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This #SOASLangs week, we'll delve in our #African languages holdings @SOASLibrary and @SOAS_SpecColl, or rather just brush on their surface: with several 100s of languages and dialects represented, it is our most #multilingual collection!
#AfricanLanguages #Multilingualism
#AfricanLanguages #Multilingualism
Let's start with #Swahili also known as #Kiswahili.
This @SOAS "Language for Lockdown" video is a great introduction to the 1,200 years history of Swahili: .
#SOASLangs #SOASfromHome
This @SOAS "Language for Lockdown" video is a great introduction to the 1,200 years history of Swahili: .
#SOASLangs #SOASfromHome
@SOAS @CAS_SOAS @SOAS_SpecColl hold a great collection of Swahili manuscripts, see digital.soas.ac.uk/swahili.
Among them figure a few copies of al-Inkishafi "The Soul's Awakening", a 19th cent. poem by Sayyid Abdallah bin Ali bin Nassir.
#Swahili #SOASLangs #SOASfromHome #Inkishafi
Among them figure a few copies of al-Inkishafi "The Soul's Awakening", a 19th cent. poem by Sayyid Abdallah bin Ali bin Nassir.
#Swahili #SOASLangs #SOASfromHome #Inkishafi
Time for some #Semitic geekery concerning 'hollow verbs'. These are verbs which have a vowel (usually long) where strong verbs have their second radical consonant, like #Arabic qām-a 'he stood up', ya-qūm-u 'he will stand up', #Hebrew qām, yā-qūm (same meanings). 1/9
It's controversial whether these hollow verbs already had this shape in Proto-Semitic. The alternative is that they originally had the consonant *w or *y as their second radical, but that this dropped out in various languages, causing vowel contraction. 2/9
I think the forms like ya-qūm- are Proto-Semitic, where they developed from even earlier forms like ya-qwum-. But because other forms (like Arabic and Hebrew qām-) show irregular correspondences between different languages, Proto-Semitic retained a consonant here IMO. 3/9
