Hebrew as the early modern gateway drug to Arabic: Franciscus Raphelengius reading a Qur'an by noting Hebrew cognates above the line in @ubleiden.bsky.social MS. Or. 251 (eventually a model for his Arabic type), fully digitised here: digitalcollections.universiteitleiden.nl/view/item/33...

So, here's the article I have out as of today and it's #OpenAccess. It deals with one of the earliest Christian Arabic scribal workshops in the Sinai monastery, where many of the mss produced there have been preserved to this day. In this 🧵 I do a quick rundown of the most important findings. 1/n

Cool, I didn't know Hegra was in the Targum! (Rekem is Petra.)

The registration for the Leiden Summer School in Languages and Linguistics 2026 is now open! Interested in classes in Anatolian, Indo-European, Semitic, Sino-Tibetan, etc., etc.? Join us in Leiden from 6-17 July! Program, fees, and application form: www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/education...

Top-tier pun

Nice D(h)usares reference:

normalize writing articles as if you're composing an Iron Age monumental inscription

Fixed again (more or less).

Amazing resource for archaic #Greek paleography:

Greeks seeing Philip II's horse win in the Olympics in 356: "Man, I miss when the Olympics were apolitical."

call me sigma boy the way I've been researching the origin of these Greek sibilant letters

In the same way, the Greek letter names are first attested in a play written during the lifetime of Nehemiah.

iambic tetrameter ass stick

This thread is awesome.

the ancient egyptian word for a female dog was whore there's no way 𓅱𓉔𓂋𓏏𓃡 whr.t => ⲟⲩϩⲟⲟⲣⲉ so pronounced /ˈwhɔːrə/

my two favorite language family distributions

Also, did you know that our wonderful Journal of African Languages and Linguistics is open access? Via subscribe to open (S2O) anyone has access this year! @degruyterbrill.bsky.social

gad saad's jewish beiruti dialect has some interesting features with respect to lebanese arabic on the whole: 1. no imala to ē, his highest alif is p much ǣ 2. 1sg a-, like baʔellak 'i tell you' (not bʔellak) 3. distinction between -e (ـة) and -i (ـي)

In Memoriam by a teacher of mine and doctoral student of Muraoka's:

Daniel 9:

Visited the Cairo Geniza collection in the Cambridge UL for the first time today. Almost lost for words at the amount and diversity of materials, languages and scripts. Herewith my photo of a Hebrew primer used in 10th century Egypt to teach kids to write

most transparent archaeological period label

Me to my toddler

In discussie met de secundaire literatuur:

Barhebraeus in the 13th century on Uyghur script being adapted for Mongolian:

Van Putten (2018):

Ancient Greek students when you ask them the nominative plural ending for first declension nouns:

"Either exile yourself or accept excommunication" goes hard

interview with 500m speed skating Olympic champion Femke Kok in Frisian @avzaagzonunaada.bsky.social www.omropfryslan.nl/nl/video/FNO...

Do we know why Targumic #Aramaic has אִיזֵל for the imperative 'go' and not אְזֵל**? Dissimilation? ASsimilation?

Fun trick question for Morphology 101: what can you say about the formation of these place names, all important ancient(ish) cities of the Aramaic–Arabian frontier? - Petra - Hegra - Bostra - Palmyra - Dura (Europos) - Hatra - Basra - Rhinocolura

lessgoo

Puntje voor מקום א׳

ḥazal, who are also deeply obsessed with books, try to explain books into the story on multiple occasions. Three examples: 1. Gen. Rabbah 59:11 explains וְכׇל־ט֥וּב אֲדֹנָ֖יו בְּיָד֑וֹ (Gen. 24:10) — How can the servant be holding all of Abraham's possessions? He's holding a will that bequeaths them to Isaac!

the what now

Takamitsu Muraoka (1939-2026), professor of Hebrew at Leiden University (1991-2003) and famous scholar in Septuagint studies, and awarded awarded the Burkitt Medal of the British Academy in 2017. He still taught in Asian countries which had suffered under Japanese militarism in the 20th century.

Reposting this fantastic interview with Kevin van Bladel on his vision of the "Classical Near East", talking a lot about languages like Greek, (Christian) Arabic, Armenian, Coptic, Syriac, Mandaic, and Middle Persian. Also very interesting in terms of career paths and how our fields are structured.

𐤌𐤑𐤁𐤕 𐤀𐤆 𐤀𐤔 𐤉𐤈𐤍𐤀 𐤀𐤓𐤔 𐤓𐤁 𐤎𐤓𐤎𐤓𐤌 𐤋𐤀𐤁𐤉 𐤋𐤐𐤓𐤎𐤉 𐤓𐤁 𐤎𐤓𐤎𐤓𐤌 𐤁𐤍 𐤀𐤓𐤔 𐤓𐤁 𐤎𐤓𐤎𐤓𐤌 𐤁𐤍 𐤌𐤍𐤇𐤌 𐤓𐤁 𐤎𐤓𐤎𐤓𐤌 𐤁𐤍 𐤌𐤔𐤋 𐤓𐤁 𐤎𐤓𐤎𐤓𐤌 𐤁𐤍 𐤐𐤓𐤎𐤉 𐤓𐤁 𐤎𐤓𐤎𐤓𐤌 𐤅𐤋𐤀𐤌𐤉 𐤋𐤔𐤌𐤆𐤁𐤋 𐤁𐤕 𐤁𐤏𐤋𐤓𐤌 𐤁𐤍 𐤌𐤋𐤊𐤉𐤕𐤍 𐤁𐤍 𐤏𐤆𐤓 𐤓𐤁 𐤇𐤆 𐤏𐤍𐤌 𐤏𐤋 𐤌𐤔𐤊𐤁 𐤍𐤇𐤕𐤍𐤌 𐤋𐤏𐤋𐤌

Don't want to get my hopes up, but this sounds genuinely exciting. The seventh century is one of the most important era's in Western Eurasian history, witnessing the rise of Islam, the end of Ancient Persia, and the dramatic reduction of Eastern Rome losing its status as Mediterranean Empire.

After almost 6½ years, I'm finally back to just one institutional email address again (from a high score of three). This will save me hours a day in two-factor authentication!

Over the years, Miyagawa So (University of Tsukuba), one of DO’s most prolific contributors, has written extensively on digital initiatives related to various ancient African languages and scripts, including Demotic, Egyptian Hieratic, Coptic, and Nubian. Read more on our blog ⬇️

this bit of text on the wall of the Old New Synagogue in Prague (of golem fame) sent me down a rabbit hole involving gematria, Hebrew calendrics and Bohemian Yiddish. a thread

Learned the other day that we have a 6th-century guy in the Babylonian exile attested with this name in cuneiform records. Only one in his family without a Yahwistic name. But with good Judahite precedent.

I've been reading this to my five year old with an alveolar click for three nights now. So far he's replacing it with a velar stop but I will persevere

Just saw on the other platform that Jonas Sibony has published his online dictionary of the Arabic Varieties of the Jews of Morocco www.jonas-sibony.com/djm/

In a new form of household trolling, the oldest, Aalia (15), is teaching Layla (4) to repeat that "Homer was a blind poet who wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey"

Here are a few medieval quotes that exemplify the narratives of Hebrew, Latin, and Arabic paleography: 🧵

Alright, one more blog post. Hot off the press.