LINGUIST List 8.17

Wed Jan 15 1997

Qs: Arabic name, Ebonics, Arabic lx

Editor for this issue: Susan Robinson <suelinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Lee Hartman, Spelling a name in Arabic
2. Donna Christian, Ebonics
3. michael hall, Arabic

 Can someone help me with the spelling, in Arabic,
of the name of this historical personage?
 Histories of Spain tell us that the Moorish Invasion of A.D. 711
was led by one Tarik or Tariq or T.ariq, whose name contributed
the final syllable of _Gibraltar_ (said to be from _jabal at-tariq_,
'mountain of Tariq').
 My questions:
 1) Is the first letter indeed "emphatic" _t_, the one usually
 romanized with a "subdot"?
 2) Is the last consonant the velar _k_, or the uvular _q_?
 3) Is either of the vowels long?
 4) Is this name commonly used today?
 5) Is "jabal at-Tariq" grammatically plausible as an "id.a:fa"
 construction? I.e., would the personal name take the
 definite article?
 6) Bonus question: How does one spell _Qaddafi_?
 Journalists seem to vary it at random.
 I'm in limbo: I know enough about Arabic to _care_ about
these questions, but not enough to be able to resolve them.
 Please respond to me individually, not to the list.
Since I presume the interested audience is small, I will NOT
post a summary, but will answer individual inquiries from the
curious.


- ------------------------------------------------------------------
Lee Hartman
Dept. of Foreign Languages
Southern Illinois University
Carbondale, IL 62901-4521
U.S.A.

Ebonics/AAVE

We at the Center for Applied Linguistics have been attempting to
collect as many commentaries and articles about the Ebonics
discussion that we can reasonably get our hands on. With the
exception of a few odd articles sent to us by friends, most the
material we have is from the Washington Post, the New York Times,
the Wall Street Journal and occasionally USA Today. That leaves
a large number of papers that we do not have access to. So if you
would be willing to send us any articles, and/or
commentaries/letters to the editor (including yours), etc., that
you have saved, we would be most appreciative.

Please respond directly to me, by mail, fax, or e-mail. Thanks.

Donna Christian
Center for Applied Linguistics
1118 22nd Street NW
Washington, DC 20037 USA
voice: 202/429-9292 (ext. 202)
fax: 202/659-5641
internet: donnacal.org

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I'd like to hear from anyone with an interest in Arabic
linguistics. My own particular interests lie in systemic functional
linguistics (Halliday) and discourse analysis, but I'm happy to talk
to anyone as there are not a lot of us Arabic linguists about.