# baby talk (blogs) — RSS Amplifier Recent posts from the 1 feeds in the RSS Amplifier directory that cover baby talk. Page: Feed: --- ## [S/š-Ṭ-Ḥ in Algerian Arabic](https://lughat.blogspot.com/2026/08/ss-t-h-in-algerian-arabic.html) _2026-08-06 · Lameen Souag الأمين سواق · Jabal al-Lughat_ On holiday in Algeria, I've been going frequently to some coastal rocks called əṣ-Ṣṭuħ الصطوح, from the plural of ṣṭəħ صطح "flat terrace roof", and occasionally eating šṭiṭħa شطيطحة "stew". I haven't done any dancing ( šṭiħ شطيح) - not really my thing. But if I go into the mountains where they speak Kabyle, I might hear someone call something aməšṭuħ (amecṭuḥ) "small"; if they ask me… ## [Comparative East Chadic B evidence on the Mubi pronominal series](https://lughat.blogspot.com/2026/07/comparative-east-chadic-b-evidence-on.html) _2026-07-03 · Lameen Souag الأمين سواق · Jabal al-Lughat_ Mubi is the best described member of a small "Mubic" subgroup consisting of Masmedje, Kajakse, and Zerenkel. The other members are much more poorly described, but enough can be gleaned from published materials to show that they share essentially the same system of subject pronominal suffix series with different syntactic functions . For Masmedje, a short text is provided in Marti et al. (2007) ,… ## [Relativisation in Mubi and Zerenkel](https://lughat.blogspot.com/2026/07/relativisation-in-mubi-and-zerenkel.html) _2026-07-02 · Lameen Souag الأمين سواق · Jabal al-Lughat_ The remarkable voice system described for Mubi seems to interact with relativisation, but textual data is scarce. In textual examples of subject relativisation, the same suffix shows up that Jungraithmayr describes as forming attributive adjectives; compare: njó tú gì hìtt-ìt sàhíi tú person ? M.REL pronounce.IPFV-ADJ truth ? a person who speaks the truth (Jungraithmayr 2013:64, 115)… ## [Notes on Mubi syntax](https://lughat.blogspot.com/2026/07/notes-on-mubi-syntax.html) _2026-07-01 · Lameen Souag الأمين سواق · Jabal al-Lughat_ Looking over Jungraithmayr's Mubi grammar again recently, I think I managed to make sense of the subject paradigms. Presumably all this was clear to Jungraithmayr, but it certainly wasn't clear to me, nor was it mapped to cross-linguistic typological categories; it may therefore be useful to comment. At first sight, Mubi looks like its basic order is SVOX, as in sentences like: màb-í nyúbùt… ## [Mabaan domestic animal loanwords](https://lughat.blogspot.com/2026/02/mabaan-domestic-animal-loanwords.html) _2026-02-03 · Lameen Souag الأمين سواق · Jabal al-Lughat_ The core of the Eastern Sudanic hypothesis is the idea that Nubian - historically the largest language family of Sudan proper - is related to Nilotic, the largest language family of South Sudan. One complication for this analysis is that, as the primary language of the medieval Nubian kingdoms, Nubian was well-positioned to influence the more northerly Nilotic languages from an early date. A… ## [Darja notes from the past](https://lughat.blogspot.com/2025/10/darja-notes-from-past.html) _2025-10-02 · Lameen Souag الأمين سواق · Jabal al-Lughat_ Going through some old papers, I found some notes on Dellys dialect that I had taken years ago from Amti Khira; better to put them up (mainly so I can find them more easily) than leave them to get dusty. A nursery rhyme, legendarily said by the swift ( əl-xŭṭṭayfa ) on its return from migration: يا مولات البيت البيت أعطيني كسيرة بالزيت قالتلي كولي وكليت Ya mulat əlbit, əlbit Aʕṭini ksira bəzzit… ## [Darja miscellaneous notes 2025](https://lughat.blogspot.com/2025/08/darja-miscellaneous-notes-2025.html) _2025-08-05 · Lameen Souag الأمين سواق · Jabal al-Lughat_ Every time I go to Algeria, I come back with some linguistic observations that are new to me (if not necessarily to anyone else.) Here are this year's. Many collective nouns take plural agreement: sqit əššjəṛ əttəħtaniyyin “I irrigated the lower trees”, kanu sjəṛ “there were trees”, ənnməl haðu “these ants”. Not all do, though, or at least not all the time: nnamus bəkri kʊnna nšufuh nəqqʊtluh… ## [HEAD = GOURD in Algeria](https://lughat.blogspot.com/2025/07/head-gourd-in-algeria.html) _2025-07-30 · Lameen Souag الأمين سواق · Jabal al-Lughat_ The metaphorical identification of heads with gourds is probably obvious enough to arise spontaneously anywhere that gourds are in regular use (even English has expressions like "stoned out of his gourd".) In Algeria, it is historically reflected in some varieties' lexicon. Kabyle has in most contexts replaced pan-Berber ixf with novel a-qəṛṛu , whose ṛ betrays its loanword origin. The… ## [Eastern Sudanic subgroup reconstructions](https://lughat.blogspot.com/2025/06/eastern-sudanic-subgroup-reconstructions.html) _2025-06-03 · Lameen Souag الأمين سواق · Jabal al-Lughat_ This is basically a note to myself, and may be updated. Eastern Sudanic is generally taken to embrace most of the languages of Sudan, including the following families: Nubian Nara Taman Nyima Jebel Daju Surmic Nilotic Temeinic Its existence, however, remains debatable ( cf. Güldemann 2022 ). A reconstruction of Eastern Sudanic (much less anything above it, such as Nilo-Saharan) remains out of… ## [More Mabaan pharyngeals](https://lughat.blogspot.com/2024/12/more-mabaan-pharyngeals.html) _2024-12-11 · Lameen Souag الأمين سواق · Jabal al-Lughat_ Thomas Anour has posted a number of Bible extracts: Mark 10:13-18 , John 1:1-13 , and James 4:1-3 . Comparing these to a published translation from 2002 (from which he sometimes diverges slightly) and to the anonymous dictionary linked in the previous post makes it possible for a beginner to parse much of the text. No more examples of /ħ/ were heard; but another pharyngeal, /ʕ/, was. This phoneme… ## [Ship software peacefully (Sponsored)](https://crawlproof.com/a/hn8gbgAijmge) _2024-12-11 · **Sponsored**_ Deploy apps from your repo with auto-config, instant previews, scaling, and monitoring. ## [Mabaan pharyngeals](https://lughat.blogspot.com/2024/12/mabaan-pharyngeals.html) _2024-12-10 · Lameen Souag الأمين سواق · Jabal al-Lughat_ The least well documented subgroup of West Nilotic is the Burun group , spoken around the borders between Sudan, South Sudan, and Ethiopia. The largest language in this subgroup is Mabaan, spoken in South Sudan, for which there exists at least one dictionary (available without bibliographic information on Roger Blench's site), and several very interesting articles by Torben Andersen. But we are no… ## [Tlemcen: medieval folk etymologies and their implications](https://lughat.blogspot.com/2024/09/tlemcen-medieval-folk-etymologies-and.html) _2024-09-26 · Lameen Souag الأمين سواق · Jabal al-Lughat_ In the mid-14th century work Bughyat al-ruwwād fī dhikr il-mulūk min banī ʕAbd al-Wād , Yaḥyā Ibn Khaldūn (brother of the more famous Ibn Khaldūn) ventures two possible etymologies for the name of Tlemcen (Standard Arabic Tilimsān , dialectal Arabic Tləmsān ): تسمى بلغة البربر تلمسنين كلمة مركبة من تلم ومعناه تجمع وسين ومعناه اثنان اي الصحراء والتل فيما ذكر شيخنا العلامة ابو عبد الله الابلي رحمه… ## ["Berber" language in early Arabic texts](https://lughat.blogspot.com/2024/09/berber-language-in-early-arabic-texts.html) _2024-09-15 · Lameen Souag الأمين سواق · Jabal al-Lughat_ Searching Shamela , I recently realised that the earliest references to a language of (al-)Barbar in Arabic go back further than I had assumed, to the second century AH. While these are unlikely to shed much light on actual linguistic practices, they are worth a look. Two occur in the Qur'ānic commentary ( tafsīr ) of Mujāhid ibn Sulaymān (d. 150 AH = 767 AD); one in his discussion of sūrat…