuheir, 2 vols., Cambridge 1877, p. 42/175 and p. 8/7 )
the would-be prophet
Abu al-Tayyib Ahmad ibn Husayn al-Mutanabbi (915-965 CE), was a panegyrist for the famous emir Sayf al-Dawla for a time, and was also known for writing fakhr, or poetry with a self-vaunting or boasting attitude. His laqab (nickname) is from the 7th form of the verb نبى “to be a prophet” and means “the would-be prophet” or “the one who gives himself out as a prophet.” Arrogant, perhaps, but a huge baller:
I have tasted the bitter and the sweet of affairs
And walked over the rough and smooth path of days
I have come to know all about time. It cannot produce
Any extraordinary word or new action.
(Translation: Franz Rosenthal, Knowledge Triumphant: The Concept of Knowledge in Medieval Islam, Leiden 1970, p. 277)
Another one:
Live where you will
acquire virtue and knowledge
for the fuller man is he who says:
This is what I am,
not, ‘my father was so-and-so’.
(Translation: Omar Pound, Arabic and Persian Poems, Washington 1970, p. 64-65)
Lastly, a story about his wit and subtlety, my translation from the Kitāb Tasliyyit al-Khawāṭr fi Muntakhbāt al-Malḥ wa al-Nawādr by Shākr al-Batlūnī:
One of the subtle of signs is that the famous poet al-Mutanabbi once praised a certain enemy of his king. The king then became angry, and had it in mind to assassinate him. al-Mutanabbi fled. Then after a period of time, the king ordered his secretary to address al-Mutanabbi amiably, that he would return; then the king would deceive him and kill him. But though the secretary loved al-Mutanabbi disobedience was not possible for him. So he wrote at the end of the letter “[the king] has forgiven you, God willing” and put a shadda on the nūn (of the word inna). Then when al-Mutanabbi understood it, he set out and dispatched a letter to the secretary, after having added an alif after the nūn with a shadda. And this is one of the subtlest of signs: the scribe meant by the inna, the speech of God be exalted, “the notables conspire against you, in order to kill you; leave! I am one of your sincere advisors.” And al-Mutanabbi meant by the addition of alif, the speech of God be exalted, “we will never enter [that kingdom], as long as they continue to be in it.”
Go here to listen to a recitation of one of his panegyrics.
dym sassenach!
Reading Confessions of an Opium-Eater, I came across this passage describing a portion of the author’s stay in Welsh country as an adolescent. In it we see that the author (and probably other British folk of his educated class) considered Welsh to be a funny and unpronounceable language (on that matter, see the comedy of Rhod Gilbert) and that one could expect English to be a minority language in that region, even among young people (and not the other way around, like today).
And, that English is referred to as “Saxonese” (sassenach), apparently, in Welsh. It is interesting in that, though we always refer to white people as Anglo-Saxon, we never call their language anything but Angle-ish (English). The term sassenach would make sense in Welsh if, when the Germanic tribes invaded Britain, there were more Saxons in the West intermingling with Welsh people, and the Welsh thus used Saxon as a generic term for all Germans.
Once in particular, near the village of Llan-y-styndw (or some such name), in a sequestered part of Merionethshire, I was entertained for upwards of three days by a family of young people with an affectionate and fraternal kindness that left an impression upon my heart not yet impaired.
… They spoke English, an accomplishment not often met with in so many members of one family, especially in villages remote from the high road. Here I wrote, on my first introduction, a letter about prize-money, for one of the brothers, who had served on board an English man-of-war; and, more privately, two love-letters for two of the sisters. They were both interesting-looking girls, and one of uncommon loveliness. In the midst of their confusion and blushes, whilst dictating, or rather giving me general instructions, it did not require any great penetration to discover that what they wished was that their letters should be as kind as was consistent with proper maidenly pride.
… Thus I lived with them for three days and great part of a fourth; and, from the undiminished kindness which they continued to show me, I believe I might have stayed with them up to this time, if their power had corresponded with their wishes. On the last morning, however, I perceived upon their countenances, as they sate at breakfast, the expression of some unpleasant communication which was at hand; and soon after, one of the brothers explained to me that their parents had gone, the day before my arrival, to an annual meeting of Methodists, held at Carnarvon, and were that day expected to return; “and if they should not be so civil as they ought to be,” he begged, on the part of all the young people, that I would not take it amiss. The parents returned with churlish faces, and “Dym Sassenach” (no English) in answer to all my addresses. I saw how matters stood; and so, taking an affectionate leave of my kind and interesting young hosts, I went my way; for, though they spoke warmly to their parents in my behalf, and often excused the manner of the old people by saying it was “only their way,” yet I easily understood that my talent for writing love-letters would do as little to recommend me with two grave sexagenarian Welsh Methodists as my Greek sapphics or alcaics; and what had been hospitality when offered to me with the gracious courtesy of my young friends, would become charity when connected with the harsh demeanour of these old people.
Check out the whole work at Project Gutenberg. In general, Thomas De Quincey ‘s tale is quite humorous.
17th century egyptian curses
Returning again to the annals of the erudite Yusuf al-Maghribi’s cleverly-titled Dafʿ al-iṣr ʿan kalām ahl miṣr, we find recorded various curses and swear words used by Egyptians in the 17th century. There isn’t much analysis, just observation. Though al-Maghribi must have had an opinion on using swears/curses, he seems to have been mainly interested in them as linguistic curiosities. It is fascinating to see a linguist at work during this period in Egypt. His book could have been supplemented, though, by a transcribed, voweled passage of someone speaking the Egyptian dialect (because sources for “Middle Arabic” are so scarce).
Because curses and swears are usually based on what cultural mores or religious morals deem bad (which changes over time), such words and phrases can be quite humorous out of context.
Some insults and swears:
زِبْل مُفَرَّك zibl mufarrak “crumpled dung”
وَغْل waghl “parasite”
نِغِف nighif “dry snot”
تِرّل tirril “oaf”
مَهْبول mahbūl “simpleton”
بَهْلول bahlūl “silly, foolish”
هَبيل habīl “stupid”
عِكْفِش ʿikfish “stupid”
Some curses:
سُخام و لُطام sukhām wa luṭām“filth and slaps!”
رَغَم الله انْفُه ragham allah anfu “may god rub his nose in the sand”
نمّلت اِسْتُه nammilet istu “may his ass tingle”
في رقبة العدوّ سِلْعة fi raqabet alʿuduw silʿah “a cyst on the enemy’s neck!”
على قَلْبِهم دَبْلة ʿalā qalbihum dablah “may there be a lump on their hearts”
للعدا الَحكّة l-lʿada l-ḥakka “may the enemy get the itch!”
For those interested in vulgar expressions used in contemporary Arabic, the website mo3jam.com, a user-generated compendium of slang in the different Arabic dialects, is highly useful.
Reference: Egyptian Arabic in the seventeenth century: a study and edition of Yusuf al-Magribi’s Daf’ al-isr ‘an kalam ahl Misr, Ph.D dissertation, Liesbeth Zack, Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics 2009. View the original Arabic text.
some found libyan proverbs
When I was a student at AUC in 2008, I whiled away the hours between buses browsing through old books in their new library. The library’s collection as a whole wasn’t great, but it did have a number of books on obscurish (and even extinct) Arabic dialects (Sicilian, Cypriot). To my excitement, I found several old Italian books on Libyan Arabic. One of them was a descriptive grammar of the Arabic spoken in Cyrenaica, or eastern Libya. The book was L’arabo parlato in Cyrenaica, by Elpido Ianotta, published in 1933, during the time when the Italians occupied Libya. Perhaps the only fortunate result of the Italian colonization was that much of older Libyan culture and language was recorded – albeit in out-of-print Italian books – but recorded, nonetheless.
Skimming past the grammar and syntax section, I came upon section entitled Proverbi Beduini, “Bedouin Proverbs.” This was the most exciting – 84 eastern Libyan proverbs, recorded over 70 years ago, with accompanying Italian translations.
Since the book transliterated Arabic for Italians pronouncing the Latin alphabet, I just transliterated the Latin letters back into Arabic. Then I translated them into English, asking my father for help with interpretation. He was familiar with nearly all of them, which I take as proof that their use wasn’t just limited to non-urban Libyans.
Here are the first 10:
الزَمّار يموت و صُبْعه يرِفّ
“The flute player dies with his finger shaking,” meaning that strong habits stay with you your whole life, even until death.
كل حدّ يجِرّ النار لخُبزه
“Each one brings the fire (closest) to his bread”
لو قُوّسَت في العشيِ دَوِّر لك شجَرة تقية
“If the sun starts to move west, find a shady tree.” Problems don’t get solved and disappear, life involves continuous problem-solving (I imagine).
من يقول للصيد فَمَّك ابخر
“Who would tell the lion that his breath stinks?” For fear of retaliation, nobody wants to confront a tyrant. If this isn’t poignant in contemporary Libya, I don’t know what is.
رقيق الغرَض ياكِل عشاه مَرّتين
“The person with no dignity eats his dinner twice.” This may be because, food being scarce in times past, eating more than one’s share would have been considered not only gluttonous, but a sign of lacking shame or concern for one’s fellows or host. [Thanks, Abdurahman!]
طول الخيط يوَدِّر لابرة
“The needle will be lost if the thread is too long.” Meaning, use enough to do the job, and do not extend the matter (whether it’s conversation or a project).
ما يحَكّ للحَيّ لَذّ مِن يده
“Only you can scratch your itch.” No one will do your job or look after your interests.
جَت تجْري و الحَمَتها حادورة
“It came running and was met by a slope.” Similar idea as the English “to add fuel to the fire…”
طويلة القَرْن تحَكّ وين تِستلذّ
“The one with big horns scratches itself where it pleases.” Interpretation unsure…I’m thinking something along the lines of ‘those who have the means can do what they please.’
سوق الغلا جلّاب
“The high priced brings customers.” Unobtainable things are attractive.
These kind of proverbs provide an interesting look at folk wisdom, though it is debatable how much insight they give into the kinds of things that Libyan Bedouin found important to think and educate their young about. It’s also neat to see that a lot of these proverbs have equivalents in English (and no doubt in other languages as well), which indicates to me that there is at least some similarity in human experience around the globe.
selections from ‘the american chesterfield’
Philip Stanhope, the Earl of Chesterfield, was an 18th century British statesman. Hoping to educate his son in the most honourable (excuses for the Brit spelling in this context), gentlemanly, and learned way possible, he wrote a series of extensive letters to him over the course of 20 years on everything from friendship, choice of company, and knowledge to ‘genteel carriage,’ employment of time, and rules for conversation.
In the early 1800s, his work was adapted into The American Chesterfield, a selected edition of some of his letters with additions from American advice-givers “suited to the youth of America.” I happened to find in my house a pocket-sized, rather raggedy and cover-lacking copy of this very work, dating from 1847.
Many of the letters are somewhat loquacious, wandering around a bit before getting to the point, and the author frequently inserts French words where English ones would probably do fine. I suppose it was intended to give the text an “air of douceur” (to quote from the chapter on Genteel Carriage).
My favorite passage, somewhat more timeless in its applicability than others, at least to me, was entitled Eloquence of Expression. Part of his point was that speaking well will at the least lead people not to become uninterested in your subject, or annoyed with you, while those who speak well incline you towards their opinions and ideas. He writes:
No one can attend, with pleasure, to a bad speaker…He who mumbles out a set of ill-chosen words, utters them ungrammatically, or with dull monotony, will tire and disgust. Do you not suffer, when people accost you in a stammering or hesitating manner; in an untuneful voice, with false accents and cadences; puzzling and blundering through solecisms, barbarisms, and vulgarisms; misplacing even their bad words, and inverting all method?
In order to avoid such problems, and speak pleasantly and eloquently, it is necessary to
Not neglect your style, in whatever language you speak, or whomsoever you speak to, were it your footman. Seek always for the best words, and the happiest expressions, you can find. Do not content your self with being barely understood; but adorn your thoughts, and dress them as you would your person; which, however well proportioned it might be, it would be very improper and indecent to exhibit naked, or even worse dressed than people of your rank are.
Would that our generation (and Presidents) heed such a warning and discard their sloppy and degenerate speech!
Lord Chesterfield warns that one’s career in government depends on one’s ability to speak well in public, for one will have to speak in front of one’s peers at some point, and people’s impressions, opinions, and even their personal like or dislike may depend upon it. He goes on for 12 small-type pages, citing the examples of classical Greece and Rome, quoting from Cicero, referring to his own political experience, and coming up with paragraph long analogies like the above one about speech as clothing. I think his son probably just wanted to be left alone after a while to do his own thing.
Not only that, but his son had a short, undistinguished political career, and died young after eloping with a peasant woman. Lord Chesterfield died of a broken heart or something shortly after.
If you want to browse through his letters or read them, they’re available online at Project Gutenberg.
