Apparently not; they didn't sight the new moon yet, so it will be tomorrow at sunset.
For Pacifica - random quotes on Arabic and Qur'an
- Thread starter Bestiola
- Start date
I thought I'd try to write an Arabic version of that. Anyone able to have an opinion may let me know how awful they think it is.
عندما كان أفلوطين، مؤسس المدرسة الفلسفية الأفلاطونية المحدثة، يعيش بروما، وصل كاهن مصري يريد إظهار قوته وطلب من أفلوطين أن يأذن له أن يستحضر دايمون أفلوطين. إن الدايمون في دين الإغريقيين القدماء هو كائن متوسط بين الناس والآلهة. وافق أفلوطين عليه وذهبا إلى معبد إيزيس، فاعتقده الكاهن وحيد مكان صفي في روما. وأدى الكاهن طقوسه ونجحت، ولكن من ظهر لم يكن دايمونا بل إلها
The idiomatic phrase at the end of that sentence is exactly the same as in French: "de temps à autre" = literally "from time to other", i.e. "from time to time".
(The last diacritic is wrong but that's intentional; the sentence is from a "spot the mistakes" exercises—the "from time to time" phrase itself isn't a mistake.)
أنا فاهمها بس في أجزاء من الفقرة شكلها غريبة
@Pacifica
I'm just beginning to look at Arabic/Quran, although the "alphabet" is too horrifying to start learning. I'm trying to make sense of the formulaic:
bismillāhir Raḥmānir Raḥīm
Is it correct to parse it this way:
bi-smi-llāhi (a)l-raḥmāni (a)l-raḥīm
[in-name-of-Allah the-rahmaan-of the-merciful]
Is that in fact the article al which assimilates to the following r? Or is it some ending? Also, what case are the words in? I like it especially because it's so close to the language of Exodus 34. YHWH is described as אֵל רַחוּם וְחַנּוּן /el raḥūm wₔḥannūn/.
I'm just beginning to look at Arabic/Quran, although the "alphabet" is too horrifying to start learning. I'm trying to make sense of the formulaic:
bismillāhir Raḥmānir Raḥīm
Is it correct to parse it this way:
bi-smi-llāhi (a)l-raḥmāni (a)l-raḥīm
[in-name-of-Allah the-rahmaan-of the-merciful]
Is that in fact the article al which assimilates to the following r? Or is it some ending? Also, what case are the words in? I like it especially because it's so close to the language of Exodus 34. YHWH is described as אֵל רַחוּם וְחַנּוּן /el raḥūm wₔḥannūn/.
It isn't as bad as it looks, at least when it comes to simply memorizing/learning how to read it. I learned it in a matter of days (with only a couple of letters taking a little more time to stick perfectly, I guess, but that got resolved on its own quickly enough). (Pronouncing the "weird" letters correctly is another matter, as is writing Arabic by hand.)
Yes, the article assimilates to some letters, including r. Look up "sun letters" and "moon letters".
Also, the a of the article gets dropped when it follows a vowel.
The words smi llāhi r-raḥmāni r-raḥīm are all in the genitive.
Bi- is a preposition, as you probably guessed. All Arabic prepositions are followed by the genitive. llāhi is genitive for the most obvious reason ever (possessive). The other two words are genitive because they modify, and agree with, llāhi.
Note that, in isolation or at the beginning of a sentence, smi would have an initial i (and, well, not have the genitive ending, because a genitive word wouldn't normally be found in those situations). This i gets dropped when preceded by another vowel, much like what happens with al- (it's represented by the same alif character), except that the a of al- is always written even if not pronounced, whereas in ism the letter actually gets dropped in writing too. It's an epenthetic vowel; it's there only because in classical Arabic a sentence or isolated word etc. can't start with two consonants (and you can't have more than two consonants in a row in any position, either).
Not too sure what you're doing with the ofs there. For a word-for-word translation I would say "in-name of-Allah (or of-the-God), the-Merciful, the-Compassionate". And in normal English "in the name etc."
Endings that consist of a short vowel get dropped in pausa. That's why the last word doesn't have the i ending. It would otherwise. Actually, in a fully vocalised text (as Qur'an texts often are), the diacritic for that i would be present; but it just usually isn't pronounced in this context.
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Well, not always, but after this preposition at least, yes.
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What am I saying? It isn't always written, just almost always. It isn't written after the proclitic li, meaning "to" or "for".
I had read that Arabic, like Hebrew, made the distinction of bound vs. non-bound (construct vs. absolute), although frankly this confused me, since I also thought it had the (rudimentary) case system common to Semitic. Like Hebrew absolute bayit 'house' vs. bet 'house-of' (e.g. Bethlehem 'house-of bread'). So I thought that smi was 'name-of', but now I see that's not the case.
Thanks for your help, and don't think too badly of me if I come to you again (& again).
Incidentally, the Quran I'm reading mentions in its notes that it's argued by some that 'rahmaan' is not an elative form (of rahim?), but a name in its own right. I wish I knew just what they meant by that!
Arabic does have the "construct state". It's just that I think of "of" as being attached to the genitive! So it's just matter of perspective, I guess.
I'm not sure. What I know as elative is a different form altogether (it would be 'arḥam) but maybe the term is used in other ways that I'm not aware of (in this case, just to mean "intensive"...?). As for being a name, ar-raḥmān is one of the official 99 names of Allah, but then so is ar-raḥīm.
Similar names were applied to deities before Islam: Rahmanan - Wikipedia
But, in any case, as far as this below is concerned:
Ar-raḥmān is not in the construct state (he doesn't belong to ar-raḥīm; he's the same guy, as you've probably understood from my earlier post).
I guess I'm having trouble making sense of how Arabic can have both constructs & a genitive. So it must have both a construct genitive (meaning roughly 'of-something-of') & an absolutive genitive? What would that even look like?