Abugida--the song
Harlan Messinger
song by that name in 2001. Who knew? On YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDloYKw7J90
The title appears on a couple of occasions at the bottom of the screen
written as "Abu Gieda", a misspelling presumably on the part of the
video's creator.
Peter T. Daniels
The NPR story yesterday translated it as "The ABC of Love."
Harlan Messinger
I see that neither the OED nor MW Unabridged have included "abugida" yet
but maybe now that NPR has put it out there they'll consider it.
OK, this is confusing. I just looked for "abjad" in the OED and they
cite you, in 1990: "I propose to call this type an 'abjad'". But then
they show the word in use as far back as 1793. The meaning appears to
have been different in the earlier uses, though--it was used to refer to
mappings of the letters to numbers, as in gematriya.
Peter T. Daniels
As I've noted before, the OED contacted me to verify the quotation,
and replied that they had nothing at all on "abugida." I suspect
"abjad" caught on because it appeared in the Unicode glossary, but the
Unicode glossary screwed up "abugida" so badly that no one could
figure out what it was supposed to mean.
The 1793 usage (what's the reference?) clearly involves the original
Arabic sense.
Harlan Messinger
C. F. Greville, "Brit. India Analyzed I". I thought you had coined the
term, rather than adapting an existing one. What term is used in Arabic?
Alif-baa?
Yusuf B Gursey
in arabic abjad refers to the order of letters when they are assigned
numerical values, alif-ba:' the normal order ofthe alphabet. I don't
know if any arab linguists have adapted a word in the sense used by
Peter Daniels.
Peter T. Daniels
No, no, no, no, no. "Abjad" is the Arabic term for the ancestral
order, which is the order used when the letters serve as numbers
(which is less commonly done than with Hebrew, but still used
occasionally).
"Abugida" is the Ge`ez and Amharic term for the NSem. order, which is
known from the superscripts in Ps. 119 and is used in some other
liturgical contexts.
I don't know the Arabic word for 'alphabet'.
Harlan Messinger
What do Arabic speakers call alphabets or abjads or abugidas used in
other writing systems? What do they call the Roman or Cyrillic or Greek
alphabet, or the Hebrew one, or Devanagari?
Harlan Messinger
No to what? The reference isn't Greville, or I didn't think what I
claimed to have thought, or you didn't coin the word, or you didn't
adapt an existing word?
> "Abugida" is the Ge`ez and Amharic term for the NSem. order, which is
> known from the superscripts in Ps. 119 and is used in some other
> liturgical contexts.
So your contribution was to have extended this existing word into a term
to cover similar writing systems?
Yusuf B Gursey
: On Aug 4, 10:11?am, Harlan Messinger
'alifba:' or Huru:fu~l-hija:'
alan
It's "abjad" (whether or not it's in "abjadi" or "hija:'i" order), or
"alifba:'"
Peter T. Daniels
I have NEVER claimed to have invented the words, and every time I
discuss them in an article or chapter, I include a footnote with their
source (and crediting Wolf Leslau with suggesting the latter). What I
did was introduce them into the English language in the senses needed
for my typology of writing systems.
Yusuf B Gursey
and also 'abjad
alan
" alan" <in_fla...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:h59qtl$q4l$1...@news.eternal-september.org...
BTW ---- Maybe Yusuf knows ---- when was the hija:'i order introduced?
Harlan Messinger
Oh, OK. I was led astray by references all over the Internet to your
having "coined" or "invented" the terms, which to me implies that the
words were brand new.
Yusuf B Gursey
> " alan" <in_flagra...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
I think it was the invention of the classical grammarians who
rearanged the abjad order according to shape and sound. alif, ba, then
the letters resembling ba etc. and the semivowels and ha:' at the end.
Peter T. Daniels
Though Sibawayh uses a phonetic order that (probably coincidentally)
resembles the Sanskrit order.
Yusuf B Gursey
well, the words for "alphabet" are discussed in the other posts. what
I read in classsical works discusses the *kh*aTT (script, from the word
for "line") or Huru:f ("letters") of other peoples (in the work I read
that of the Turks, i.e. teh Uighur script)
alan
While searching around for a history of the development of the hija:'i
ordering of letters, I came across the mention of not only two forms of
hija:'i but also two forms of abjadi, which are described as "Eastern" and
"Western" respectively. The "Eastern" forms are the ones we're familiar
with today, but the "Western" forms were apparently once widepsread in the
Maghreb and in Andalus. The differences are very slight:
Eastern abjadi:
ابجد هـو ز حطي كلمن سعفص قرشت ثخذ ضظغ
Western abjadi:
ابجد هـو ز حطي كلمن صعفض قرست ثخذ ظغش
Eastern hija:i:
أ ، ب ، ت ، ث ، ج ، ح ، خ ، د ، ذ ، ر ، ز ، س ، ش، ص ، ض ، ط ، ظ ، ع ، غ ،
ف ، ق ، ك ، ل ، م ، ن ، هـ ، و ، ي
Western hija:i:
أ ، ب ، ت ، ث ، ج ، ح ، خ ، د ، ذ ، ر ، ز ، ط ، ظ ، ك ، ل ، م ، ن ، ص ، ض ،
ع ، غ ، ف ، ق ، س ، ش ، هـ ، و ،ي
see: http://www.ahlalhdeeth.com/vb/archive/index.php/t-18453.html
Yusuf B Gursey
the western hija seems to follow the abjad order more closely.
as for the western abjad it is older and acc. to sources the pre-
islamic one. there is an article about it tying the two to the shift
in the sibilants that occured in in arabic.
persian, ottoman turkish etc. (aside from the additional letters) use
the eastern hija but with waw (which is usually pronounced [v], i.e.
not a semivowel) and ha interchanged. the extra letters are not
included in the abjad, they are given the numerical values of the
arabic letters they are derived from (like *ch* that of j ;
*zh* that z etc.
Peter T. Daniels
Note also that <f> and <q> are dotted differently in the Maghreb.
Do you know when Arabic orthography for Persian got settled -- the
<ch>, <zh>, etc.?
Yusuf B Gursey
no.but I know by the 11th cent. various languages were using extra
dots. Firdawsi is a century earlier, so perhpas then. I think ga:f is
a late comer, it was never a seperate letter in ottoman orthography
and only occassionally differentiated from ka:f (which also served for
the old *ng* sound and spirantized version of [g], i.e. g~ of modern
turkish). if it had been consistently used in persian the ottomans
would have adopted it.
Yusuf B Gursey
: On Aug 5, 2:51??am, Yusuf B Gursey <y...@theworld.com> wrote:
:> On Aug 5, 1:24??am, " ??alan" <in_flagra...@hotmail.com> wrote:
:> > While searching around for a history of the development of the hija:'i
:> > ordering of letters, I came across the mention of not only two forms of
:> > hija:'i but also two forms of abjadi, which are described as "Eastern" and
:> > with today, but the "Western" forms were apparently once widepsread in the
:>
:> > see:http://www.ahlalhdeeth.com/vb/archive/index.php/t-18453.html
:>
:> the western hija seems to follow the abjad order more closely.
:>
:> as for the western abjad it is older and acc. to sources the pre-
:> islamic one. there is an article about it tying the two to the shift
:> in the sibilants that occured in in arabic.
:>
:> persian, ottoman turkish etc. (aside from the additional letters) use
:> the eastern hija but with waw (which is usually pronounced [v], i.e.
:> not a semivowel) and ha interchanged. the extra letters are not
:> included in the abjad, they are given the numerical values of the
:> arabic letters they are derived from (like *ch* that of j ;
:> ??*zh* that z etc.-
: Note also that <f> and <q> are dotted differently in the Maghreb.
and then there is the differences in the decimal numerals
Peter T. Daniels
I know that the Persian <5> is different from the Arabic <5> (and both
are provided in some fonts).
Yusuf B Gursey
I had in mind the difference between the Maghrebi (western) numerlas
directly ancestral to the European numerals vs. the eastern ones, but yes,
there are differences between the persian ones and the eastern arabic ones
too. <5> may be ascribed to calligraphy, so also <6>, but there is
radically different form for <4>.
alan
"Yusuf B Gursey" <y...@TheWorld.com> wrote in message
news:h5fbc3$uci$1...@pcls6.std.com...
While use of the European numerals had been pretty much confined to Morocco,
Algeria, and Tunisia, their use seems by now to be pretty much all over the
Arab world.
>but yes,
> there are differences between the persian ones and the eastern arabic ones
> too. <5> may be ascribed to calligraphy, so also <6>, but there is
> radically different form for <4>.
In view of the fact that the remaining numerals are identical*, the
differences are a bit puzzling. Could it be due to no more than calligraphy
and/or the eccentricities of the Persian and Arabic mathematicians who
introduced the system to their respective audiences?
*
۰۱۲۳۴۵۶۷۸۹ (Persian)
٠١٢٣٤٥٦٧٨٩ (Arabic)
Yusuf B Gursey
> "Yusuf B Gursey" <y...@TheWorld.com> wrote in messagenews:h5fbc3$uci$1...@pcls6.std.com...
>
>
>
>
>
> > In sci.lang Peter T. Daniels <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote in
> > <4442b6a5-fc35-43a6-b9bb-a7e0bea51...@32g2000yqj.googlegroups.com>:
Libya switched over to the european numerals rather recently.
the situation is complicated by the fact that Algeria and Tunisia used
the eastern ones, I think due to ottoman influence.
> Arab world.
especially with the use computer fonts that give the european numerals
>
> >but yes,
> > there are differences between the persian ones and the eastern arabic ones
> > too. <5> may be ascribed to calligraphy, so also <6>, but there is
> > radically different form for <4>.
>
> In view of the fact that the remaining numerals are identical*, the
> differences are a bit puzzling. Could it be due to no more than calligraphy
> and/or the eccentricities of the Persian and Arabic mathematicians who
> introduced the system to their respective audiences?
old texts show more varieties. I read somewhere that they stabilized
only in the 14th or 15th cent. and the islamic world was fragmented by
then.
Yusuf B Gursey
: old texts show more varieties. I read somewhere that they stabilized
: only in the 14th or 15th cent. and the islamic world was fragmented by
: then.
actually in arabic script there is a third way of expressing numerals, by
the siya:qa:t script. the siyaqat script is a dotless (apparently
to avoid forgery by redotting) abreviated shorthand used for financial
purposes. it also keeps it cryptic for the general public. its obsolete
except perhaps by iranian bazaar merchants if what a friend told me is
correct. the numerals are just the numeral names in arabic written in the
specialized script.
Yusuf B Gursey
see:
"On the Placing of _s._ in the Maghribi
_abjad_ and the Khirbet al-Samra' ABC" by M.C.A. Macdonald in the
_Journal of Semitic Studies_, vol. 37, p. 155 (1992).
alan
"Yusuf B Gursey" <y...@theworld.com> wrote in message
news:9719d555-b7f0-46e1...@p28g2000vbn.googlegroups.com...
//see:
//"On the Placing of _s._ in the Maghribi
//_abjad_ and the Khirbet al-Samra' ABC" by M.C.A. Macdonald in the
//_Journal of Semitic Studies_, vol. 37, p. 155 (1992).
Thanks for the reference, Yusuf
alan
"Yusuf B Gursey" <y...@TheWorld.com> wrote in message
Interesting -- I'd never heard of the siyaqat script
Yusuf B Gursey
the usual eastern mnemonic is: (Wright p. i 28, Enc. of Islam II
"Abdjad")
(Z = *DH*, G = *gh* , $ = *sh*, x= *kh* , (in) is a tanwin)
'abjad huwwaz HuTiy [HuTi:] kalaman sa3faD qara$at *th*axa*dh* DaZaG
the usual western one is (EI 2):
'abajid (Wright: 'abujad(in) ) hawaz(in) HuTiy(in) (Wright: HuTiya)
kalamn(in) (Wright: kalamna) Sa3faD(in) (Wright: SAfaD) qurisat
*th*axu*dh* ZaG$(in) (Wright ZaGu$).
Wright also givesan alternative (but the same order) eastern mnemonic
(I presume older) more resembling the western one in terms of
voweling:
'abujad(in) hawaz(in) HuTiya kalamna sa3faS quri$at *th*axu*dh* DaZuG
I find the appearanceof abujad (resembling the ethiopic) in the older
forms interesting.
alan
Particularly interesting in view of the fact that it really bears no
relation to the order of the Ethiopic (Ge'ez) alphabet which (omitting the
voweled combinations of the consonants) is:
he le ħe me se re še qe be te ĥe ne 'e ke we "e ze je de ge ţe p'e şe đe fe
pe
I'd guess that the word abugida (with the meaning of "alphabet") was taken
from the Arabic abujad(in)
Peter T. Daniels
You would guess wrong.
The North Semitic order is known to every Ethiopian Christian from the
superscripts of the "stanzas" of the acrostic Psalm 119, and the
vowels are those of the first four of the seven columns of the
traditional chart of syllables (the first order, or column, is the low
short vowel; the fourth order is the low long vowel).
Yusuf B Gursey
I would agree with Peter Daniels the direction was from ethiopic to
arabic
Harlan Messinger
> the usual eastern mnemonic is: (Wright p. i 28, Enc. of Islam II
> "Abdjad")
> (Z = *DH*, G = *gh* , $ = *sh*, x= *kh* , (in) is a tanwin)
>
> 'abjad huwwaz HuTiy [HuTi:] kalaman sa3faD qara$at *th*axa*dh* DaZaG
>
> the usual western one is (EI 2):
>
> 'abajid (Wright: 'abujad(in) ) hawaz(in) HuTiy(in) (Wright: HuTiya)
> kalamn(in) (Wright: kalamna) Sa3faD(in) (Wright: SAfaD) qurisat
> *th*axu*dh* ZaG$(in) (Wright ZaGu$).
I guess that's Arabic for abcadefgi jecklemanopker stoovwaziz.
Yusuf B Gursey
it's not the usual alphabetical order of dictionaries,but the order in
which letters are assigned numerical values.
Yusuf B Gursey
finally,in pre-modern times there was some debate as to include the
ligature
lam-alif as a seperate "letter" in the hija:'i: order. those
westerners who gave it that status put it between waw and ya' (acc. to
Wright), while those easterners put it (I think) at the end. the "lam-
alif is a letter" even fabricated a Hadith supporting them.
> "Western" respectively. The "Eastern" forms are the ones we're familiar
> with today, but the "Western" forms were apparently once widepsread in the
> Maghreb and in Andalus. The differences are very slight:
>
> Eastern abjadi:
>
> ابجد هـو ز حطي كلمن سعفص قرشت ثخذ ضظغ
> Western abjadi:
> ابجد هـو ز حطي كلمن صعفض قرست ثخذ ظغش
>
> Eastern hija:i:
> أ ، ب ، ت ، ث ، ج ، ح ، خ ، د ، ذ ، ر ، ز ، س ، ش، ص ، ض ، ط ، ظ ، ع ، غ ،
> ف ، ق ، ك ، ل ، م ، ن ، هـ ، و ، ي
>
> Western hija:i:
> أ ، ب ، ت ، ث ، ج ، ح ، خ ، د ، ذ ، ر ، ز ، ط ، ظ ، ك ، ل ، م ، ن ، ص ، ض ،
> ع ، غ ، ف ، ق ، س ، ش ، هـ ، و ،ي
>
> see:http://www.ahlalhdeeth.com/vb/archive/index.php/t-18453.html- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
Yusuf B Gursey
: "Yusuf B Gursey" <y...@TheWorld.com> wrote in message
actually it involves learning the siyaqat form, normally highly
abreviated, of individual words such as numbers, names of the lunar
months etc. and specialized financial terms. usually all the letters are
joined. but nowadays its only a burden for scholars of the economic
history of muslim lands.
Harlan Messinger
I tried to find some illustration of the siyaqat form on-line but was
unsuccessful.
Yusuf B Gursey
I found one (looking under the turkish spelling siyakat), but the numerals
are normal arabic ones.
http://img3.imageshack.us/img3/2412/kklcekynn1545tekihaneli.jpg
alan
[...]
> finally,in pre-modern times there was some debate as to include the
> ligature
> lam-alif as a seperate "letter" in the hija:'i: order. those
> westerners who gave it that status put it between waw and ya' (acc. to
> Wright), while those easterners put it (I think) at the end. the "lam-
> alif is a letter" even fabricated a Hadith supporting them.
Interesting --- I wonder what argument they used to justify consideration of
lam-alif as a separate letter?
Yusuf B Gursey
well, probably the real reason was aesthetic IMHO. how they justified it
was quite blunt: it was a sin not to considerit a seperate letter!
but I will post if I find out more.
Yusuf B Gursey
<4081e9d9-dd80-4ab5...@c1g2000yqi.googlegroups.com>:
: finally,in pre-modern times there was some debate as to include the
: ligature
: lam-alif as a seperate "letter" in the hija:'i: order. those
: westerners who gave it that status put it between waw and ya' (acc. to
: Wright), while those easterners put it (I think) at the end. the "lam-
no,acc. to Wright they inserted it between waw and ya'
: alif is a letter" even fabricated a Hadith supporting them.
Yusuf B Gursey
: In sci.lang Yusuf B Gursey <y...@theworld.com> wrote in
: <4081e9d9-dd80-4ab5...@c1g2000yqi.googlegroups.com>:
Wright says "This combination is called lam-elif, and is geenrally
reckoned a twenty-ninth letter ofthe alphabet, and inserted before <y>.
The
object of it ismerely to distinguish elif as the long vowel a: ..., from
elif as spititus lenis (elif with hemza, ...)."
so it seems to be an excuse to have alif among the letters of prolognation
as well. but I think the real reason is the esthetic quality of lam-alif
DKleinecke
> In sci.lang Yusuf B Gursey <y...@theworld.com> wrote in <h6d60m$14...@pcls6.std.com>:
> : In sci.lang Yusuf B Gursey <y...@theworld.com> wrote in
> : <4081e9d9-dd80-4ab5-a836-bbdddbc58...@c1g2000yqi.googlegroups.com>:
>
> : : finally,in pre-modern times there was some debate as to include the
> : : ligature
> : : lam-alif as a seperate "letter" in the hija:'i: order. those
> : : westerners who gave it that status put it between waw and ya' (acc. to
> : : Wright), while those easterners put it (I think) at the end. the "lam-
>
> : no,acc. to Wright they inserted it between waw and ya'
>
> : : alif is a letter" even fabricated a Hadith supporting them.
>
> Wright says "This combination is called lam-elif, and is geenrally
> reckoned a twenty-ninth letter ofthe alphabet, and inserted before <y>.
> The
> object of it ismerely to distinguish elif as the long vowel a: ..., from
> elif as spititus lenis (elif with hemza, ...)."
>
> so it seems to be an excuse to have alif among the letters of prolognation
> as well. but I think the real reason is the esthetic quality of lam-alif
I get the impression it is the only ligature that is likely to survive
the transition to printing. I see very little everyday Arabic material
- are any other ligatures in common use?
Yusuf B Gursey
most material is now printed. there are many ligatures with mim, and also
with the jim family, but yes, in print many of the ligatures are dying
out.
Peter T. Daniels
But with the advent of OpenType, Arabic printing can get back to the
triumphs of the first Islamic printed books, from late-19th-c. Bulaq.
Some of them were so beautifully done you could barely tell they
weren't manuscript.
alan
Thanks, Peter, for mentioning that --- I found a great OpenType arabic font
downloadable for free at http://www.pakdata.com/products/arabicfont. Looks
like it got all the ligatures . . . can you recommend any others?
Thanks . . .
alan
"Yusuf B Gursey" <y...@TheWorld.com> wrote in message
news:h6fho2$kho$1...@pcls4.std.com...
I recall having read somewhere of someone's contention that the first letter
of the Arabic alphabet was actually hamza and that alif came at the end
between waw and ya'. I can't remember his logic, but it seemed to be an
eccentric notion and one not shared with others, though . . .
Yusuf B Gursey
: "Yusuf B Gursey" <y...@TheWorld.com> wrote in message
I have never come across this.
well, in the begining of the word the "chair" of the hamza is always alif.
and alif at the beginning of the word alif always represents hamza,
whether waSl or qaT`, unless it has a madda whichis the combination hamza
and long a: , so saying hamza is the first consonant has some merit.
Peter T. Daniels
> like it got all the ligatures . . . can you recommend any others?
> Thanks . .
Thanks for finding that. I'm not, however, eager to register at a
Pakistani religious site just to get a free font.
What app will you use to take advantage of OpenType?
alan
"Yusuf B Gursey" <y...@TheWorld.com> wrote in message
I found that reference --- it is someone calling themselves "Burdah" who
cites (but does not name) "Tajweed Experts". Incidentally, he (or she)
offers another rationale for placing hamza as the first letter:
إن كل حرف من الحروف الهجائية يُبدأ فيه الحرف بمسماه ، فلفظ (الباء) أوله
باء ، ولفظ (الميم) أوله ميم ، فكل حرف من الحروف مبدوءٌ باسمه ، وعلى ذلك
فالألف مبدوءة بالهمزة وهو اسمها فتكون الألف هي الهمزة ولا شيء غير ذلك
loosely and partially translated: all the hija'i letters begin with their
designators; ba' begins with b, mim begins with m..... and 'alif begins with
hamza ...
This site is also where I saw the notion of the alphabet beginning with
hamza and ending waw, alif, ya':
الرأي الراجح هو المذهب الثاني : أن عدد الحروف تسعة وعشرون حرفًا هي : "
همزة ، باء ، تاء ، ثاء ، جيم ، حاء ، خاء ، دال ، ذال ، راء ، زاي ، سين ،
شين ، صاد ، ضاد ، طاء ، ظاء ، عين ، غين ، فاء ، قاف ، كاف ، لام ، ميم ،
نون ، هاء ، واو ، ألف ، ياء " ، وتأتي الألف بعد الواو وقبل الياء
Yusuf B Gursey
: "Yusuf B Gursey" <y...@TheWorld.com> wrote in message
: news:h6i7nb$7ob$1...@pcls6.std.com...
: loosely and partially translated: all the hija'i letters begin with their
: designators; ba' begins with b, mim begins with m..... and 'alif begins with
: hamza ...
well, Harf means both "letter (of the alphabet)" and "consonant" so indeed
the first consonant is the hamza. OTOH it is impossible in arabic to have
a word begining with alif without it being a hamza (glottal stop). so what
is one to put in ordering words in the place that alif belongs? not a good
idea. but perhaps for teaching purposes one could learn the hamza and
learn about alif as long a later.
: This site is also where I saw the notion of the alphabet beginning with
: hamza and ending waw, alif, ya':
alan
I have a junk-mail address I use if dubious sites want registration. All
they did was send me a link to download, which I'll give you here, if you'd
rather not go the email route; it should work for you too:
http://pakdata.com/download/PDMS_Saleem_QuranFont-signed.ttf (I also scanned
it with AVG antivirus before I put it in my fonts folder --- no virus)
>
> What app will you use to take advantage of OpenType?
They say it will work with Microsoft Word, but I've always had trouble with
Word as far as left-to-right scripts go. It worked perfectly in Open Office
(the free alternative to MS word) You can download Open Office at:
http://download.openoffice.org/
alan
" alan" <in_fla...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:h6idg7$9jb$1...@news.eternal-september.org...
(correction: I meant right to left)
Peter T. Daniels
> it with AVG antivirus before I put it in my fonts folder --- no virus)
>
>
>
> > What app will you use to take advantage of OpenType?
>
> They say it will work with Microsoft Word, but I've always had trouble with
> Word as far as left-to-right scripts go. It worked perfectly in Open Office
Thank you. I did have a look at their sample Word file and there were
some peculiarities about the display; but within Word there's no way
to access OpenType variations (and I don't think there's a way to do
so in OpenOffice, either, which has many problems of its own);
alan
I was able to correctly display that sample Word file in MS Word (I'm just
unable to create right-to-left documents). What "peculiarities" did you
notice in the display?
Also, I'm not quite sure what you mean by "within Word there's no way to
access OpenType variations"?
Anyway, do let me know of any other fonts you across which include all the
ligatures. Thanks.
Peter T. Daniels
For instance, in the pdf version, the iyats are separated by numbers
in circles. In the Word version, there are big empty circles.
> Also, I'm not quite sure what you mean by "within Word there's no way to
> access OpenType variations"?
In InDesign, you can access every glyph variant from a display of an
OpenType font. In Word you can't. I'm surprised that it can show
things like the ligatured variants if they're coded in the text by
some other document processing program.
> Anyway, do let me know of any other fonts you across which include all the
> ligatures. Thanks.-
There's no definitive list of ligatures. They're up to the creativity
of the calligrapher.
alan
That's odd. I'm using Word 2003 and it displays exactly what the PDF
version displays (the numbers are in the circles)
>
> > Also, I'm not quite sure what you mean by "within Word there's no way to
> > access OpenType variations"?
>
> In InDesign, you can access every glyph variant from a display of an
> OpenType font. In Word you can't. I'm surprised that it can show
> things like the ligatured variants if they're coded in the text by
> some other document processing program.
I see what you mean . ..
>
> > Anyway, do let me know of any other fonts you across which include all
> > the
> > ligatures. Thanks.-
>
> There's no definitive list of ligatures. They're up to the creativity
> of the calligrapher.
I shouldn't have said *all* the ligatures . . . I suppose I should have
specified by referring to the ligatures which had been standard in
typography in the past . .
Peter T. Daniels
Again, there is no standard Arabic typography, beyond the fairly
pathetic font you'll see in Wright's grammar. The Bulaq printings used
hundreds of sorts to imitate manuscripts (just as Gutenberg's 42-line
Bible of 1455 uses hundreds of sorts for the 24 + 24 letters of the
Latin alphabet).
I've only just seen Derenbourg's edition of Sibawayhi, printed in
Paris in 1885-90 (it's a very big book), and the Arabic type is quite
handsome -- but no one could mistake it for a manuscript.
IBM did an amazing job squeezing an acceptable Arabic into the 82 or
so slots on a Selectric ball, and the computer fonts (which were
designed for ASCII systems) have pretty much stuck with their
solutions. OpenType has made possible what you see in their samples,
but it isn't yet accessible to most computer-users.
Yusuf B Gursey
On Aug 5, 10:33 pm, Yusuf B Gursey <y...@theworld.com> wrote:
> On Aug 5, 9:40 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gram...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> > >persian, ottoman turkish etc. (aside from the additional letters) use
> > > the eastern hija but with waw (which is usually pronounced [v], i.e.
> > > not a semivowel) and ha interchanged. the extra letters are not
> > > included in the abjad, they are given the numerical values of the
> > > arabic letters they are derived from (like *ch* that of j ;
> > > *zh* that z etc.-
>
> > Note also that <f> and <q> are dotted differently in the Maghreb.
>
> > Do you know when Arabic orthography forPersiangot settled -- the
> > <ch>, <zh>, etc.?
>
> no.but I know by the 11th cent. various languages were using extra
> dots. Firdawsi is a century earlier, so perhpas then. I think ga:f is
> a late comer, it was never a seperate letter in ottoman orthography
> and only occassionally differentiated from ka:f (which also served for
> the old *ng* sound and spirantized version of [g], i.e. g~ of modern
> turkish). if it had been consistently used inpersianthe ottomans
> would have adopted it.
finally I found this in Enc. of Islam II Supplement "Iran",
subheading "Languages". from the online version it has:
<<
The first attempts to put Persian texts into
Arabic script originate from the 9th century.
After some fluctuation and instability (see
Meier 1981; Lazard 1963, 4) a standard system
of script appears to have developed by the 12th
century and has remained almost unchanged until
recently.
...
New Persian, including its chronological and
dialectal variants used in Iran, Afga:nista:n
and Central Asia (except Ta:dji:ki: [q.v.]) in
the 20th century), since the Islamic conquest
has been written predominantly with the Arabic
script augmented with four modified letters for
denoting peculiar Persian phonemes (p , ch , zh ,
g ) which do not exist in Arabic. These �Persian
letters� were created from their nearest equivalent
letters (b , j , z , k ), and both series continued
to be used in the manuscript tradition until the
12th century and beyond (for the details of
adaptation from the time of Si:bawayhi (8th century
[q.v.]) see P. Horn, Neupersische Schriftsprache,
in GIPh, i/2, 12; Lazard 1963, passim; F. Meier,
Aussprachefragen des a"lteren neupersisch, in Oriens,
xxvii�xxviii (1981), 71; Kha:nlari:, Wazn-i Shi:r-i
fa:rsi:, Tehran 1354/1975, 117, etc.).
>>
so it seems that the extra letters to have been
established as part of regular usage by the 12th
century CE though they were invented considerably
earlier.
Peter T. Daniels
I found that passage (though not marked that it came from the
Supplement) in the on-line EI at Columbia, where the print version is
not on the shelf in the reference room where the catalog says it
should be. Horn (available in google books) says absolutely nothing on
the topic and does not mention Sibawayhi. I don't know what Lazard
1963 is, and the journal Oriens was not available to me, so I don't
know what Meier says.
So far, all I have is B. Moritz in EI1, who refers to a ms. of the 4th/
11th c. in the BM that uses the four Persian letters _but not
consistently_. An article in the on-line EnIr (Arabic influences)
mentions an earlier Persian ms. that uses only Arabic letters.
An editor at EnIr -- for whom, as I've occasionally mentioned here,
I'm doing translating -- thanked me for noting the lacuna and says
they've commissioned an article to cover the topic (though he didn't
tell me what lemma they selected for it -- either "Manuscripts" or
"Paleography" could work, as the print edition has only reached K or
so).
Yusuf B Gursey
I'll look it up tomorrow.
> 1963 is, and the journal Oriens was not available to me, so I don't
I'll look it up tomorrow, it's available on-line at my library. if I
find
the article, I could e-mail it to you, if you so wish.
> know what Meier says.
>
> So far, all I have is B. Moritz in EI1, who refers to a ms. of the 4th/
where in EI1 ?
> 11th c. in the BM that uses the four Persian letters _but not
what's "BM"?
> consistently_. An article in the on-line EnIr (Arabic influences)
> mentions an earlier Persian ms. that uses only Arabic letters.
>
> An editor at EnIr -- for whom, as I've occasionally mentioned here,
where in EnIr?
> I'm doing translating -- thanked me for noting the lacuna and says
> they've commissioned an article to cover the topic (though he didn't
> tell me what lemma they selected for it -- either "Manuscripts" or
> "Paleography" could work, as the print edition has only reached K or
> so).
EI2 says that Biruni knew and refered to the extra letters of
Khwarezmian (Iranian language). Mahmud al-Kashgari
(11th cent.) uses fa;' with three dots to denote turkic /v/ and
a later hand in the manuscript of his Turkic dictionary (which
is a later copy) seems to have added the extra dots of /*zh*/
(a foreign phoneme in Turkic).
Yusuf B Gursey
Aussprachefragen des älteren neupersisch
Fritz Meier
Oriens, Vol. 27, (1981), pp. 70-176
(article consists of 107 pages)
Published by: BRILL
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1580565
also http://www.jstor.org/pss/1580565
it deals with the majhul vowels and *dh* in persian.
best look it up yourself, as it is a big file.
> find
> the article, I could e-mail it to you, if you so wish.
>
> > know what Meier says.
>
> > So far, all I have is B. Moritz in EI1, who refers to a ms. of the 4th/
>
> where in EI1 ?
>
> > 11th c. in the BM that uses the four Persian letters _but not
>
> what's "BM"?
>
> > consistently_. An article in the on-line EnIr (Arabic influences)
> > mentions an earlier Persian ms. that uses only Arabic letters.
>
> > An editor at EnIr -- for whom, as I've occasionally mentioned here,
>
> where in EnIr?
>
> > I'm doing translating -- thanked me for noting the lacuna and says
> > they've commissioned an article to cover the topic (though he didn't
> > tell me what lemma they selected for it -- either "Manuscripts" or
> > "Paleography" could work, as the print edition has only reached K or
> > so).
>
> EI2 says that Biruni knew and refered to the extra letters of
> Khwarezmian (Iranian language). Mahmud al-Kashgari
> (11th cent.) uses fa;' with three dots to denote turkic /v/ and
> a later hand in the manuscript of his Turkic dictionary (which
> is a later copy) seems to have added the extra dots of /*zh*/
> (a foreign phoneme in Turkic).- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
Yusuf B Gursey
could you give me the URL for it?
Yusuf B Gursey
I guess it is this:
>
>
> > the topic and does not mention Sibawayhi. I don't know what Lazard
> > 1963 is, and the journal Oriens was not available to me, so I don't
> > know what Meier says.
>
> > So far, all I have is B. Moritz in EI1, who refers to a ms. of the 4th/
> > 11th c. in the BM that uses the four Persian letters _but not
> > consistently_. An article in the on-line EnIr (Arabic influences)
> > mentions an earlier Persian ms. that uses only Arabic letters.
>
> > An editor at EnIr -- for whom, as I've occasionally mentioned here,
> > I'm doing translating -- thanked me for noting the lacuna and says
> > they've commissioned an article to cover the topic (though he didn't
> > tell me what lemma they selected for it -- either "Manuscripts" or
> > "Paleography" could work, as the print edition has only reached K or
> > so).- Hide quoted text -
>
Peter T. Daniels
> > I'll look it up tomorrow, it's available on-line at my library. if I
>
> Aussprachefragen des älteren neupersisch
> Fritz Meier
> Oriens, Vol. 27, (1981), pp. 70-176
> (article consists of 107 pages)
>
> Published by: BRILL
> Stable URL:http://www.jstor.org/stable/1580565
>
> alsohttp://www.jstor.org/pss/1580565
>
> it deals with the majhul vowels and *dh* in persian.
>
> best look it up yourself, as it is a big file.
That would be fine ... if I had any way to get at jstor without a 90-
minute (each way) trip to the New York Public Library (where printouts
cost something like 20c per page).
> > find
> > the article, I could e-mail it to you, if you so wish.
>
> > > know what Meier says.
>
> > > So far, all I have is B. Moritz in EI1, who refers to a ms. of the 4th/
>
> > where in EI1 ?
1: 391 s.v. "Arabia d. Arabic writing." Sorry, I misremembered the
date, 576/1180, copied in 672. "The Persian punctuation of the
letters ... is already fully developed though not always consistently
used.".
> > > 11th c. in the BM that uses the four Persian letters _but not
>
> > what's "BM"?
British Museum
> > > consistently_. An article in the on-line EnIr (Arabic influences)
> > > mentions an earlier Persian ms. that uses only Arabic letters.
>
> > > An editor at EnIr -- for whom, as I've occasionally mentioned here,
>
> > where in EnIr?
"Arabic. iii. Influences on Persian literature" first paragraph.
(That's where the 4th/10th c. date came from -- earliest Persian ms.,
no Persian letters.)
> > > I'm doing translating -- thanked me for noting the lacuna and says
> > > they've commissioned an article to cover the topic (though he didn't
> > > tell me what lemma they selected for it -- either "Manuscripts" or
> > > "Paleography" could work, as the print edition has only reached K or
> > > so).
>
> > EI2 says that Biruni knew and refered to the extra letters of
> > Khwarezmian (Iranian language). Mahmud al-Kashgari
> > (11th cent.) uses fa;' with three dots to denote turkic /v/ and
> > a later hand in the manuscript of his Turkic dictionary (which
> > is a later copy) seems to have added the extra dots of /*zh*/
> > (a foreign phoneme in Turkic).-
Where in EI2? Is it conceivable that the concept of extra letters
moved from Turkish to Persian???
Peter T. Daniels
> On Oct 27, 6:34 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> > I found that passage (though not marked that it came from the
> > Supplement) in the on-line EI at Columbia, where the print version is
> > not on the shelf in the reference room where the catalog says it
> > should be. Horn (available in google books) says absolutely nothing on
>
> could you give me the URL for it?
No -- there's simply a link in the Columbia catalog s.v. Encyclopedia
of Islam that goes directly to Brill's (very slow) EI front page.
Peter T. Daniels
Oh, _that_ url. The bit you need is vol. 1 part 2, which isn't fully
on google books (published less than 100 years ago?), but the "limited
preview" happens to include the page 12 or Horn that doesn't say the
things that the reference says it does. Note that the "limited
preview" crams both parts 1 and 2 of vol. 1 into a single massive
file, so you need the p. 12 that's in the middle of the book.
Yusuf B Gursey
that is not from EI2. it's directly from the Kashgari's book. Kashgari
was not using the Karakhanid orthography, which was plene for
Turkic words, but his own conventions which represented the
then existant long vowels vs. short vowels. his work is a Turkic
Arabic dictionary intended to teach Turkic to the Arabs. he
does not make any distiction between b and p (phonemic
distinction was either rare or non existant in the Turkic
of the time) neither between j (a rare sound in his Turkic)
and *ch* and neither between k and g (which was phonemic).
the written Turkic of his time was basically a transliteration
of the Uighur script which did not make these distinctions
and was plene for Turkic owrds.
Peter T. Daniels
> On Oct 28, 10:40 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> > > > > An article in the on-line EnIr (Arabic influences)
> > > > > mentions an earlier Persian ms. that uses only Arabic letters.
>
> > > > > An editor at EnIr -- for whom, as I've occasionally mentioned here,
>
> > > > where in EnIr?
>
> > "Arabic. iii. Influences on Persian literature" first paragraph.
> > (That's where the 4th/10th c. date came from -- earliest Persian ms.,
> > no Persian letters.)
>
> > > > > I'm doing translating -- thanked me for noting the lacuna and says
> > > > > they've commissioned an article to cover the topic (though he didn't
> > > > > tell me what lemma they selected for it -- either "Manuscripts" or
> > > > > "Paleography" could work, as the print edition has only reached K or
> > > > > so).
>
> > > > EI2 says that Biruni knew and refered to the extra letters of
> > > > Khwarezmian (Iranian language). Mahmud al-Kashgari
> > > > (11th cent.) uses fa;' with three dots to denote turkic /v/ and
> > > > a later hand in the manuscript of his Turkic dictionary (which
> > > > is a later copy) seems to have added the extra dots of /*zh*/
> > > > (a foreign phoneme in Turkic).-
>
> > Where in EI2? Is it conceivable that the concept of extra letters
> > moved from Turkish to Persian???
>
> that is not from EI2.
"EI2 says that Biruni knew ..."
BTW it looks from your description that the Meier article is also mis-
cited by the EI Supp. author (whose name I couldn't easily find in the
online version) and won't help me.
> it's directly from the Kashgari's book. Kashgari
> was not using the Karakhanid orthography, which was plene for
> Turkic words, but his own conventions which represented the
> then existant long vowels vs. short vowels. his work is a Turkic
> Arabic dictionary intended to teach Turkic to the Arabs. he
> does not make any distiction between b and p (phonemic
> distinction was either rare or non existant in the Turkic
> of the time) neither between j (a rare sound in his Turkic)
> and *ch* and neither between k and g (which was phonemic).
> the written Turkic of his time was basically a transliteration
> of the Uighur script which did not make these distinctions
> and was plene for Turkic owrds.-
Yusuf B Gursey
that's either under "Biruni" or "Kh(w)arazm" (I may have got that
last spelling wrong).
>
> BTW it looks from your description that the Meier article is also mis-
> cited by the EI Supp. author (whose name I couldn't easily find in the
> online version) and won't help me.
>
>
>
> > it's directly from the Kashgari's book. Kashgari
> > was not using the Karakhanid orthography, which was plene for
> > Turkic words, but his own conventions which represented the
> > then existant long vowels vs. short vowels. his work is a Turkic
> > Arabic dictionary intended to teach Turkic to the Arabs. he
> > does not make any distiction between b and p (phonemic
> > distinction was either rare or non existant in the Turkic
> > of the time) neither between j (a rare sound in his Turkic)
> > and *ch* and neither between k and g (which was phonemic).
> > the written Turkic of his time was basically a transliteration
> > of the Uighur script which did not make these distinctions
> > and was plene for Turkic owrds.-- Hide quoted text -
>
Yusuf B Gursey
> On Oct 28, 2:03 am, Yusuf B Gursey <y...@theworld.com> wrote:
>
> > > I'll look it up tomorrow, it's available on-line at my library. if I
>
> > Aussprachefragen des älteren neupersisch
> > Fritz Meier
> > Oriens, Vol. 27, (1981), pp. 70-176
> > (article consists of 107 pages)
>
> > Published by: BRILL
> > Stable URL:http://www.jstor.org/stable/1580565
>
> > alsohttp://www.jstor.org/pss/1580565
>
> > it deals with the majhul vowels and *dh* in persian.
>
> > best look it up yourself, as it is a big file.
>
> That would be fine ... if I had any way to get at jstor without a 90-
> minute (each way) trip to the New York Public Library (where printouts
> cost something like 20c per page).
well, I remember you don't like big attachments. if you have a flash
drive,
that's all you need, plus Acrobat reader that's available free on-
line.
Peter T. Daniels
That must have been from my dial-up days. But I can't receive or send
any file over 20 Mb.
There's no way to email an article from NYPL jstor to myself, so why
would it be downloadable onto a flash drive?
Yusuf B Gursey
you could get a Yahoo Mail or Gmail account for free, they don't have
any limits.
> There's no way to email an article from NYPL jstor to myself, so why
> would it be downloadable onto a flash drive?
if NYPL computers have a USB port and that somehow the "save"
option of the browser is not disabled, then you should be able
to download the article on your flash-drive.
Peter T. Daniels
I have Verizon Yahoo email.
> > There's no way to email an article from NYPL jstor to myself, so why
> > would it be downloadable onto a flash drive?
>
> if NYPL computers have a USB port and that somehow the "save"
> option of the browser is not disabled, then you should be able
> to download the article on your flash-drive.-
Boy, would I have a harvest if I could do that! But the librarians
aren't aware of such a possibility.
Yusuf B Gursey
you don't have to ask them, just take a look at their
computers.
Yusuf B Gursey
sorry, I thought it was 20 Kb . no, the file shouldn't be over 20 Mb!
Yusuf B Gursey
furthermore the article says:
<<
In ancient manuscripts, the early classical long
vowels (madjhu:l) e: and o: were distinguished
occasionally by special superscript signs on
the letters ya:' and wa:w (e.g. Codex Vindobonensis,
ed. F.R. Seligmann, Vienna 1859, and Bukha:ran
Jewish-Persian texts, cf. Horn, in GIPh, i/2, 33;
the Lahore Tafsi:r (madjhu:l e:), cf. MacKenzie,
The vocabularly of the Lahore Tafsi:r, in Iran and
Islam. In memory of the late Vladimir Minorsky,
419 n. 7; and see further Meier 1981, 86, and
Windfuhr 1979, 150).
>>
modern kurdish uses a small v sign over the
ya:' and wa:w to make them madjhul.
Pashto has an upside down like damma,
a diacritic for o: and two dots vertically
for e:
Yusuf B Gursey
<<
ARABIC
...
iii. Arabic Influences in Persian Literature
...
The earliest surviving Persian manuscript in Arabic
script (see below) dates only from the beginning of
the 4th/10th century, and from this we can see that
the principles underlying the adaptation of the Arabic
script to the writing of Persian were already established.
Arabic loanwords appear in their Arabic form without
change of spelling; Persian sounds not found in Arabic
are represented by their nearest equivalent, thus pa:'
by ba:', či:n by ǰi:m, ga:f by ka:f (a practice that
continued well into the 6th/12th century and beyond).
E. G. Browne (Lit. Hist. Persia I, pp. 8-11) has
plausibly suggested that the choice of script was a
religious one. Whereas Zoroastrian books continued
to be written in the Pahlavi script, Persian converts
to Islam naturally turned to the script of the Koran.
This process may very well have begun very soon after
the Arab conquest, since the Pahlavi script was the
preserve of a small priestly class, whereas the
Muslim converts were drawn largely from the
illiterate classes. For such people it would be
common sense, since a new script had to be learned
anyway, to choose the much simpler Arabic script;
the fact that it enjoyed religious sanction was an
additional bonus.
Yusuf B Gursey
<<
ARABIC
...
...
>
Yusuf B Gursey
> On Oct 27, 5:09 pm, Yusuf B Gursey <y...@TheWorld.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Aug 5, 10:33 pm, Yusuf B Gursey <y...@theworld.com> wrote:
> > finally I found this in Enc. of Islam II Supplement "Iran",
> > subheading "Languages". from the online version it has:
>
> I found that passage (though not marked that it came from the
> Supplement) in the on-line EI at Columbia, where the print version is
there are two "Iran" clicks. the first is from the regular volume,
the other from the Supplement.
Yusuf B Gursey
Enc. of Islam II (Online Edition)
Khwa:razm
<<
K.utayba's invasions may have ended the old scribal
tradition, but the language itself persisted, now
written in the Arabic alphabet but with several
characters modified to render the characteristic
sounds of Khwa:razmian, e.g. ... for the labiodental
fricative v or β, and ... for the africate ts (as
in Pashto) and probably for its voiced equivalent
dz; these modified characters are to be found, for
instance, in several manuscripts of Bi:ru:ni:'s works
where Khwa:razmian names and terms are cited. It may
be that Bi:ru:ni: knew something of the old Khwa:razmian
script, but this is uncertain. ..
>>
Yusuf B Gursey
> On Oct 28, 2:03 am, Yusuf B Gursey <y...@theworld.com> wrote:
>
> > > I'll look it up tomorrow, it's available on-line at my library. if I
>
> > Aussprachefragen des älteren neupersisch
> > Fritz Meier
> > Oriens, Vol. 27, (1981), pp. 70-176
> > (article consists of 107 pages)
>
> > Published by: BRILL
> > Stable URL:http://www.jstor.org/stable/1580565
>
> > alsohttp://www.jstor.org/pss/1580565
>
> > it deals with the majhul vowels and *dh* in persian.
>
> > best look it up yourself, as it is a big file.
>
> That would be fine ... if I had any way to get at jstor without a 90-
> minute (each way) trip to the New York Public Library (where printouts
> cost something like 20c per page).
>
> > > find
> > > the article, I could e-mail it to you, if you so wish.
>
> > > > know what Meier says.
>
> > > > So far, all I have is B. Moritz in EI1, who refers to a ms. of the 4th/
>
> > > where in EI1 ?
>
> 1: 391 s.v. "Arabia d. Arabic writing." Sorry, I misremembered the
> date, 576/1180, copied in 672. "The Persian punctuation of the
672 AH is 1273 / 1274 (July to July).
> letters ... is already fully developed though not always consistently
> used.".
<<
In books the old Arabic script {style of calligraphy} was preserved
much longer ... Ghaza:li:'s Kimiya:' al-sa`a:da of 576 (1180 : in
Cairo, in the Brit. Mus. a MS. of is written in stiff naskhi:, in
which
however the Persian punctuation of the letters ... is already fully
developed though not always consistently used ..."
Yusuf B Gursey
On Aug 5, 12:24 am, " alan" <in_flagra...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> On Aug 4, 2:51 pm, Yusuf B Gursey <y...@theworld.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Aug 4, 3:39 pm, " alan" <in_flagra...@hotmail.com> wrote:
...
>
> > > BTW ---- Maybe Yusuf knows ---- when was the hija:'i order introduced?
>
> > I think it was the invention of the classical grammarians who
> > rearanged the abjad order according to shape and sound. alif, ba, then
> > the letters resembling ba etc. and the semivowels and ha:' at the end.
>
> While searching around for a history of the development of the hija:'i
> ordering of letters, I came across the mention of not only two forms of
> hija:'i but also two forms of abjadi, which are described as "Eastern" and
> "Western" respectively. The "Eastern" forms are the ones we're familiar
> with today, but the "Western" forms were apparently once widepsread in the
> Maghreb and in Andalus. The differences are very slight:
>
...
not only that, as this site also summarizes the differences between Estern
and Western values, but Arabic natural philosphers also seemed to have
invented a symbol for zero, based on a greek ligature:
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/arabic/glossary.html
<<
The symbol for zero was derived from Greek astronomical and mathematical
manuscripts where a symbol was often used as an abbreviation for the Greek
word ouden, meaning "nothing".
>>
>
> see:http://www.ahlalhdeeth.com/vb/archive/index.php/t-18453.html
alan
"Yusuf B Gursey" <y...@TheWorld.com> wrote in message
news:he5anv$f8$1...@pcls4.std.com...
Interesting --- the Arabic symbol looks like the letter Ha:' with its tail
curling around to form a small "o" . . . I wonder if that might have been
a sort of hybrid abbreviation for "Harf omicron" . . .
>
> >>
>
>>
>> see:http://www.ahlalhdeeth.com/vb/archive/index.php/t-18453.html
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
Yusuf B Gursey
> "Yusuf B Gursey" <y...@TheWorld.com> wrote in messagenews:he5anv$f8$1...@pcls4.std.com...
or maybe just an arabized version of the ligature omicron-upsilon
(omicron with upsilon on top)?
>
>
>
>
> >> see:http://www.ahlalhdeeth.com/vb/archive/index.php/t-18453.html- Hide quoted text -
alan
Could be, although I think just plain omicron and not the omicron-upsilon
ligature was used in those Greek mathematical manuscripts . . .
Yusuf B Gursey
the abjad system figures in the well-known turkish slang
expression otuzbir çekmek "to pull 31" meaning "to masturbate".
it is turns out to be the abjad number of turkish el "hand" .
in Ottoman script it was written alif (=1), lam (=30) أل <'l> .
turkish /e/ is an open sound and is close to the fatHa /a/ of
modern iranian persian.
also there is the lesser known derogatory (better known amongst
the older generation acc. to the poster below) expression beş
"5" meaning "passive homosexual" because the eastern arabic
numeral "5" ٥ resembles western zero "0", well you get the idea.
I had correctly guessed the last one, but had always wondered
about the first until I saw the post below (portions are in
english, german and turkish):
From: "Dumrul" <Dum...@gmx.net>
Subject: Re: 31 cekmek (Linguistic question)
Date: 2000/03/03
Message-ID: <UVWv4.35696$t8.6...@newscene.newscene.com>#1/1
References: <38BF8B40...@uibk.ac.at>
<wUQv4.35129$t8.6...@newscene.newscene.com>
Newsgroups: soc.culture.turkish
Dumrul <Dum...@deli.org> schrieb in im Newsbeitrag:
wUQv4.35129$t8.675...@newscene.newscene.com...
>
> Helmut Kalb <helmut.k...@uibk.ac.at> schrieb in im Newsbeitrag:
> 38BF8B40.2956E...@uibk.ac.at...
> > Merhaba,
> >
> > I've heard that in Turkish the phrase in the subject (31 cekmek) means
> > "to masturbate".
> > Literally translated "31 cekmek" means "to pull the 31", doesn't it?
> > Can anyone tell me how it came to the meaning "to masturbate"?
> >
> > Thank You in advance
> >
> > Selamlarimla
> >
> > Helmut
>
> Hallo Helmut.
> Das Wort bzw. disese Bedeutung stammt aus der Zeit des
> Osmanisch/Türkischen,
> und kommt aus dem arabischhen Schriftart. Mit arabischen Schriftsystem
> schreibt man "el" (Hand) mit "Alif" und "Lam" und zwar von rechts nach
> links. Übrigens gibt es im arabischen Schriftsystem auch eine Zahlsystem,
> also jeder Buchstabe hat auch einen Zahlwert. Demnach, Lam=30, Alif=1, und
> das macht 31;-) Also, 31 (otuzbir) ist nicht anderes al Hand, "El" ;-)
>
> Dumrul
> "Hace'tül Ebced"
Umarim helmut'un merakini biraz da olsun giderebildik de, ingiliz
gavurcasiyla yazamadigim icin, bazi arkadaslar anlamamis olabilirler.
Almanca bilmeyen arkadaslara kisa ozet:
31 sozcugu Osmanlica doneminden kaynaklanma olup, Arap harfleri ile
yazilan
"el" sozcugunun ebced hesabi ile sayiya cevrilmesinden kaynaklanan
aktarmali
(kinaye) bir kavramdir. Arapca Elif=1, Lam= 30 degerlerini tasir. Bu
sekilde
Elif ve Lam harfleri ile yazilan "el" sozcugunun sayisal degeri 31
olur;-)
Simdi aklima geldi, yeni kusaklar bilmez, ama bilene gore, birine "lan
5",
(be$) demek en buyuk kufurlerden biridir. Bilindigi gibi Arap
rakamlariyla 5
rakami, simdiki sifira yakin "O" gibi bir isarettir. Yani birine "hadi
lan
be$" deyince, kastedilen, ibne, yavsak, yumo$, tekerlek vs.
olmaktadir;-)
Dumrul
"SCT Luzumsuz Bilgiler Daire Baskani"
> >
> >
> >
>
>
Dumrul
"Hace'tül Ebced"
>
>
>
Yusuf B Gursey
> > > > BTW ---- Maybe Yusuf knows ---- when was the hija:'i order introduced?
>
> > > I think it was the invention of the classical grammarians who
> > > rearanged the abjad order according to shape and sound. alif, ba, then
> > > the letters resembling ba etc. and the semivowels and ha:' at the end.
>
> > While searching around for a history of the development of the hija:'i
> > ordering of letters, I came across the mention of not only two forms of
> > hija:'i but also two forms of abjadi, which are described as "Eastern" and
> > "Western" respectively. The "Eastern" forms are the ones we're familiar
> > with today, but the "Western" forms were apparently once widepsread in the
> > Maghreb and in Andalus. The differences are very slight:
>
> > see:http://www.ahlalhdeeth.com/vb/archive/index.php/t-18453.html
>
> the western hija seems to follow the abjad order more closely.
>
> as for the western abjad it is older and acc. to sources the pre-
> islamic one. there is an article about it tying the two to the shift
> in the sibilants that occured in in arabic.
see:
M. V. MCDONALD
THE ORDER AND PHONETIC VALUE OF ARABIC SIBILANTS IN THE "ABJAD"
J Semitic Studies 1974 XIX: 36-46
Peter T. Daniels
> On Aug 5, 1:51 am, Yusuf B Gursey <y...@theworld.com> wrote:
> > On Aug 5, 1:24 am, " alan" <in_flagra...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > > BTW ---- Maybe Yusuf knows ---- when was the hija:'i order introduced?
>
> > > > I think it was the invention of the classical grammarians who
> > > > rearanged the abjad order according to shape and sound. alif, ba, then
> > > > the letters resembling ba etc. and the semivowels and ha:' at the end.
>
> > > While searching around for a history of the development of the hija:'i
> > > ordering of letters, I came across the mention of not only two forms of
> > > hija:'i but also two forms of abjadi, which are described as "Eastern" and
> > > "Western" respectively. The "Eastern" forms are the ones we're familiar
> > > with today, but the "Western" forms were apparently once widepsread in the
> > > Maghreb and in Andalus. The differences are very slight:
>
> > > see:http://www.ahlalhdeeth.com/vb/archive/index.php/t-18453.html
>
> > the western hija seems to follow the abjad order more closely.
>
> > as for the western abjad it is older and acc. to sources the pre-
> > islamic one. there is an article about it tying the two to the shift
> > in the sibilants that occured in in arabic.
>
> see:
>
> M. V. MCDONALD
> THE ORDER AND PHONETIC VALUE OF ARABIC SIBILANTS IN THE "ABJAD"
> J Semitic Studies 1974 XIX: 36-46
M. C. A. Macdonald (no relation) claims to have thoroughly refuted
that article in numerous places. I'll be reviewing the question at the
AOS in March.
Yusuf B Gursey
really? Henry Churchyard (who used to briefly post here) claimed
similar conclusions independently in the article:
Henry Churchyard
Early Arabic _siin_ and _shiin_ in light
of the Proto-Semitic Fricative-Lateral Hypothesis" in _Perspectives
on
Arabic Linguistics V_, Mushira Eid and Clive Holes eds. (1993).
I would be interested in the references of M. C. A. Macdonald's
refutation.
Yusuf B Gursey
I found two and read the first.
it's not so much a refutation as providing more detail and some
"tweeking". MacDonald references McDonald. basically, sin was
pronounced midway between [s] and [*sh*] while shin was pronounced
halfway between a lateral and [*sh*]. they use [ç]. also MacDonald
makes reference to use of etymological considerations. IIRC McDonald
does not. also McDonald gives a much later date for the shift to the
modern pronouciation of sin and shin than does MacDonald. tell me if I
am wrong.
M. C. A. Macdonald
ON THE PLACING OF S. IN THE MAGHRIBI ABJAD AND THE KHIRBET AL-SAMR'
ABC
MACDONALD J Semitic Studies.1992; XXXVII: 155-166
M. C. A. Macdonald
1986 'ABCs and Letter Order in Ancient North Arabian'. PSAS 16:
101-68 "Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies"
Yusuf B Gursey
Henry Churchyard was talking about MacDonald ot McDonald. here is
Henry Churchyard's post on the subject:
<<
From: "Henry Churchyard" <chur...@usa.net>
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: some arabic and persian words
Date: 5 Dec 2000 00:30:00 -0600
Organization: The University of Texas at Austin
Lines: 45
Message-ID: <90i218$q...@moe.cc.utexas.edu>
References: <G50vr...@world.std.com>
<20001203224042...@ng-xa1.aol.com>
<G5154...@world.std.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: moe.cc.utexas.edu
In article <G51549....@world.std.com>,
Yusuf B Gursey <y...@world.std.com> wrote:
>Yahya M (yah...@aol.com) wrote:
> OTOH a recent "journal of semitic studies" article, "the maghribi
> abjad order" (or something like that) argues for a hushing sound for
> arabic sin for early classical arabic (I'll have to have peter
> daniels' opinion on that, but I am not comfortable with it). arabic
> shin at that time, it could be argued, had preserved its lateral
> quality. unfortunately, following the reasoning of the article,
> foreign s would have to be transcribed at taht time as S (sad).
I assume you're referring to "On the Placing of _s._ in the Maghribi
_abjad_ and the Khirbet al-Samra' ABC" by M.C.A. Macdonald in the
_Journal of Semitic Studies_, vol. 37, p. 155 (1992). Also, I
discussed this at some length in my paper "Early Arabic _siin_ and
_shiin_ in light of the Proto-Semitic Fricative-Lateral Hypothesis" in
_Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics V_, Mushira Eid and Clive Holes
eds. (1993). MacDonald and I consider some of the same types of
evidence (early Arabic loanwords and the earlier or so-called
"Western" abjad), and come to certain broadly similar conclusions, but
MacDonald's strong point is gathering a wide range of borrowings and
transcriptions, while I consider linguistic/phonological factors and
the broader historical/comparative picture, which lead me to reject
certain of Macdonald's assumptions (such as the idea that Arabic
_shiin_ was ever pronounced like a German ich-laut, which ignores the
Semitic comparative evidence and certain clues provided by the early
Arabic grammarians). (Note that I didn't happen to see MacDonald's
1986 paper, and his 1992 paper was published too late to be taken into
account for my own paper, so that we arrived at our conclusions
independently.)
The idea that Arabic _siin_ may have had an early [sh] pronunciation
or [sh]-like pronounciation was actually first proposed in 1962 by
Beeston (as far as I'm aware), I basically agree with Beeston and
Macdonald on this point, but not on some other points, especially the
proposal that _shiin_ = ich-laut in Sibawayhi.
...
Yusuf B Gursey
> On Oct 27, 5:09 pm, Yusuf B Gursey <y...@TheWorld.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Aug 5, 10:33 pm, Yusuf B Gursey <y...@theworld.com> wrote:
>
> > > On Aug 5, 9:40 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> > > > >persian, ottoman turkish etc. (aside from the additional letters) use
> > > > > the eastern hija but with waw (which is usually pronounced [v], i.e.
> > > > > not a semivowel) and ha interchanged. the extra letters are not
> > > > > included in the abjad, they are given the numerical values of the
> > > > > arabic letters they are derived from (like *ch* that of j ;
>
> > > > Note also that <f> and <q> are dotted differently in the Maghreb.
>
> > > > Do you know when Arabic orthography forPersiangot settled -- the
> > > > <ch>, <zh>, etc.?
>
> > > no.but I know by the 11th cent. various languages were using extra
> > > dots. Firdawsi is a century earlier, so perhpas then. I think ga:f is
> > > a late comer, it was never a seperate letter in ottoman orthography
> > > and only occassionally differentiated from ka:f (which also served for
> > > the old *ng* sound and spirantized version of [g], i.e. g~ of modern
> > > turkish). if it had been consistently used inpersianthe ottomans
> > > would have adopted it.
in Thackston's "Translator's Preface" to Rashiduddin's "Jami`u't-
Tawarikh Compendium of Chronicles" (from Persian), v.i p.xvi, col 2
Thackston says (in connection with the transcription of Chinese
names):
<<
... Although k (ك) could be distinguished from g (گ) in Persian, it
was common practice in manuscript copying to disregard the
distinction
altogether, and the distinction between j (ج) and ch (چ) was made
only
intermittently and inconsistently. ..
>
> > finally I found this in Enc. of Islam II Supplement "Iran",
> > subheading "Languages". from the online version it has:
>
> > <<
> > earlier. -
>
> I found that passage (though not marked that it came from the
> Supplement) in the on-line EI at Columbia, where the print version is
> not on the shelf in the reference room where the catalog says it
> should be. Horn (available in google books) says absolutely nothing on
> the topic and does not mention Sibawayhi. I don't know what Lazard
> 1963 is, and the journal Oriens was not available to me, so I don't
> know what Meier says.
>
> So far, all I have is B. Moritz in EI1, who refers to a ms. of the 4th/
> 11th c. in the BM that uses the four Persian letters _but not
> consistently_. An article in the on-line EnIr (Arabic influences)
> mentions an earlier Persian ms. that uses only Arabic letters.
>
> An editor at EnIr -- for whom, as I've occasionally mentioned here,
Peter T. Daniels
> in Thackston's "Translator's Preface" to Rashiduddin's "Jami`u't-
> Tawarikh Compendium of Chronicles" (from Persian), v.i p.xvi, col 2
> Thackston says (in connection with the transcription of Chinese
> names):
>
> <<
>
> ... Although k (ك) could be distinguished from g (گ) in Persian, it
> was common practice in manuscript copying to disregard the
> distinction
> altogether, and the distinction between j (ج) and ch (چ) was made
> only
> intermittently and inconsistently. ..
What is the date of the ms. he is describing?
Yusuf B Gursey
rashi:duddin faDlulla:h Tabi:b (he was originally a physician, Tabi:b,
his father an apothecary and a convert from Judaism) b. ca. 645/1247
d. 718/1318 (he was executed). he started his work after he acieved
high office he became a vizier) 697/ 1298 during the reign of the
muslim Ilkhanid Ghazan Khan (in Persia) and was interrupted by his
execution during the time of Öljäytü. they were produced both in
arabic and persian every year under the terms of the foundation he
founded. some tomes survived just in persian, others just in arabic. 4
from his own lifetime, ca. 714/1314 (fragmentary, in arabic, in
Edinburgh University Library), 3 other in persian (in Istanbul,
Topkapı) 714/1314, two 717/1317 . others in persian: Tashkent 17th
cent.; Istanbul 717/1317; St. Petersburg Library 810/1407; British
Museum no later than 1433; Tehran Museum 1004/1596; Paris Bibliothèque
Nationale 16th. cent.; St. Petersburg Institute 1567. it has also been
translated into Ottoman Turkish (Introduction and Ch. 1) ca. 1425 and
portions in Chaghatay Turkic ca. 1600.