#OCIANA #Top_10_in_2025 : The #OCIANA team inserted more than 1500 new inscriptions into the database. Here are our top ten (with a three-way tie at #10) of the year, just in case you missed them! From Nabonidus to Dahr, let us known what you think! www.academia.edu/145461821/OC...

Dear All. I listened to an interview with Irving Finkel over the weekend. He claimed that the Biblical Flood narrative contains quite a few Akkadian loanwords. Any ideas what any of them might be? Or whether anyone’s written stuff about them?

Review of Schneider's "The Semitic Sibilants", by yours truly: academic.oup.com/jss/advance-...

If מִשְׁאֶ֫רֶת (Exod. and Deut. only) is a kneading trough, it’d be nice if it was cognate with שְׂאֹר (‘leaven’). But what’s happened to its sibilant? Loaned into Egyptian (where its lateral fricative went) & borrowed back? Feels a bit far-fetched, not least because it’s not attested in Egyptian (afaik).

Related to Geez maʕār (*maʕar) and Amharic mar = ‘honey, honeycomb’?

Not sure how much weight I can reasonably put on this text:

As a little treat for you, here's an #ArabicBible Advent calendar 🧵. Every day I'll post a verse from the Christmas story from one of the oldest Arabic Gospel lectionaries, Sinai ar. 72, dated 897 CE (and a few other texts in between). [2nd attempt, I won't be offended if you point out my nonsense.]

How come the construct of נְבֵלָה (‘carcass’) is נִבְלַת, and, possibly, of לְבֵנָה is לִבְנַת? I wondered if the constructs preserved an older form, since בְּרֵכָה corresponds to *birkat (e.g., بِرْكَة), but then בְּרֵכָה simply becomes בְּרֵכַת, so I don’t know.

Egyptian ḥmꜣ.t (‘salt’) as a cognate of the West Semitic *milḥ? Not dissimilar metathesis seems to be reflected in the borrowing of West Semitic *rumḥ (‘spear’) as *murḥ (hence Coptic ⲙⲉⲣ(ⲉ)ϩ).

#Updated on #OCIANA - The first Ancient South Arabian inscription from the Ḥarrah, from Zalaf, Syria! Was it carved by a North Arabian who learned the script or a wandering South Arabian trader? Impossible to know! But its irregularities tell a story. Find more: ociana.osu.edu/inscriptions...

Egyptian ḥmꜣ.t (‘salt’) as a cognate of the West Semitic *milḥ? Not dissimilar metathesis seems to be reflected in the borrowing of West Semitic *rumḥ (‘spear’) as *murḥ (hence Coptic ⲙⲉⲣ(ⲉ)ϩ).

A neat Masoretic note on II Sam. 13. Something like, שׁממה [occurs] three times (ג̇), twice defectively (ב̇ חָסֵר) and once fully (וחד מָלֵא). [Ordered by appearance], [the first is] ותשב תמר ושממה, [the second, which is plene]כי־רבים בני־שוממה מבני, [and the third] נתנני שממה.

Huehnergard’s excellent article on Hebrew nominal patterns classifies כֻּתֹּ֫נֶת as a *quttul-t form, which it may be, but is it better explained in light of the tendency for pre-tonic *u to prompt gemination (עָמוֹק/עֲמֻקִּים), since כֻּתֹּ֫נֶת isn’t geminated in (unstressed) construct forms (e.g., כְּתֹנֶת הַפַּסִּים)?

Idea for paper. List various Modern South Arabian borrowings from Arabic where a lateral fricative is effectively restored, such as in the case of šəmāl ⇒ śēməl(i) = ‘inland/north’. Entitle the paper ‘The Imputation of Śin’.

Idea for paper. List various Modern South Arabian borrowings from Arabic where a lateral fricative is effectively restored, such as in the case of šəmāl ⇒ śēməl(i) = ‘inland/north’. Entitle the paper ‘The Imputation of Śin’.

Question. Do we have any record of Canaanite that can be shown to predate the Canaanite Shift?

Question: Hoch has examples in (Egyptian) syllabic orthography of what appears to be *yomm (‘sea’) from the late 2nd millennium. How should these be explained? The effect of the Canaanite Shift on a stress-lengthened *a? Or the Phoenician Shift? (When does the latter date?)

Question: Hoch has examples in (Egyptian) syllabic orthography of what appears to be *yomm (‘sea’) from the late 2nd millennium. How should these be explained? The effect of the Canaanite Shift on a stress-lengthened *a? Or the Phoenician Shift? (When does the latter date?)

From a Songhay cultural group on Facebook: "Today, Friday, let us put our siblings who are in Sudan, and all the land of Sudan - especially Al Fashir, in Darfur - in our prayers: may God hold their hand in the situation they are in..."

Caught up with my brother last weekend, who now speaks pretty good Swahili. I was intrigued to discover that Swahili appends -Vw to verbal stems to make them statives, just like Ancient Egyptian. Anyone know of non-Bantu languages that do the same thing?

Was the sound shift *w > /v/ in postvernacular Hebrew precipitated by a corresponding shift in vernacular Aramaic? Or does it represent an independent development?

3 more weeks to apply for this... please continue to share widely.

THREAD. Some thoughts on (apparent) dual suffixes in Biblical names. Relevant comparative data gratefully received. As I understand it, dual-esque suffixes in names like Ephraim (אֶפְרַיִם) and are thought to go back to */aym/ and are (often) viewed as secondary developments.

THREAD. Some thoughts on (apparent) dual suffixes in Biblical names. Relevant comparative data gratefully received. As I understand it, dual-esque suffixes in names like Ephraim (אֶפְרַיִם) and are thought to go back to */aym/ and are (often) viewed as secondary developments.

Go Birds! Several Egyptian hieroglyphic signs are birds. Here are some common bird signs and their meanings/uses: [resurrecting an old but topical thread]

Re-patterned Geese. ⟨smn⟩ = ‘goose’ is a good Egyptian lexeme, attested from the Old Kingdom onwards. It presumably reflects *sV̆mānV̆(w) since it appears in Coptic as ⟨smune⟩.

Re-patterned Geese. ⟨smn⟩ = ‘goose’ is a good Egyptian lexeme, attested from the Old Kingdom onwards. It presumably reflects *sV̆mānV̆(w) since it appears in Coptic as ⟨smune⟩.

Lots of new grammar in the #Dhofari inscriptions, suggesting further links with the Modern South Arabian languages. The verb yġfrm 'may they pardon' shows the plural ending -m. See these two new texts just uploaded to #OCIANA ociana.osu.edu/inscriptions... ociana.osu.edu/inscriptions...

Cognate with Egyptian jzr(w).

Cognate with Egyptian jzr(w).

Are there good examples of loanwords that have preserved a phonological feature that’s ultimately been lost in the loanword’s native language?

One of the more common ways to form diminutives in Beja is via the sound change /r/ > /l/. Apparently that goes the other way in Tuareg. Can anyone confirm/deny? Or provide examples from other languages?

Anyone out there aware of papers about situations where a phoneme has been lost from a language as a whole but has been preserved in a specific region/people-group due to language contact?

Intrigued by עַרְבַּיִם = ‘twilight’. Do parallels exist in Semitic? (Let me know pls.) They might in Egyptian. In Herdsman, I came across dwꜢ dwꜢ (‘dawn dawn’) = ‘very early’. And many Egyptian words for dawn/twilight *look* like plurals: jḫḫ.w = ‘twilight’, mšr.w = ‘twilight’, ꜥnḏ.w = ‘dawn’.

Close, but no cigar (סגר). Attempted pun.

Dear Hebrew folks. How clear is it that undageshed BGDKPTs indicate a prior vowel (historically)? I’m looking into the (alleged Egyptian loan) פִּטְדָה = ‘peridot’, and would expect פִּטְדָה to go back to *pVṭdat rather than *pVṭVdat. Could the cluster *-ṭd- have led to an undageshed ד for some reason?

Do any kind souls out there have a copy of Osing’s “Hieratische Papyri aus Tebtunis I”. Apparently it includes a vocalised form of ⟨t-ḥḏ⟩ (‘white bread’), which I’m keen to have a look at.

Scholars still debate Coptic's doubled vowels: Do they represent a long vowel, or a vowel + glottal stop? Old Nubian derived much of its writing from Coptic, and could be important evidence. #Egyptology #Linguistics #AncientBlueSky egyptianhistoricallinguistics.blogspot.com/2025/08/old-...

Do any kind souls out there have a copy of Osing’s “Hieratische Papyri aus Tebtunis I”. Apparently it includes a vocalised form of ⟨t-ḥḏ⟩ (‘white bread’), which I’m keen to have a look at.

Dear Coptic folk. Any ideas what Sᵃ and Sᶠ denote?

Dear Coptic folk. Any ideas what Sᵃ and Sᶠ denote?

Anyone know if this is cognate with the Classical Arabic ʔWS = ‘to help’?

Anyone know if this is cognate with the Classical Arabic ʔWS = ‘to help’?

Nice--have been reading this chapter for a while now, and have finally put two and two together re its author! Thanks! @maartenkossmann.bsky.social

So cool that Old Nubian manuscripts preserve the [u]-vowel of the Old Egyptian ⟨jrp⟩ = ‘wine’ (3rd mill.), which has shifted to [ē] in the Coptic ⟨ērp⟩. Thanks for sharing!

So cool that Old Nubian manuscripts preserve the [u]-vowel of the Old Egyptian ⟨jrp⟩ = ‘wine’ (3rd mill.), which has shifted to [ē] in the Coptic ⟨ērp⟩. Thanks for sharing!

Dear Dialectologists. Could anyone tell me if the attached description of Moroccan Arabic vowels sound right, and, if so, how this relates to stress? Do you end up with stressed shewa-type vowels, or does stress accompany length?

If any kind Egyptologists/Copticologists (?) would be willing to take a look at a section on Egyptian names I’ve recently put together for a book, then please let me know.

Not quite top of the world’s problems at the moment, but why do some text file handlers have the option ‘Merge delimiters?’, and why would it be set to TRUE by default? When would this ever be desirable behaviour?

Keen to know if folk out there are aware of cases of C₁vʔC₂ ⇒ C₁vC₂C₂? Is this a common/known development?