Arabic-L:LING:more on Arabic etymological dictionaries

[Dilworth Parkinson]

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Arabic-L: Mon 10 Jan 2011
Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <dil at byu.edu>
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1) Subject: more on Arabic etymological dictionaries

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1)
Date: 10 Jan 2011
From: Benjamin Geer <benjamin.geer at gmail.com>
Subject: more on Arabic etymological dictionaries

Thomas Milo wrote:
An Arabic etymological dictionary? There is no such thing. 

Etymology in the modern sense is a serious black hole in Oriental studies. There is nothing that systematically and exhaustively scrutinizes the obvious relationships of Arabic with related Semitic languages like Akkadian, Eblaitic, Ugaritic, Phoenician, Aramaic, Sabaic, Thamudic, Hebrew, Ethiopian etc. etc., nor with any of the surrounding major non-Semitic languages such as Sumerian, Latin, Greek, Egyptian, Persian ad Turkish.

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 qawmiyyastarted to be used to mean "nationalism" in Arabic, or who was the first person to use the word thaqafa to mean "culture".  In other words, it would be immensely useful to have something like the Oxford English Dictionary for Arabic.

I think this could only be done through digitisation and electronic processing of large numbers of texts.  A vast project.

Ben

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