[Corpora-List] "Tajweed" in English dictionaries and corpora

[Eric Atwell]

I think a linguistically important difference between Islam and
Christianity is that Islamic tradition holds that the Quran should be
read and recited in its original source language, Classical Arabic, 
whereas the Christian tradition is to read the Bible in translation -
very few Christians have accessed the Hebrew and Greek source
texts of the Bible. It follows that much of specialised vocabulary used
in discourse about Islam is also Arabic in origin, although
it is used in the UK and worldwide even by non-Arabic-speaking Muslims.
British Christians on the other hand use very few Greek or Hebrew words 
in discourse about their religion, since they have English translations
to use. But does this mean that words like "Tajweed" are foreign 
whereas Christian specialised terms are English?

Eric Atwell


On Wed, 6 Mar 2013, Khurshid Ahmad wrote:

> What is an Islamic word? An Arabic word? A Persian word? An Urdu word? 
> A Berber word? I have not come across words that belong to a religion: 
> Hindu word? Christian word? Jewish word? More confoundingly Otto Lassen 
> suggested that there are Islamic words?
>
>
>
> On 06-03-2013 20:23, Otto Lassen wrote:
>> Eric Atwell started a discussion 28.2 about how
>>
>> vocabulary related to Islam figures in British dictionaries
>>
>> and corpora. He found one word, "tajweed", which did not figure.
>>
>> But there are many islamic words in the dictionaries
>>
>> and many which are not in the dictionaries, so I wonder
>>
>> how the choice of including / excluding words is made
>>
>> and what are the effect of this choice on the users?
>>
>> I tried with another word, "kafir" (or “kaffir”), which
>>
>> means infidel, disbeliever, unbeliever.
>>
>> You find it in the online versions of Oxford English Dictionary
>>
>> and Collins English Dictionary but not in Longman
>>
>> Dicitionary of Contemporary English nor in British National Corpus.
>>
>> The encyclopedias (Britannica, Wikipedia) have it naturally.
>>
>> So why is "kafir" better represented than "tajweed"?
>>
>> A proposal for a solution could be that "kafir" is used in
>>
>> the Qur'an many times. In Shakir's translation there are
>>
>> 400 hits for disbeliev.. and unbeliev..... For every 3 pages
>>
>> 2 has them The contrast between believers and
>>
>> unbelievers is in that way basic for the Qur'an and
>>
>> for its influence on the readers. Unbelievers are described
>>
>> very negatively. The concept of "kafir" is part of the belief
>>
>> of the 5% muslims in England but must be known by
>>
>> everybody because it concerns all. Therefore the
>>
>> choice of "kafir" to the dictionaries. “Tajweed" tells only
>>
>> how to recite verses from the Qur’an.
>>
>> But this may not be the only explanation of the choice
>>
>> of including / excluding islamic words in dictionaries.
>>
>> Regards
>>
>> Otto Lassen
>
> -- 
>
> Webpage: www.cs.tcd.ie/khurshid.ahmad
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