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Nabataean Arabic Readings (www.youtube.com)

submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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It's very interesting listening to this, i understand most of this.

You may have noticed the Paa' letter. In semitic languages, there is the Pe letter, but when arabic diverged it became just the Faa' letter. So sæpoh is pronounced sæfoh, and it means "His sword"

In hebrew you can notice this, with the Pe/Fe letter.

I highly recommend his channel, he has accurate readings and makes some incredible content.

PS: Allat is a pre-islamic arabian goddess. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Lat.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

The way that he's singing them does a lot of the work, but it's clear those inscriptions were made to be sung, not just spoken - and I'm almost sure that those verses are being split into "blocks" of four syllables each. Picking for example the first verse of the last inscription:

la¹ḥa²ga³ mut⁴ | wa¹laẓ² t̠a³rom⁴

I probably got the vowels wrong, but what matters is their placement. The bold is for the most obvious syllables, I think that they're long? It's clearly tailored to a rhythm.

You may have noticed the Paa’ letter. In semitic languages, there is the Pe letter, but when arabic diverged it became just the Faa’ letter.

That's a really common sound change across languages; [p] seems to lenite faster than other voiceless stops. Other languages showing the same changes are Old Japanese (that /p/ is nowadays /h/ [ɸ~ç~h] and Old Armenian (PIE *t *k *kʷ ended as [tʰ kʰ kʰ], but *p ended as [w] or [h]).

I highly recommend his channel, he has accurate readings and makes some incredible content.

I can confirm the accuracy based on this video - he got the 1500 Portuguese distinction between [s̻] and [s̪], the retracted [ɫ] and the unraised [e o] just right, even if no modern dialect AFAIK keeps all those features intact.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago

The way that he's singing them does a lot of the work, but it's clear those inscriptions were made to be sung, not just spoken - and I'm almost sure that those verses are being split into "blocks" of four syllables each. Picking for example the first verse of the last inscription:

Absolutely - the vowels are strangely too long and can sound weird (LHYN, would be pronounced Liheyn in modern arabic) but it's still understandable and mostly intelligible.

That's a really common sound change across languages; [p] seems to lenite faster than other voiceless stops. Other languages showing the same changes are Old Japanese (that /p/ is nowadays /h/ [ɸçh] and Old Armenian (PIE t k kʷ ended as [tʰ kʰ kʰ], but p ended as [w] or [h]).

Interesting, i thought it was a semitic thing :)

I can confirm the accuracy based on this video - he got the 1500 Portuguese distinction between [s̻] and [s̪], the retracted [ɫ] and the unraised [e o] just right, even if no modern dialect AFAIK keeps all those features intact.

I love his videos, especially the reconstruction of old language pronunciation like this one :D