Old Hijazi: Difference between revisions

A collection of papyri from Egypt includes Arabic texts written with Hebrew characters. These papyri predate 900 AD<ref>Blau and Hopkins, [https://www.academia.edu/38210910/Joshua_Blau_and_Simon_Hopkins_Judaeo-Arabic_Papyri_Collected_Edited_Translated_and_Analysed_Jerusalem_Studies_in_Arabic_and_Islam_vol._9_1987_87-160 Judaeo-Arabic papyri], 1987,  p. 90</ref>.{{Quote|[https://www.academia.edu/38210910/Joshua_Blau_and_Simon_Hopkins_Judaeo-Arabic_Papyri_Collected_Edited_Translated_and_Analysed_Jerusalem_Studies_in_Arabic_and_Islam_vol._9_1987_87-160 Blau and Hopkins, Judaeo-Arabic papyri, 1987,  p.154]|“The Arabic of these papyri has lost case and mood categories in the noun and verb. The breakdown of the case system is indicated by several features. Had tanwīn existed in the type of Arabic studied here, there can be no real doubt that it would have been marked by final nun; the fact that these texts use an acoustically based orthography, quite free from the influence of literary Arabic spelling, makes this virtually certain. The adverbs terminating in aleph must therefore be regarded as reflecting the ending ā, not the literary tnwīn.”}}Although the Hebrew script is defective and doesn’t write short vowels and many long ‘a’ vowels, these Judaeo-Arabic texts are still valuable as they don’t abide by Arabic orthography rules. E.g. A word pronounced as “kalbun”(with final short vowel and nunation) is written in Arabic as “klb” without the suffix in accordance with Arabic orthography rules. But when this word is written in Judaeo-Arabic as “klb”( instead of “klbn”) then this means it’s pronounced without the suffix because these texts are phonetic and don’t abide by Arabic orthography rules<ref>Joshua Blau, [https://www.academia.edu/10334155/A_Handbook_of_Early_Middle_Arabic_by_Prof_Joshua_Blau A Handbook of Early Middle Arabic], 2002, p.137</ref>.