Thread by @AmericanMaghreb

[THREAD] Arabic scholars & students: two new etymological dictionaries (like the OED but for Arabic) are now in production, one in Doha (@dohadictionary) & the other in Sharjah (@ArabiclanginShj). The former is online, the latter is only hard copy...1/6

dohadictionary.org

...at least for now. Over at Al-ʿArabī al-Jadīd, Iraqi linguist Ahmad al-Janabi favors us with a preliminary comparison (in Arabic), admitting bias since he worked on the Doha project (see link below; h/t @borfali for posting). Here's the upshot: ... 2/6

www-alaraby-co-uk.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.alarab…

Doha dictionary has entries for all letters, while Sharja has only hamza, bāʾ, and tāʾ. Doha's entries only go to 200 AH / 816 CE, whereas Sharja goes to the present year (1442 AH / 2020 CE). Sharja entries are mainly nouns and verbs while Doha uses some 30 parts of speech... 3/6

...for its entries. The Sharjah entries have plural forms of nouns without referring to original texts, which by contrast the Doha entries do (texts accessible by clicking the button "الجموع"). The Doha online platform includes texts not entered in the dictionary so that ... 4/6

...users can verify authentic dating of witnesses. The Doha entries have texts going back further in time than the Sharjah entries, which also tend to use lexicons like Lisān al-ʿarab rather than primary witnesses (e.g. poetry, histories) ... 5/6

All in all, al-Janabi weighs in (not surprisingly) on the side of the Doha project, while giving due credit to Sharjah for its contribution. I personally would like to know if, as you use the dictionaries, your impressions match al-Janabi's or my own. Happy philologizing! 🧐 6/6

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