<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">------------------------------------------------------------------------<br>Arabic-L: Thu 20 Jan 2011<br>Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <<a href="mailto:dil@byu.edu">dil@byu.edu</a>><br>[To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l@byu.edu]<br>[To unsubscribe, send message from same address you subscribed from to<br><a href="mailto:listserv@byu.edu">listserv@byu.edu</a> with first line reading:<br> unsubscribe arabic-l ]<br><br>-------------------------Directory------------------------------------<br><br>1) Subject: Arabic Etymological Dictionary Project<br>2) Subject: Arabic Etymological Dictionary Project<br>3) Subject: Arabic Etymological Dictionary Project<br><br><div>-------------------------Messages-----------------------------------<br>1)<br>Date: 20 Jan 2011<br>From: Thomas Milo <<a href="mailto:tmilo@decotype.com">tmilo@decotype.com</a>><br>Subject: Arabic Etymological Dictionary Project<br><br><blockquote cite="mid:08A01DBF-3B65-4CE3-9EE2-CEEEE7931583@byu.edu" type="cite">I should perhaps not conceal from you that I have already begun work on<br>"the" etymological dictionary everybody is looking for</blockquote><div><br></div><div>This is exiting news. I sincerely hope it will help Oriental studies to extend and deepen its scope.<br></div><div><br></div>--------------------------------------------------------------------------<br>2)<br>Date: 20 Jan 2011<br>From: Thomas Milo <<a href="mailto:tmilo@decotype.com">tmilo@decotype.com</a>><br>Subject: Arabic Etymological Dictionary Project<br><div><br></div><div>Hi Ben,<br><br><blockquote cite="mid:BB576260-A213-4E0F-99AB-6DFC5688D3D1@byu.edu" type="cite"><div class="gmail_quote"><div>I agree, and it would also be very useful to have an etymological dictionary that traced the histories of modern Arabic words. For example, I would like to know exactly when the word <i>qawmiyya</i>started to be used to mean "nationalism" in Arabic, or who was the first person to use the word <i>thaqafa</i> to mean "culture". In other words, it would be immensely useful to have something like the Oxford English Dictionary for Arabic.<br></div></div></blockquote><br>This function is indeed also missing from our instruments. Useful as it is, this is however IMHO not what etymology is about. After all, the OED is not an etymological dictionary. The sort of thing one would like to be able to find in an authoritative etymological dictionary is, e.g., the notion that RZQ as in <i>rizq </i>and <i>razzāq </i>is in fact not Semitic but borrowed from Persian <i>rūzik </i>[<i>rūz</i> "day"+<i>ik</i>"adjectival suffix"] in the sense of "daily ration" (I got this etymology in a personal communication with Volker Popp, one of the contributors to "The Hidden Origins of Islam" -<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm/frm/19589/sec_id/19589">http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm/frm/19589/sec_id/19589</a>).<br><br>BTW, Arthur Jeffery's The Foreign Vocabulary of the Qurʾān is kind of an etymological trailblazer.<br></div><div><br></div><div>--------------------------------------------------------------------------<br></div><div>3)<br>Date: 20 Jan 2011<br>From: Richard Durkan <<a href="mailto:rdurkan@hotmail.com">rdurkan@hotmail.com</a>><br>Subject: Arabic Etymological Dictionary Project<br></div><div><br></div><div><div>Even if there are no systematic and exhaustive studies of the relationship between Arabic and the languages cited by Thomas Milo, have there been less ambitious, preliminary studies? The only ones I have come across are in connection with Persian and standard Arabic. Then there also the etymological dictionaries of Egyptian colloquial (eg Spiro, Hinds & Badawi) and a study of Semitic cognates (Old Babylonian - Akkadian - Ugaritic - Arabic - Aramaic - Hebrew - Sumerian - Egyptian) I received from Michael Sheflin via this list.</div><div> </div><div>Richard Durkan</div></div><div><br></div><div>--------------------------------------------------------------------------<br>End of Arabic-L: 20 Jan 2011</div></div></body></html>