<div dir="ltr">------------------------------------------------------------------------<br>Arabic-L: Wed 27 Feb 2013<br>Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <<a href="mailto:dilworth_parkinson@byu.edu" target="_blank">dilworth_parkinson@byu.edu</a>><br>
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unsubscribe arabic-l ]<br><br>-------------------------Directory------------------------------------<br><br>1) Subject:standalone 'wa-'<br>2) Subject:standalone 'wa-'<br>
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1)<br>Date: 27 Feb 2013<br>From:<span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">Alexander Magidow <<a href="mailto:amagidow@gmail.com" target="_blank">amagidow@gmail.com</a>></span><br>Subject:standalone 'wa-'<br>
<br><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">To add to the discussion, I wanted to add unedited writing as well as published, but it looks like Google is less helpful than it used to be, since it filters results to make them more relevant (and if you ask it not to, it doesn't tell you how many hits you got.) However, I used a technique pioneered by Fred Hoyt to look for dialect specific uses of a given word or phrase. I would have liked to try to control for population size and internet presence, but again I was stymied by Google search. Searches were performed in Firefox, with the "private browsing" setting.</span><br style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">
<br style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">Just searching for " و " (waw surrounded by spaces) produces 1.48 billion hits.</span><br style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">
<span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">Searching for " و " and the following 'dialect key words' produces:</span><br style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">بزاف:</span><br style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">
<span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">4.3 million hits</span><br style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><br style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">برشا:</span><br style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">
<span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">1.82 million hits</span><br style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><br style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">عايز:</span><br style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">
<span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">21.8 million hits</span><br style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><br style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">بدي:</span><br style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">
<span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">35 million hits</span><br style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><br style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">It proved to be impossible to get a clear number of the results of these searches without the waw and spaces component, since google filters for relevancy and so the number of hits if you have fewer search terms is actually lower, and if you change the search parameters it doesn't tell you how many hits you got.</span><br style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">
<br style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">In any case, this shows that an independent waw is certainly not a rarity in any of these dialect areas, and indeed I am most surprised by the number of hits for dialects using بدي since there's dialects have relatively fewer speakers and a smaller internet presence than e.g. Egypt and we'd expect, if they had similar rates of use, for the Egyptian rate to be higher. This fits well with Dil's investigations, though anecdotally I know of an Arabic teacher from Egypt who in handwriting would write waw as an independent word rather than a clitic, so it certainly is an increasingly established convention that now goes beyond typing or typesetting.</span><br style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">
<br></div><div>--------------------------------------------------------------------------<br>2)<br>Date: 27 Feb 2013<br>From:<span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">Annie Higgins <<a href="mailto:treesupreaching@gmail.com" target="_blank">treesupreaching@gmail.com</a>></span><br>
Subject:standalone 'wa-'<br></div><div><br></div><div><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">Dear Dil,</span><br style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">Thank you so much for this fantastic data. i was just telling students</span><br style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">
<span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">today to keep their waw with the following word. Interesting that Hayat is</span><br style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">the standard bearer, maybe arabi version of keeping to King's english! I am</span><br style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">
<span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">all for waw with no space, just like bi and li and ka, etc.</span><br style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><br style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">
<span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">Alf shukr!</span><br style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">annie</span><br style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">
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