Marijn van Putten

Marijn van Putten

@phdnix.bsky.social

Historical Linguist; Working on Quranic Arabic and the linguistic history of Arabic and Tamazight. Game designer for Team18k

2K followers172 following1.2K posts

Marijn van Putten reposted

Lameen Souag
@lameensouag.bsky.social

Not only Zenaga but Hassaniyya too have their own versions of the Arabic letter names, according to Nicolas. Particularly puzzling for me is the distinction between aba, ata vs. ri, fi; where does that come from? Tempting to take it as a retention (cp. rēš, pē...), but then you'd expect more w/ -i.

Marijn van Putten reposted

Safaitic
@safaitic.bsky.social

The evolution of the South Semitic script is still poorly understood. An attempt to quantify the variation and model it on a genetic tree, based on weighted features that have diagnostic value (think morphological innovations in historical linguistic terms). www.academia.edu/177870340/Al...

Marijn van Putten
@phdnix.bsky.social

Well this is a first. I just received an e-mail asking me for permission to be included as a co-author of an article. An article whose existence I had not heard of up until that e-mail. The person did not wait for my reply with permission and submitted it to a journal with my name attached!

Marijn van Putten reposted

Maarten Kossmann
@maartenkossmann.bsky.social

Today at NACAL there was a fantastic talk by Massinissa Garaoun on pre-Hispanic toponomy in the Canary Islands. Based on extensive fieldwork, checking pronuniations and the topographical features the terms are connected to, he showed that there are many toponyms that are clearly...

Marijn van Putten reposted

Phillip W. Stokes
@phillipwstokes.bsky.social

Looking forward to contributing a paper to this and discussing the other papers, all of which are really strong and interesting!

Safaitic@safaitic.bsky.social

If you are within driving (or flying) distance of Austin, Texas next week, do not miss this fantastic gathering 'Timelines of Arabic 4'. My talk will handle the Paleo-Arabic corpus. Pic. Another angle of Abd-Shams inscr. I took during fieldwork in 2024. events.teams.microsoft.com/event/844c04...

Marijn van Putten reposted

Maarten Kossmann
@maartenkossmann.bsky.social

As you all know, the Musulami were the important Gaetulian group to which Tacfarinas belonged. There may be one stela that commemorates a member of this group, RIL 808. It comes from the ruins of Sila in the region of Sigus, south of Constantine in Algeria, and looks like this ⬇️

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Marijn van Putten
@phdnix.bsky.social

Ultimately, I believe Vahidnia had the right idea to look for unique readings, but she used a source was not able to do this. The editors have asked Vahidnia to publish a reply to my rather critical article, and published it in the same issue of the journal.

Marijn van Putten
@phdnix.bsky.social

While the article may come off as grumpy, it has been my intent to write an article that lays out actionable principles for researchers working on Quranic manuscripts to identify canonical readings. Providing several accessible heuristic methods (and applying one myself).

Marijn van Putten reposted

James Bejon
@jamesbejon.bsky.social

THREAD: Below is a neat word—the Ruus Al Jibal šamrūḫ = ‘the stalk of a bunch of dates’ (or something like that). Its Classical form is šumrūḫ. If I recall, @phdnix.bsky.social has shown that Cv₁CCv̄₂C > Cv₂CCv̄₂C (in a pre-Classical dialect?),…

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Marijn van Putten reposted

Joumana Medlej
@majnouna.com

My official start date is tomorrow but who can wait? I've just published the first update in my work on a new Umda edition, setting down the groundwork to begin with. Comments and questions welcome. majnouna.com/2026/08/31/u... Password: notBad1s #medievalmanuscripts #medievalsky

Marijn van Putten
@phdnix.bsky.social

Kept reading the title as Dutch for some reason, and was quite confused as to how there could be "fresh homilies" on anyone written by Jacob of Serugh.

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Marijn van Putten
@phdnix.bsky.social

Not surprising but note that it read _maliki_ yawmi d-dīni, rather than _māliki_ as most print Qurans today. The reads of Hafs (or any other Kufan for that matter) was not popular at the time in Egypt. Sadly not enough info to determine whether Warsh or Abū Amr.

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Marijn van Putten reposted

Dr Danny Bate
@dannybate.com

Former dual pronoun seen (and heard) in the wild: "enk" in a remote Alpine restaurant. It greets a plural 'you' on this menu, but was originally a dual pronoun for 'you two', cognate with English's lost pronoun inc.

Marijn van Putten
@phdnix.bsky.social

Yet another bizarre reading of Sibawayh by Carter. To illustrate the concept of waṣl "connected speech", Carter attributes a form to Sibawayh that he *definitely* does not describe and no other grammarian endorses either... This passage is the only passage with فعلتم الخير in the Kitab.

Marijn van Putten reposted

Joumana Medlej
@majnouna.com

I'm continuing to transcribe Umda manuscripts in preparation for working on the edition, and I just typed half a paragraph before realising I didn't switch the keyboard 🤦‍♀️

Marijn van Putten reposted

Marijn van Putten
@phdnix.bsky.social

Replying to @alcabbage045.bsky.social

So it's really quite rare to get insight into the *why*, sadly. There are rare moments where we have reports that explain the rationale. For example for quran.com/11/68 al-Kisāʾī reads the Genitive ṯamūdin triptotic, instead of his usual ṯamūda. His student al-Farrāʾ retains his explanation:

quran.comSurah Hud Ayah 68 - Read, Listen, Translation, Tafsir - Quran.comSurah Hud Ayah 68 - كان لم يغنوا فيها الا ان ثمود كفروا ربهم الا بعدا لثمود
Marijn van Putten
@phdnix.bsky.social

Carter in his book on Sibawayh, bizarrely claims that the pausal form of qāḍin is either qāḍī# or qāḍi#, and that the form qāḍ "is now widely accepted as correct, though only very few medieval sources explicitly refer to this form". Plenty of medieval sources refer to it... *including* Sibawayh.

Marijn van Putten
@phdnix.bsky.social

Whereas the form qāḍi#, as far as I know, seems to have been generated entirely by Carter himself. I don't think any medieval grammarian says that that is a valid pausal form.

Marijn van Putten
@phdnix.bsky.social

Yo guys, al-Sirāfī's commentary of Sībawayh's grammar is so good. I honestly don't know how anyone manages to make sense of Sībawayh's often incredibly convoluted prose without our buddy...