North African Linguistics

This lesson is based on the Muhammed Metwally Badr, the author of Nobīn Nog Gery "Read in Nubian." The original lessons use romanization and offer Arabic translations. In these lessons I'll provide the English equivalents as well and do my best to explain the grammar as it comes up. Macrons above vowels indicate a long vowel. I won't provide information about tone (because the original doesn't and I myself don't yet know it well enough to provide it, but you can find out more information about pronunciation  here ). You can also here some pronunciations of words  here , but I'm using Badr's textbook because I find the organization and pedagogy a bit better despite not using the Nubian script or having audio. I'm doing my best to keep the orthography consistent with the ⲛⲟⲡⲓ̄ⲛⳟⲁ ⲕⲟⲩⲗⲗⲁⲛ textbook but may make some mistakes (the other widespread orthography might slip in sometimes--- ⳣ = ⲱ = /w/ and  ⲡ = ⲃ = /b/ هذا الدرس مبني على عمل محمد متولي بدر و...

     This semester was by far the busiest one yet. I took a field methods course, in which we worked with a Tagalog-speaker to produce a small grammar of the language. I took a computational methods course, where I learned stats and visualization with R, and brushed up on practical use of Python for linguistic research. I worked with my research assistants on continuing the Egyptian Sign Language documentation project. I gave presentations in my sign linguistics seminar, attended and presented at two conferences, and served on the conference planning committee of another.  دا كان اكتر ترم مشغول فيه لحد دلوقتي. اخدت كورس في البحث الميداني واشتغلنا مع متحدث (تاجالوج) وهي أكبر لغة في الفلبين فكتبنا كتاب صغير (نسبيا...) سوا عن قواعدها. اخدت كورس في المنهجيات الحاسوبية واتعلمت حاجات جديده في الاحصائيات وصنع الجداول في لغة (R) وحسنت قدراتي في استخدام لغة (پايثون) لبعض التطبيقات في علم اللغة. اشتغلت مع فريقي في مشروع توثيق لغة الإشارة المصرية. قدمت في مؤتمرين وفي الكورسات...

This lesson is based on the Muhammed Metwally Badr, the author of Nobīn Nog Gery "Read in Nubian." The original lessons use romanization and offer Arabic translations. In these lessons I'll provide the English equivalents as well and do my best to explain the grammar as it comes up. Macrons above vowels indicate a long vowel. I won't provide information about tone (because the original doesn't and I myself don't yet know it well enough to provide it, but you can find out more information about pronunciation here ). You can also here some pronunciations of words here , but I'm using Badr's textbook because I find the organization and pedagogy a bit better despite not using the Nubian script or having audio. I'm doing my best to keep the orthography consistent with the ⲛⲟⲡⲓ̄ⲛⳟⲁ ⲕⲟⲩⲗⲗⲁⲛ textbook but may make some mistakes (the other widespread orthography might slip in sometimes--- ⳣ = ⲱ = /w/ and  ⲡ = ⲃ = /b/ هذا الدرس مبني على عمل محمد متولي بدر وهو...

 Just a little update on what I'm up to recently.                                        شوية أخبار عن حياتي مؤخرا After the semester ended, I got to go with my Coptic Class to visit Manchester, where they keep the Coptic Limbo collection of papyrus (and some vellum and paper) texts. It was a really cool experience working with papyrus for the first time. Much of it was so fragmentary-- I have a newfound appreciation for the work scholars do with ancient languages. The materials are fragile and you have to work hard to fill in the gaps with missing or unclear letters. The personal letters, legal texts are particularly challenging because of the handwriting. We found some magical texts too, which were even more difficult to understand. We also got to see P52  , the oldest known remnant of a copy of the New Testament, in person! بعد نهاية التيرم جتلي فرصة اني ازور م...

 I've been neglecting this blog for a while, but I thought I'd share some updates. Grad school has been keeping me pretty busy. In my first semester I took phonetics and syntax. In syntax we learned Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG), an interesting alternative to mainstream generativist syntax. For my final project I used LFG to try to analyze Coptic verb states.  بقالي فترة بهمل البلوج دا بس قولت اشارككم بعض التطوراتت. الحياة في الجامعة مشغلاني كتير وفي التيرم الأول اخذت كورسين هما الأصواتيات (إن صح المصطلح) والنحو وفي كورس النحو تعلمنا ما يسمى (القواعد التوظيفية المعجمية) أي الLFG وهو بديل عجيب للنحو التوليدي الأكثر شعبية وللمشروع النهائي في كورس النحو حاولت تحليل أحوال الأفعال باللغة القبطي من خلال الLFG  This semester I'm in phonology and semantics. Right now we're doing feature geometry and lambda calculus. It's my first time studying semantics since the short unit in my intro linguistics class in undergrad almost 10 years ago, and I'm struck by how much it ...

  From the Old Cairo Deaf Unit: From the National Association of the Deaf (in Cairo): From the Fraternal Deaf Association of Alexandria: Get new posts by email: