The school is planning a trip for students to Hadhramout حضرموت, Ma'arib and some other towns later this week for 4 days. I was keen to go after having missed 2 other trip opportunities and so yesterday I asked the director for permission to go right before the meeting about the trip. He said he would tell me after the meeting but one problem could be if there is room at the hotel. So I attended the meeting, unsure if I would be going and I was honestly jubilant when my the director read out my name in the room allocation - he'd given me the ok to go!
I have fascination with scripts and languages that look vastly different to English, which was one of the things that drew me to Arabic. It's as though an ancient and mysterious language still exists and and it's ubiquitous enough that there are lots of places to learn it. If I ever decide to get a tatoo it will probably be in Arabic or or Amharic or something else unusual but it certainly won't be in English or clique Chinese. But getting to the point, in Hadhramout there are inscriptions written in Southern Arabian script, which is the script that was used throughout Yemen before the Arabic script as we know it now replaced the language. In Arabic this script is known as musnad المُسند and the Sabaean people of Hadramout wrote these inscriptions. The alphabet of the musnad is below
The handy part is that the spoken language was similar to Arabic and so if we decipher the sounds from the alphabet above then we can translate a language that is similar to Arabic to extract the meaning. So I'll be taking my digital camera and will hoping that I'll be able to decipher even a small part of one of the inscriptions.
The Smithsonian Institute has a photo of an inscription from Yemen that they have translated.
wmaseeha means "and messiah" ie. Jesus and malik is still the word for King in Arabic.
Leading up to this trip I've been doing a bit of history research and it's reminded me of a issue I still don't understand. What is the motivation in replacing AD and BC with CE and BCE respectively? I really can't even begin to understand what the point of this is. The Christian monks came up with the gregorian calendar so good on them, let the format of their dates stay. Not being a member of Christian faith hardly seems a decent reason to want to reject AD and BC. Incidentally AD means Anno Domini, which means in the year of our Lord and this is why old medeval movies like Braveheart start with "In the year of our Lord..".
http://www.encountergod.com/14/whatad.html
I'm in a bit of a foul mood today because a guy at my school who is a native Arabic speaker always comes to talk to me in Arabic but his motivation doesn't seem as much to teach me Arabic as it is to point out all the Arabic I don't know. Today he came to me and asked why I'm always reading English websites, why not Arabic ones? That's because I don't understand Arabic well enough to read websites, mate. In the process he rattled off Arabic and repeated keywords I obviously don't know. When I don't know the word it doesn't matter how many times he repeats it with a wry smile on his face - the meaning won't suddenly come to me. He appears to get off on the blank looks on student's faces. He actually isn't a teacher here, he's a secretary. But anyway *breathe* I told him speaking words I don't know doesn't help me and my frustration had no problem jumping the language barrier.
I have fascination with scripts and languages that look vastly different to English, which was one of the things that drew me to Arabic. It's as though an ancient and mysterious language still exists and and it's ubiquitous enough that there are lots of places to learn it. If I ever decide to get a tatoo it will probably be in Arabic or or Amharic or something else unusual but it certainly won't be in English or clique Chinese. But getting to the point, in Hadhramout there are inscriptions written in Southern Arabian script, which is the script that was used throughout Yemen before the Arabic script as we know it now replaced the language. In Arabic this script is known as musnad المُسند and the Sabaean people of Hadramout wrote these inscriptions. The alphabet of the musnad is below
The handy part is that the spoken language was similar to Arabic and so if we decipher the sounds from the alphabet above then we can translate a language that is similar to Arabic to extract the meaning. So I'll be taking my digital camera and will hoping that I'll be able to decipher even a small part of one of the inscriptions.
The Smithsonian Institute has a photo of an inscription from Yemen that they have translated.
Transliteration
b kh ya l / r h m n n / w m s ya h ha /
m l k n / a b r ha / z ya b m n / m l k / s b a / w z r ya d n / w h dh r m d t
Transcription
B'khail / ar-rahman / wmaseeha /
malikan / Abraha / Zaybm / malik /
sab'a / w zarydan / w hadarmaut
Translation
With the power (help) of god, and the Jesus (=Christian) King Abraha Zeebman (King's title), the King of Saba'a, Zuridan and Hadrmaut.
wmaseeha means "and messiah" ie. Jesus and malik is still the word for King in Arabic.
Leading up to this trip I've been doing a bit of history research and it's reminded me of a issue I still don't understand. What is the motivation in replacing AD and BC with CE and BCE respectively? I really can't even begin to understand what the point of this is. The Christian monks came up with the gregorian calendar so good on them, let the format of their dates stay. Not being a member of Christian faith hardly seems a decent reason to want to reject AD and BC. Incidentally AD means Anno Domini, which means in the year of our Lord and this is why old medeval movies like Braveheart start with "In the year of our Lord..".
http://www.encountergod.com/14/whatad.html
The term “AD” was created by a monk named Dionysius Exiguus in 525 AD. Before that time, dates were calculated by an individual king’s reign (“In the fifth year of Emperor Augustus”, “In the second year of King Henry VIII”) or dated from the founding of a kingdom or an empire.
Dionysius noticed that kings died, and even empires vanished (the Roman Empire, after flourishing for centuries had collapsed just the century before). This created confusion, with some people following one calendar, and others another calendar. (This confusion is why Dionysius made a mistake of 4-6 years in trying to calculate the year of Jesus’ birth.) Dionysius therefore proposed establishing a calendar based on a kingdom which would never end. He began counting time from Jesus’ birth.
I'm in a bit of a foul mood today because a guy at my school who is a native Arabic speaker always comes to talk to me in Arabic but his motivation doesn't seem as much to teach me Arabic as it is to point out all the Arabic I don't know. Today he came to me and asked why I'm always reading English websites, why not Arabic ones? That's because I don't understand Arabic well enough to read websites, mate. In the process he rattled off Arabic and repeated keywords I obviously don't know. When I don't know the word it doesn't matter how many times he repeats it with a wry smile on his face - the meaning won't suddenly come to me. He appears to get off on the blank looks on student's faces. He actually isn't a teacher here, he's a secretary. But anyway *breathe* I told him speaking words I don't know doesn't help me and my frustration had no problem jumping the language barrier.
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