Talk:بن

What does 'Base form' exactly mean in grammatical terms? and 'Alternative form'? Could sb. please add some other example? thanks in advance. Backinstadiums (talk) 14:48, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Base form means the simplest form. For example, in English, the base form of am, is, are, were, would be "be". In this Arabic case, بْن (bn) is the base form of اِبْن (ibn). اِبْن (ibn) is more usual, though. The form بْن (bn) is just "bn". Arabic words always begin with a consonant, but cannot start with two consonants. Even at word boundaries, three consonants cannot come together. This means that helper vowels have to be added to بْن (bn) to make it pronounceable and usable. So it is usually filled out to اِبْن (ibn) or اِبْنِ (ibni), with helping vowels, so that it can be used. Nevertheless, there are times when the form بْن (bn) can be used, as in أسَامَة بِن لَادِن (ʾusāma bin lādin), since the given name ʾusāma ends in a vowel.

Alternative form means another form of the word that has exactly the same meaning (such as the English words center/centre, meter/metre, program/programme). —Stephen ^(Talk) 15:09, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

@Stephen G. Brown I've learned that what should actually be written is ٱبن not just بن. Should that be fixed? --Backinstadiums (talk) 14:58, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

No. ٱبن has alif al-wasli, or the bridging alif. The alif al-wasli can only be used when there is a word that precedes it. The alif al-wasli is silent, and it means that you have to use the final vowel of the preceding word in its place. The dictionary form is ابن. —Stephen ^(Talk) 09:30, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

@Stephen G. Brown Hi, according to the entry for bin : Etymology 2 From Arabic بِن (bin). Shouldn't it be vocalized with كسرة then? instead of sukuun بْن? --Backinstadiums (talk) 10:01, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

No. In Arabic, the word spaces do not affect the pronunciation. That is, all the words in a sentence are pronounced all together, as if there were no spaces. This very different from a language such as English or German, where each word is pronounced separately and not affected by preceding or following words.

ٱبن (with alif al-wasli) is pronounced بن, with no vowel between the two consonants. But, since there cannot be more than two consonants pronounced together (not even from one word to the next), and no word can begin with two consonants together, ٱبن has to have a vowel in front (not necessarily kasra), so the alif al-wasli means that it uses the final vowel from the preceding word. But the two consonants بن are together without a vowel between, so that means a sukuun. So for example, حمودي ٱبن ٱلحق = hamudi-bni-l-haqq (hamudibnilhaqq), where the two alifs al-wasli mean that the alifs are silent and that the final vowel of the preceding word is used in their place. —Stephen ^(Talk) 22:08, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

اِبْنَة

Hi, according to pag. 42, ‘Arabic: An Essential Grammar' by Faruk Abu-Chacra, اِبْنَة also has a variant form ٱبْنَة. Shouldn't it be added? Thanks in advance. --Backinstadiums (talk) 14:35, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

No. The only difference is the letter ٱ (alif al-wasli). The normal spelling is simply ابنة, but we add the vowel points here just to show pronunciation. The letter اِ (i) is for when اِبْنَة is written in isolation, telling you to pronounce the alif as i. The ٱ means that the alif is silent, and that you are to use the ending vowel of the preceding word in its place. Alif al-wasli means the "bridging alif" or the "connecting alif", and it works as a bridge between اِبْنَة and a preceding word. For example, the alif in في [[#Arabic|]]البيت is not pronounced, and you can specify this by writing في [[#Arabic|]]ٱلبيت. It would be incorrect to write في [[#Arabic|]]اِلبيت. —Stephen ^(Talk) 09:23, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

We normally don't write the alif al-wasl on Wiktionary, but rather just omit the vowel on the plain alif. --WikiTiki89 15:16, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Coffee etymology

@Metaknowledge: That list by Leslau, as with every such eager list, does not consist 100% of secure entries.

Linguists call it a “difficult problem”, but here Catherine Griefenow-Mewis makes a point doubting for Oromo, she is as portrayed as an expert in, that their native plant buna (“coffee plant, beans, powder and drink”), in Kafa buno, is from Arabic – isn’t it that we know coffee is from that region? Coffee spread from the Horn of Africa to the Arabic Red Sea coast and was well-known in Istanbul by the late 15th century, the rough details from my memory, there are histories of coffee. She mars that argument though by also claiming قَهْوَة (qahwa) borrowed; its occurrences before 1300 really meant wine.

Linguists rather than philologists of course tend to know not such words like بُنّ (bunn, “fish-brine”) which has an etymology from a particular fish name. If you want another etymology it could be that as well as a word for wine (قَهْوَة (qahwa)) can come to mean coffee then also a word for brine or a pungent fish-sauce … Fay Freak (talk) 02:44, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

@Fay Freak: I am not impressed by the excerpt you pointed me to; Knappert is a poor philologist and should not be taken seriously, and Griefenow-Mewis' argument that only words for unfamiliar items are borrowed is obviously incorrect. Coffee drinking may well have arisen in Yemen and then spread to Africa, or even just the cultural prestige associated with drinking coffee. I think it would be best to present every serious proposal with references, rather than just the Amharic one that Leslau disputes. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 03:09, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

@Metaknowledge: That only words for unfamiliar items are borrowed is not said, and I have noted myself terms having being replaced by colonial Arabic terms in cases as abaca; but it is obviously true that the chance of familiar things being denoted by native terms is great as a rule, which should be manifest to you from having considered the English wordhoard one or the other time as well as any language.

I cannot take anyone seriously though, or why would anyone be more serious than other, they all grope in the dark even if one is generally better than the other …

The question with Leslau’s proposal is what the Arabic word is from then, apparently not even known before, unless it is the fish-sauce. Directly from Afar? As we know this is possible, as in the tringual Dahalik archipelago. Everything refers us back to Ethiopia, with the many cognates I have now listed. What is every proposal even? I only see two options so far, a native plant name, and an incompletely claimed Arabic origin. You talk like there would be bare serious proposals left out – if so, then you would need to show us the ways, because obviously I only see these.

I find it it hard to imagine that the cultural prestige associated with drinking coffee reached the Ethiopian highlands. Wicked tongues would say culture still has failed to reach that country but you shan’t even imagine that the locals would see a need to do it like foreigners instead of like they always did, the motivation is questionable. Could, could, but more likely not, in an extent which even replaced the terms for the plant, as opposed to Ethiopian borrowings of قَهْوَة (qahwa) which concerned a version of the beverage and were particular to Muslim language groups. So the situation is likely that they have kept their term, as many have already said, although originally, it may also be a local wanderwort, then transmitted owing to close prolonged contacts. Fay Freak (talk) 04:27, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

@Metaknowledge: This is, instead of being borrowed from Ethiopia or natively formed in Arabic, although meanwhile I have found new borrowings from Ethio-Semitic and Cushitic in Arabic, probably another Aramaic borrowing with blotted meaning link, unless in view of Omani Arabic بون (būn) directly this Iranian word, meaning a “stock” in the beginning—however Syriac was even spoken in Yemen, up to Syriac loanwords in Sabaean known in the religious sphere. With a lucky search – though Brockelmann referenced him in the Syriac lexicon – I found the pages where Carlo Landberg expanded on the word’s beginnings discussed in the French Ethiopist journal “Abbay” vol. 11 (1980) 144, which is seriously in need of being digitized. He tried well to sort out unrelated words, and thereby already made the important link with Ancient Greek βύνη (búnē, “malt”). I add the Iranian “base” word to this, then really we have explained all.

It was not five centuries that coffee was introduced into Yemen (in the 14th century, which explains the absence of بُنّ (bunn) in Gəʿəz) until Western scholars were making theories about its designations with little textual basis. Fay Freak (talk) 19:01, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

This Iranian root is also borrowed as Mandaic bunka 'basis, foundation, origin'. Vahag (talk) 19:31, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

@Vahagn Petrosyan: Yes, we have Classical Syriac ܒܘܢܟܐ (būnḵā), where @334a omitted too many senses the linked CAL cites.

Given that the suffix is found in Omani Arabic بنك (bunk), the Omani Arabic looks like borrowed from Middle Iranian or Aramaic, though sometimes Neo-Persian has it as ـک (-ak). Fay Freak (talk) 19:39, 23 August 2021 (UTC)