“ |
Originally Posted by Hani But ancient Arab linguists never took it [allahum] to be a plural noun; they explained it in a different context because they didn't compare it to its Aramaic or Hebrew equivalents.
|
” |
I don't think that Jewish scholars translated it that way either, although this is far outside my expertise. The subject has come up on SciForums and people said there was a convoluted explanation for it that was vaguely similar to the Christian trinity, one god that has more than one face or personality.
“ |
Arabic is way more rich and complicated than Hebrew.
|
” |
That's surely because Arabic has always been a living language with a huge number of native speakers, spread over a wide area. It now has more than 200,000,000 in about ten countries. The size of the community promotes richness. Hebrew, on the other hand, since Roman times was a dead language used only for religious purposes by a few million people. Even Latin fared better, it was widely used in secular scholarship. Hebrew was only revived sixty years ago and is only spoken in Israel. It has a lot of catching up to do, and a tiny community of native speakers in which to do it. (A great many Israelis are immigrants who learned Hebrew as a second language.)
“ |
You know FR, you could have used all that time and effort and learned a big bunch of languages, it really isn't that hard; just learn the first one and the rest will roll off by themselves.
|
” |
I started studying Spanish when I was 11 and rate myself at 8 - 8.5 on my powers-of-three scale. I learned Esperanto when I was 14 and am more or less fluent, 8.5. I was an honorary member of the Chinese community in Los Angeles for many years and am about a 7. I range from 7 to 6 in German, French, Portuguese, Italian and Yiddish and use them for internet correspondence. Well not Yiddish I guess.
2=10 words, 4=100, 6=1000, etc., assuming a comparable level of grammar.