dhimmi no more: Syriac v Hebrew v Arabic

Submitted by Motke (Israel), Oct 30, 2018 at 15:09

Hi,

> > e.g., Arabic's مغارة is Hebrew's معرة
>
> Cave in Syriac is ܡܥܰܪܬܳܐ or Ma'rta same as
> Hebrew

Oh.

(BTW, didn't this Aramaic /ta/ suffix originally mean "the"? As I understand it, as Aramaic evolved, these suffixes (/ta/ for feminine, /a/ for masculine) became the normal.)

> [...] and now the name
> Emmanuel has no meaning in Arabic

(I wonder if that /t/ suffix is somehow related to towns named حَمَت, located near hot springs, mentioned in the Hebrew bible. The name makes sense in Hebrew, but the /t/ is weird. Arabs use ة instead of ت for such places. You mentioned "Emmanuel" + "no meaning in Arabic" and I was reminded of this. There was a Jewish town /ḥamat/, whose name was gradually mangled, by conquerors, to /amat/, /amas/, then "Emmaus", and finally the Muslims conquered it and, lo and behold, mangled the name further, to عمواس. Ironically, Arabs nowadays use this bygone town as an example for "Israeli colonialism".)

> and notice that there is no Ta marbouta
> in Syriac

(I guess you can do without Ta marbouta in Aramaic because you use the /di/ prefix to denote possessive. So you don't need to change the word itself to distinguish between "cave" and "cave of".)

> There are many other words where the
> meaning is lost or changed in Arabic as
> in Lahma, Sahra (Shahr in Arabic) Very
> interesting indeed

(Bread vs meat? Yes, it's interesting. /sahar/ in Hebrew is synonym for the Moon. BTW, did you know that English's "month" and "Moon" are cognates? Cool.)

Switching letters, switching meanings, switching everything. Providence arranged for these opposites to go further, much to our amusement/astonishment/rage. When Jews prey, they face the Temple Mount; when Muslims prey, its their "behinds" that face it.

> yitgaddal
> [...] I understand it is
> from Hebrew [..] great

Yes, the root is commonly used in Hebrew.

>
> There is no Arabic or Syriac root
> for this word yitgaddal.

My Hebrew dictionary, in its etymology line, says "[ Ugaritic GDL; Aramaic GDAL; Arabic JADALA (strong) ]".

It appears in Lane:

http://www.studyquran.org/LaneLexicon/Volume2/00000027.pdf
http://www.studyquran.org/LaneLexicon/Volume2/00000028.pdf

As for Aramaic: I find it in the Talmud (/ki gdal Hiyya breh/ = "when his son Hiyya grew up"), and in Onkelos (Aramaic translation for the Torah) the root is used in the word /migdla/, meaning "tower, big/tall structure". This word for tower exists in Hebrew and Arabic as well. Several towns in Israel bear the title. Cf. "Mary Magdalene". Cf. Druz village مجدل شمس (whose Wikipedia page says name originates in Aramaic (not Arabic)).

> yitgaddal. [...]
> the "yit" before "gaddal" is really more
> Arabic and Syriac than Hebrew! No?

Why, Hebrew does have "yit". That Kadish is in Aramaic, but it so happens that the many "yit" words there are virtually identical to their Hebrew counterparts:

"[he will] advance": Arabic = /yataqaddamu/, Hebrew = /yitqaddem/ (there's also a /yitqaddam/ form).

"[he will] revolt": Arabic = /yatamarradu/, Hebrew = /yitmarred/

Hebrew's past form is closer to Aramaic than Arabic because it has the prefix "hit" (whereas Arabic starts right with the "ta"):

"[he] advanced": Hebrew = /hitqaddem/.

"[he] revolted": Hebrew = /hitmarred/.

>
> In Syro-Aramaic the word holy is ܩܕܝܫܐ or
> Qadisha In Arabic it is مقدس or Muqaddas and
> notice that the Syriac letter ش or sheen (I'm
> using Arabic Abgad) becomes Arabic seen or س

Right.

BTW, one Arab name for Jerusalem is بيت المَقْدس. Any 3 y/o kid can figure out it's copied verbatim from Hebrew's /beit hamiqdash/, which appears gazillion times in Jewish sources, meaning: the Temple.

When I first learned of this Arab name, I though "Wow, they're shooting themselves in the foot! How can they admit there was the Jewish Temple there, and at the same time deny this, saying it's fake history?" Their answer is to claim that the Arabic phrase and the Hebrew phrase are absolutely unrelated and the holiness it refers to is of the Muslim site.

Sheesh, I typed a lot! You don't have to reply.

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