Language, Identity, Culture, Vowels and Accent!

Submitted by dhimmi no more (United States), Feb 9, 2018 at 08:13

gato you wrote:

>It is not easy to represent vowels as well and consonants of the EA with the Roman alphabet.

Semitic vowels in general and Arabic in particular are easy to master and here we go (I'm talking about vocalization here):

1. Alif is aa Fatha is a

2. Waw is uu and damma is u

3. Ya is ii and kasra is i

And don't forget one's accent is a function of one's command of vowels first and foremost Yes those that do not speak Semitic languages would have problems with Khah, 'Ayn, Hah, Sad,But you still will be understood if you say humar (donkey) where the h is vocalized as Heh instead of the Arabic Humar where the H is Hah (I'm using transliteration of Egyptian Arabic alphabet).

> If one tries to record EA in writing I think it enough to represent approximatively

Many young Egyptians posting on social media use Egyptian Arabic and it is very easy to read grammatically correct with very good syntax It is a language and their posts seem to be well understood by the readers and this is what a language is all about

>but the exact pronuntiation can be learnt only from audio recordings

There is never exact pronunciation of a language and this is why in the case of Egypt you have many dialects of Egyptian Arabic be it Sa'edee Arabic or Cairo Arabic .

>Since I have listened I know more or less how it is pronounced but I cannot represent it in writing, eg. "a" would have 4 somewhat different pronuciations in words gahez, gahza,

I'm not sure what this word means! Is it Gahiz (masculine) as in ready?

> 3aref, 3arfa.

عَارِفْ would be 'aaref two aa because you have an alif following the letter 'Ayn and kasra below the ra letter and a sukun above the letter fa
(notice I'm also using short vowels but they make all the difference)

عَرْفَا/عَرْفَة would be 'arfa one a and it represents a fatha above the 'ayn and a sukun above the ra and fa then we have an alif or ta marbouta which would be an aa (notice I'm using short vowels too)

It takes some work but once you master it it becomes easy

>It would be possible to write more exactly with the signs of International Phonetical Aassotiation(IPA), but it would not very practical.

Agree However, language and transliteration are really organic and young Egyptians are really shaping their language and its transliteration and we can only follow

>Numerous references about agriculture among Quraysh is one of the reasons why the location of "Mekka-in-Hejaz" is very unlikely for "Muhammed's Mekka".

Mecca was arid back then and it is still is arid now. However, the historical Muhammad, if he really existed, he lived way up north in the civilized Middle East

> Another reason maybe the fact that as Patricia Crone wrote, Quraysh were deriving much of their income from sales of hides and skins to the Roman army.

The difficulty I would have with this claim is that writers of late antiquity are totally silent about Quraish and their so called trade and why is that? It is either it did not exist or such trade was of little value and therefore did not make it to the literary sources. Yes argument from silence is never a strong argument but in this case I believe it is significant because after the Arab invasions we have no records of non Muslim writers telling us: Oh those are the Arabs of Muhammad who was a tajir (trader)! And not a single word about a Mecca or is it Bacca!

The silence here is significant

>Again it is very incredible that suppliers of the Roman Army would have their headquarters some 1000 km away from the place where Roman military bases were located.

Wansbrough dismissed the claim by the Islamic Historical Tradition that Islam started in Mecca in al-Hijaz and Crone in her book "Meccan Tarde" proved that historical Mecca was neither a major center of trade nor a known city prior to the Arab invasions

>Certainly their headquarters should have been somewhere in Greater Syria, maybe Petra, maybe Bosra maybe elsewhere. However the geographical location and the landscape of Petra better tallies with the description of "Mekka" in aHadith that that of other cities.

May be The Petra connection is mildly interesting

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