Syriac Hebrew and the Arabic ta marbouta

Submitted by dhimmi no more (United States), Nov 2, 2018 at 07:19

Hi Motke you wrote:

> > 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.)

This was indeed a problem to Arab grammarians because in Arabic a word that ends with a Ta marbouta is a feminine word. At times it can be very strange an example is the word خليفة or Khalifa notice that it ends with a Ta Marbouta but a خليفة is supposed to be a man! This has never been explained by Muslim grammarians. Luxenberg believes that the word خليفة should be Arabic حليف or halif (he who supports) and the etymology of Khalifa must be from Syriac ܚܠܝܦܐ or Khalipa which would be Arabized as Khalifa (notice Syriac P becomes Arabic F)

> [...] 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

The real tragedy of the Arabic language and Islam is that Arabs believe in the doctrine of al-Jahiliyya and that Islam is a new start when in actual fact history and languages are about continuity

Also almost all of the Muslims that told us what the Arabic language is all about were not even Arabs the likes of Sibawayhe and al-Tabari and their command of Syriac and Hebrew was almost zero

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