Ben Zimmer in WSJ on "Boko Haram"

[Christopher Philippo]

On May 10, 2014, at 3:19 PM, Cohen, Gerald Leonard <gcohen at MST.EDU> wrote:
> Ben Zimmer continues his  weekly very interesting Wall Street Journal column today with an article on  the origin of "Boko" of "Boko Haram." Maybe someone can provide a link to the article.
> I'm curious about one statement though. “Hausa already had a  well established word for 'book': 'littafi' derived from Arabic."
> I know no Hausa at all and minimal Arabic.  But I'm aware only of "kitab" as the Arabic word for "book."
> Arabic does have an L-T-F root meaning "soft, gentle, gracious" (turns up in the female name Latifah; cf. Queen Latifa). Is that the root which provided Hausa "littafi"?

“Hausa already had a well-established word for ‘book’: ‘littafi,’ derived from Arabic”
Zimmer, Ben. “The Words For a Ruthless Insurgency.” Wall Street Journal. May 9, 2014.
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303701304579549782784964904
http://stream.wsj.com/story/latest-headlines/SS-2-63399/SS-2-528609/

“Derived from” is pretty vague.  Maybe the root is لـطـف or it could be something else entirely.  How did English ever render masjid as mosque or Maghrib as Morocco for example?  Hausa could similarly have corrupted the root beyond easy recognition.

Paul Newman http://www.indiana.edu/~lingdept/faculty/newman/ or Ben Zimmer http://benzimmer.com/contact/ might be the best ones to ask.

CKP

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