this "the" comes from þȳ, the old *instrumental case* of the definite article.
so it's like "whereby X, thereby Y" or "by how much X, that's how much Y"
@bgsprung þā ... þā does indeed mean "when ... then" in Old English, but this temporal correlative is not where we get the "the more the merrier" construction. i'm afraid somebody took an OE class and mixed a few things up
Aug 31, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
TIL about 小儿锦 Xiǎo'érjǐn, a centuries-old method of writing Chinese in the Arabic alphabet, historically used by Muslim minority populations in China. (1/3)
the entries in the Mandarin-Arabic dictionary above have three parts:
1. the Chinese word
富 fù "rich"
2. the Arabic translation
غَنِيّ ġaniyy "rich"
3. the Xiao'erjin transcription of the Chinese word
فُوْ <fuw>
(2/3)
Jan 31, 2021 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
a short thread on yet another development in colloq #Arabic.
the topic is 🌜cliticization🌛, or what happens when words lose some of their independence & must 𝑙𝑒𝑎𝑛 on other words for support.
exx. come from Egyptian, but much of this will apply for other varieties. 1/
an 🌜enclitic🌛 is a word that behaves as though it & the word preceding it were a single word, phonologically.
in English "gimme!" (= "give me!"), only the 1st half has stress. the 2nd half has lost its stress entirely, because it is functioning as an enclitic (or clitic). 2/
i'm far from an expert in this dialect — language learning never ends! — but i have plenty of successes & failures to speak on with the following tools. 1/
two disclaimers:
1. i'm only talking abt 𝘵𝘰𝘰𝘭𝘴 i've used, not language-learning 𝘮𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘥𝘴, for wh there are many podcasts, YT videos, books, etc.
2. some of these are applicable for learning other varieties of Arabic & even other langs, but some are obviously not!
2/
Dec 17, 2020 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
colloquial #Arabic has a verb just like this ... what is it?
