For harrak and his foray into Judeo-Arabic

Submitted by dhimmi no more (United States), Jan 13, 2007 at 08:10

My dear harrak al-jahil here is your little examination in Judeo-Arabic and it is an open book examination

Could you translate the following sentences from Judeo-Arabic to English, one is a famous Rabbinical saying and the second is from the Cairo Geniza documents (I stand correted here but I believe that the Geniza documents is the source of the second sentence):

1. minhag yubattel halakhah

2. la-'iqaar we-'af'al gab 'in lam yuktab shetaar.

If you cannot translate such simple Judeo-Arabic i must assume that you know no Judeo-Arabic and in this case your bogus claim that Ahmaq really means crazy in Judeo-Arabic is nothing but another bogus claim.

For the readers: Judeo-Arabic is a form of Middle Arabic that was developed by the Jews living in Muslim countries. It is Arabic that has many loan words from Hebrew and it is written iusing Hebrew letters or Aramiac letters or even Arabic letters. It reflects the rapid changes in the evolution of the Arabic language in the middle ages.

Saadya Gaon translated the first 5 books of the Bible from Hebrew to Arabic in the 10 th century and in the process set the bar very high for such translations. And from his work I can very much adduce that the word Ahmaq means: impulsive, foolish. It deos not mean crazy as in your bogus claim.

And the hyena will be back for more.

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