Arabic-L:LING:Lexical Foresight Repost

[Dilworth Parkinson]

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Arabic-L: Thu 01 Feb 2007
Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <dilworth_parkinson at byu.edu>
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1) Subject:Lexical Foresight Repost

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1)
Date: 01 Feb 2007
From:"Dr. M. Deeb" <muhammaddeeb at gmail.com>
Subject:Lexical Foresight Repost

[I am reposting this since the Arabic didn't come through for many  
people.  In trying to figure out why the Arabic comes through  
sometimes and sometimes does not, it occurred to me that it is the  
nicely formatted submissions (like Prof. Deeb's) that often don't  
come through.  So I copied his post into a text editor and removed  
ALL the formatting.  Could someone for whom the Arabic did NOT come  
through before let me know if it does come through this time?   
thanks, dil]

Lexical Foresight

             Their richness and diversity notwithstanding, Arabic  
lexicons pay only passing attention to etymology, and when they do,  
the background information is either general or uncertain. Whilst  
much can be said about this unfortunate deficiency which still  
persists despite the efforts of the Arabic academies, I would like  
specifically to point out the conflicting etymology of Iraq.


I.    Al-Qa:mu:s al-MuHi:T traces the (عراق) entry to its presumed  
Persian origin as (إيران شهر) which means a country rich in  
palm-trees.


II.    Lisa:n al-‘Arab, on the other hand, suggests that (عراق)  
is the Arabicized form of the Persian origin (إيراق).


     III.    The philologist al-ASma’iyy has a different view,  
quoted in al-Muzhir.  Whereas he agrees that (إيران شهر) is  
the Persian origin, he contends, with an uncanny modern foresight,  
that it means “the wasteland.”   [my emphasis]


             *MD

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End of Arabic-L:  01 Feb 2007