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 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:

Today's post is about the indefinite article in Kunuz Nubian. In Kunuz Nubian, nouns are assumed definite by default, without adding anything.  Adding the suffix -weer makes the noun indefinite. It can also trigger vowel-lengthening in nouns that end in vowels. In nouns that end in m or b, weer changes to beer. In the accusative, the r in -weer becomes a k. بوست اليوم عن أداة التنكير بالنوبي الكنزي (الماتوكي). يعتبر الاسم بالكنزي معرفة عادة لكنه بإضافة اللاحقة (وێر). يمكنها تطويل الصائت الذي يسبقها.  إذا انتهت الكلمة بال (م) أو بال (ب) فيتغير (وێر) إلى (بێر). اذا كانت الكلمة منصوبة فيتغير إلى (وێك). See the chart below:                                    أنظر إلى الجدول تحت: definite indefinite definite indefinite definite indefinite kub kubbeer boat a boat ⲕⲟⲩⲡ ⲕⲟⲩⲡⲡⲉ̄ⲣ saab saabbeer cat a cat ⲥⲁⲁⲡ ⲥⲁⲁⲡⲡⲉ̄ⲣ kam kambeer camel a camel ⲕⲁⲙ ⲕⲁⲙⲡⲉ̄ⲣ elum elumbeer crocodile a cr...

Egyptian Sign Language (LIM, Lughat al-Ishāra al-Masriyaa) is a term I use to refer to the urban sign language varieties I have learned a bit of and observed in use in Cairo and Alexandria. The language fits well within some of the typological patterns described by Zeshan et al. (2013), with some perhaps unique differences. Data is drawn from interviews with signers and resources produced by four different organizations, two in Cairo and two in Alexandria, which exemplify significant variation in this domain. Here I give a general outline of the numeral system including some of its interesting morphological and lexicalization patterns, and note effects of language contact where it occurs (or does not) on word order. (لغة الإشارة المصرية) هو مصطلح أستخدمه للإشارة إلى نوعيات لغوية قد رأيتها وتعلمت القليل عنها في القاهرة والإسكنرية واللغة تتماشى مع بعض النمطيات التيپولوجية التي وصفتها زيشان وزملائها (٢٠١٣) وربما توجد بعض الأشياء غير المسبوقة. تأتي هذه البيانات من مقابلات ومصادر أنجبتها ٤ ...