Arabic-L:LING:Arabic Etymological Dictionary Project

[Dilworth Parkinson]

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Arabic-L: Thu 20 Jan 2011
Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <dil at byu.edu>
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1) Subject: Arabic Etymological Dictionary Project
2) Subject: Arabic Etymological Dictionary Project
3) Subject: Arabic Etymological Dictionary Project

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1)
Date: 20 Jan 2011
From: Thomas Milo <tmilo at decotype.com>
Subject: Arabic Etymological Dictionary Project

> I should perhaps not conceal from you that I have already begun work on
> "the" etymological dictionary everybody is looking for

This is exiting news. I sincerely hope it will help Oriental studies to extend and deepen its scope.

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2)
Date: 20 Jan 2011
From: Thomas Milo <tmilo at decotype.com>
Subject: Arabic Etymological Dictionary Project

Hi Ben,

> 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.

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 rizq and razzāq is in fact not Semitic but borrowed from Persian rūzik [rūz "day"+ik"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" -http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm/frm/19589/sec_id/19589).

BTW, Arthur Jeffery's The Foreign Vocabulary of the Qurʾān is kind of an etymological trailblazer.

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3)
Date: 20 Jan 2011
From: Richard Durkan <rdurkan at hotmail.com>
Subject: Arabic Etymological Dictionary Project

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.
 
Richard Durkan

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