Some thoughts on NM•NH, a Libyco-Berber ethnonym that everybody on Bluesky has been wondering about for ages. In the eastern script, the dot symbol can be used to substitute for a letter. Which letters are involved is not entirely clear - Y, Z and Z² are pretty certain, but there may be more hiding

6. Arabic script is not linear!! consonants are supposed to stack!! i get accepting compromises when you’re dealing with the introduction of the printing press, but we have OpenType fonts now. ـحـ is a crime against calligraphy

28. initial hamza should *always* be transcribed in Classical Arabic and MSA. it behaves differently from ʔalif al-waṣl and i think that’s important to indicate

#NewPublication #OpenAccess #Judaeo-Arabic www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.116...

Niya Prakrit, a Central Asian Gāndhārī dialect, was the administrative language of Shanshan (3–4 c. CE). N. Schoubben shows the strong Iranian (Bactrian) influence, but rejects a “Tocharian C” substrate, and argues Kushan officials shaped it. #openaccess www.harrassowitz-ver...

My first proper foray into Afroasiatic-level reconstruction just came out in BJALL: "Disentangling Afroasiatic *t-morphemes: No path from middle to imperfective" brill.com/view/journal... Sadly not open access, but I'd be delighted to send a copy to anyone who asks me for one (myfirstname@gmail)

Here's a Lam-Alif-cum-Ankh to grace your day. gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/b... You'll get a kick out of this one @majnouna.com

I like. Obviously. ;)

al-Dānī tells us that when lā is used in a categorical negation, like lâ ǧarama, lâ rayba and lâ ḫayra, that Ḥamzah in the transmissions of Ḫalaf, al-Dūrī, Ibn Saʿdān and ʾAbū Hišām from Sulaym from Ḥamzah would make the vowel of lâ overlong.

More bizarre Peer Review woes: Yesterday I was asked whether I was interested in reviewing the collected volume entitled "The Comparative Textual Criticism of Religious Scriptures". I was like: wait a minute, isn't that the volume my Quranic textual criticism chapter was published in? It was. 🤦

Receiving a peer review written by an LLM, including a reference to a hallucinated non-canonical variant reading was not on my "things that can happen during peer review" bingo card, yet here we are.

@phdnix.bsky.social @maartenkossmann.bsky.social @lameensouag.bsky.social this is above my paygrade!

My new book is officially out! It's published Open Access with Cambridge's Semitic Languages and Cultures series, and can be freely downloaded here: www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.116...

Exciting new publication! Christian Arabic manuscripts are very important for understanding the medieval history of Arabic, and an informed approach that gives agency to the users of this interesting expression is very important. It's also Open Access! www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.116...

You want to see some weird vowels? Of course you do. That's why I made this: a home-grown, slop-free, handcrafted artisanal *research paper*. No artificials here. 100% natural, baby. What you see is what you get. And you know what else? It's free. wydawnictwo.pan.pl/index.php/fo...

We got a new AMA with @phdnix.bsky.social dropping on May 13!

Ever wondered how maghrebi vocalisation works, and while you learn, also learn how it's employed to write Berber in pre-modern script, here's a little thread for you. :-)

Strange use of the term 'ghayr mu3jamah' attributed to Ahmad b. Salih. This term would usually mean "without a consonantal dot" which it can't mean here since lâm doesn't take a consonantal dot. In this context clearly seems to mean "without taghlizh" (i.e. emphatic Lam)

feɬ righɬ aɬ home

New pre-publication with Sigrid Kjær, #OpenAccess as usual 👇 🐦🐦

Summer school in historical sociolinguistics at Ghent University for "graduate students and young (at heart!) researchers":

Livestream tomorrow on the burning questions of late antique Arabia’s religious history. Join here: www.youtube.com/live/iJ4zsdI...

KANJI!?!? In MY English? It's more likely than you think. youtu.be/_gCyZI-Ettw?...

In case you missed the Kickstarter, pre-orders are now open for this book, for dispatch starting in May (after I start fulfilling pledges). payhip.com/b/W306o

It was a great pleasure and a honor to act as the co-supervisor for Mariana Martins’ dissertation about the emergence of a new Sign Language in Guinea Bissau, for which she received the doctorate yesterday. The book is available open-access.🧵 www.lotpublications.nl/creating-a-s...

Public lecture on Thursday in Paris. I will deliver a lecture on the linguistic pre-history and history of the Mecca region, based on two seasons of epigraphic fieldwork carried out btwn '21-'22. Welcome.

Someone on Reddit asked me what the difference between "Quranic Arabic" and "Classical Arabic" is. It was fun to put my thoughts together on this (and the vexed question of what "Classical Arabic" even means. Perhaps others will find this of interest too.

A new article of mine was recently published by the Journal of Islamic Studies: "‘Where did you learn to write Arabic?’: A Critical Analysis of Some Ḥadīths on the Origins and Spread of the Arabic Script" academic.oup.com/jis/advance-...

So what about the other "bad guy", Ibn Miqsam? Was he shunned and dropped from the transmission of the Quran, or did he also become a canonical transmitter among the ten canonical readers? While he is not as prominent in the transmission paths as Ibn Shanabudh he indeed appears!

Qliffī! Save us!

Behold, a THAAD

The trials of Ibn Shanabudh for his reciting of non-Uthmanic readings is often invoked in the context of the "canonization of the seven readings" by Ibn Mujahid. His doing so, and being punished for it are often touted as examples of the establishment of the canon.

Handwritings of great scholars: 1. Sanskrit-devanāgarī: David Pingree (ed.), Yavanajātaka 2. Arabic & Greek: Manfred Ullmann, Wörterbuch zu den griechisch-arabischen Übersetzungen des 9. Jahrhunderts 3. Tangut: К. Б. Кепинг, Тангутский язык: морфология

NEW BOOK | Ottoman-Era Documents from the Cairo Genizah by Jane Hathaway The latest book in the Cambridge Semitic Languages & Cultures series, this groundbreaking volume makes a transformative contribution to studies of the Cairo Genizah. Read freely online or buy a copy: buff.ly/NYtRPfq #OAbooks

We hebben iets teveel bezuinigt op jou onderweis

Fun chain of derivation + borrowing: #Hebrew g-ʔ-y 'to be proud' > gaʔăw-ā 'pride' > gaʔawṯ-ān 'prideful' > gaʔawṯān-ūṯ 'pridefulness' > #Yiddish gavsones 'arrogance' > #Dutch kapsones 'airs' > kapsones-lijer 'braggart'

"Gistradagis" is a Gothic word, attested once, that perfectly corresponds to English 'yesterday' –⁠ except that it means 'tomorrow'. Old Norse is flexible with this word too ('í gær' means 'yesterday/tomorrow'), perhaps due to a common stage when it came to refer to a day on either side of today.

#TIL "the LORD of Hosts" (𐡉𐡄𐡄 𐡑𐡁𐡀𐡕, [yh]h ṣbʾt) is attested as a divine name on an #Aramaic ostracon from Elephantine. (First line, starting with the second 𐡄.)

Fixed again (more or less).

An interesting report from al-Dani's Jami`: Basically every transmitter of Ibn Dhakwan reported and even Ibn Dhakwan's own book say explicitly that Q51:60 and Q83:31 break with the general rule, and have an unharmonized -humu pronoun rather than his regular -himu.

"They do not ??? them, they do not fast for him, they do not feed [the poor] for him" wel-ten yesmeṯri, wel_fell-as etẓumun, wel_fell-as esseččen

New Open Access article: Finding Dūrī: Communal Transmission of Abū ʿAmr among the People of ʿIrāq === The proofs still had the title's pun working in Spanish, but between final proofs and publication someone who didn't get it, changed it. :-( al-qantara.revistas.csic.es/index.php/al...

"Is it okay to fast before the moon-seeing, or not?" "Ma yeggur wuẓum qbel teẓra n uyur, neɣ min?"

ah yes, the RaSnBaSt

It's #InternationalLEGOClassicismDay! 🎉 This year I've been building a LEGO Katabasis Book Nook, which has been a ridiculous amount of fun! Here are a few pictures - and you can find the whole thing on my website: classicalstudies.support/2026/02/20/i... #ILCD10 #BCEPantheon

I have a new blog post out, looking into material that shows how people tried to sell private collections to public institutions in the Weimar Republic, what prices they were asking, and how librarians rejected offers due to fishy provenance. medisi.hypotheses.org/8489 @dehypotheses.bsky.social

Western Amazigh Tetserret / Zenaga : - əskorək = askarag = i did - əskorad = askaraḏi = i did it - ǝnnak = ǝnnag = i said - ǝnnad = ǝnnaḏi = i said it

New Article: When did Faṣīḥ become Qabīḥ? Rehabilitating Classical phonological and morphological features And it's Open Access!: doi.org/10.1093/jss/... A short summary of the contents of this article 🧵

The program of the Leiden Summer School in Languages and Linguistics 2026 (6-17 July) is now online! www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/education... Hopefully, there will be some courses of your liking! (Hittite perhaps?) The application form will be online soon, too, so keep an eye out for it.

lessgoo