2156: Canaanite Shift Nov 9, 2020

When languages split from each other, often the change comes from sound shifts. These, like the Great Vowel Shift in English, or Grimm's Law encompassing Germanic languages are quite broad in scope, but this isn't always, or even usually the case. The Canaanite Shift describes a process wherein [a] became [o] in long syllables. This affected Northwest Semitic languages like Hebrew and Aramaic, but not South Semitic like Arabic. For instance Tiberian Hebrew שלום (šalom) and the Arabic سلام (salām) share a root meaning 'complete; peace' but differ in the stressed vowel. This shift was so productive that this affected inflections, i.e. it affected the morphology and not only the roots of words, such as the plural ending [at] in Arabic or [ot] in Hebrew:

"Girls; daughters": بَنَات (banāt) versus בָּנוֹת (bānōṯ)

Or with present participles, such as

“Writer; the one writing”: كاتب (kātib) versus כותב (kōṯēḇ)

2142: South African 'k*ffer' & Hebrew כפרה‎ (redemption) Share Same Arabic Cognate Oct 26, 2020

The Arabic كفر (k-f-r) is the source of the very offensive South African slang 'kaffer', but also to the Hebrew כפרה‎ (kapará) which in modern slang is a term of endearment. This is because the Arabic word meaning as a verb 'to disbelieve' can be used as a noun, كَافِر‎ (kāfir), essentially to mean ‘infidel’. This word comes from Bantu—the Africans of this region of East Africa having extensive contact historically—but has now been taken up in other languages as an offensive term for black people. Meanwhile, the Hebrew כפרה‎ (kapará) literally means "atonement; redemption", and also practically 'sacrifice'. This connection then to 'infidel' may seem odd, but it may seem even odder than the Semitic root relating these words means 'village'. Essentially, an infidel would be someone outside the village, and in other Semitic languages it came to refer to a more generic covering, or in this case protection. The phrase in Modern Hebrew comes from Judeo-Moroccan Arabic 'nímšī kapā́ra ʿalēk', or literally “I will go as atonement for you”, as a way to express humility—sort of like with ciao—and abbreviated as כפרה‎.

2044: dinar Jul 20, 2020

Lots of Arab countries use the Lira as currency because of Italian use in trade, and this is mostly true of the dinar. In Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait and Bahrain, as well as Serbia and North Macedonia the dinar is used, but in the case of all former Yugoslav states динар and the rest this comes from Arabic دِينَار‎. 'Dinar' itself though stems back further to the Latin 'dēnārius' meaning 'ten each' once used in the Roman Empire. Other Muslim-majority states have used over the years as well.

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