Darja notes 2026

Back from holiday; this year's miscellaneous observations on Darja follow.

Gemination of intervocalic p in loans seems intuitive enough, but how to explain the gemination in سيرّو sirru "syrup"?

Internal-a plurals normally preserve consonant quantity, but plurals of excess may be an exception: خبابز xbabəz "too much bread", عجاجن ʕjajən "too much carbs" (cf. sg. خُبْز xʊbz "bread", عجينة ʕjina "dough".)

A nice illustration of the productivity of final -a in professional plurals: شيوفة šyufa "chefs" (cf. شاف šaf "chef".)

An example of a three-way numeral division with a broken plural: معروكة məʕruka "one maarek [sort of layered fried flatbread]"; count plural معروكات məʕrukat, e.g. شوية معروكات šwiyya məʕrukat "a few maarek"; mass plural معارك mʕarək.

The plural in -an is noticeably more widely generalised than in Classical Arabic: جيجان jijan "chickens" (cp. جاج jaj "chicken (mass noun)", جاجة jaja "chicken (count noun)"); حيطان ħiṭan "walls" (sg. حيط ħiṭ); ترقان tərqan "roads" (with numerals usually ترُق trʊq; sg. تريق triq), etc.

-an is also generalised in certain classes of verbal noun - in particular, weak-final Stem II (تنحانية tənħaniyya "removal" from نحّي nəħħi "take off", تسربانية tsərbaniyya "service" from سربي sərbi "serve"), but also geminate-final (هفّان həffan "fooling" from هفّ həff "to fool") and even hollow (طيحان ṭiħan "falling" > طيح ṭih "fall"). In the latter cases, -an appears only in the abstract verbal noun, not in count nouns - طيحة ṭiħa "a fall".

Normally the third person plural dative clitic is -əlhʊm, but it can also be plain -lʊm, with knock-on effects on stress: ندوّشلُم ndəwwə́šlʊm "I'll bathe them".

I've written at length on change-of-state verbs, but I missed this kind of pairing: شلوق šluq "brackish" (of water) yields يشلاق yəšlaq "it becomes brackish". (The adjective is ultimately from Romance, according to Corriente.)

A fun denominal verb: سيّد səyyəd "to call someone mister". (Someone sarcastically referred to السي الحلّوف ssi l-ħəlluf "Mr. Boar" while complaining about its depredations, and another person responded راك سيّدتهُ ṛak siyyədt-u! "you've called him sir!") Another two: دوزن duzən "to dress (salad)", دومن dumən "to play dominos".

A rare case where st- still yields a clearly estimative reading: استبطاتك stəbṭat-ək "she thought you'd take too long to arrive", cf. بطا bṭa "take too long". In another word, what was originally the same prefix has undergone sibilant harmony, perhaps via Kabyle: ازّهزا zzəhza "to make fun (of)".

A cousin who grew up in Bab el-Oued shows a few interesting morphological differences: passives are normally in -tn- (يتنخدم yətnəxdəm "it gəts fixed", يتنمحى yətnəmħa "it gets erased"), and oblique WH-words use maš instead of mən: لمّاش lə-mmaš "why/for what?", تاعماش taʕ-maš "whose?"

I've claimed confidently that negative ma is never dropped in this variety, but listening carefully, I'm fairly sure I was wrong; it's only that the dropping is still below the threshold of consciousness. People will reject examples without it, but in actual speech, I do hear things like قالتلكش qalət-lək-š "she didn't tell you?"

Distributive numeral reduplication is familiar enough, but I only noticed this time that in complex numbers you only have to reduplicate the first element: أطيلهُم ڨاع ميتين ميتين آلف aṭi-lhʊm gaʕ mitin mitin aləf "give them all 2000.00 dinars each".

I think I've suggested previously that the short forms of numerals are only used with measure words; however, they do seem to have broader uses: ثلث مادريات، ستّ مادريات θləθ madriyyat, sətt madriyyat "three/six timbers".

Aside from its tricky uses as an inflected auxiliary verb, uninflected عود ʕud can be used as a negative complementiser "lest": تخاف عود يدور txaf ʕud iduṛ "you're afraid it might turn", عود مانجيش بكري ʕud manjiš bəkri "in case I don't come early".

Another marginal auxiliary: حبّ ħəbb "to want" can somewhat marginally also be used with inanimate subjects as "be about to", e.g. حنا من بعيد نشوفوها بللي حابّة تطيحħna mən bʕid nšufuha bəlli ħabba tṭiħ "we could see from far away that it was about to fall".

Fun biological terms: قاقّة في ورقة qaqqa fi wərqa, a plant with red berries (sarsaparilla?); رهوط ṛhuṭ "fried egg jellyfish" (doesn't sting).

Two idioms: kla ṛaṣ-u (lit. "ate his head") = to be very numerous, e.g. ən-nməl kla ṛaṣ-u "there are ants all over the place"; bda yməṣṣ-li f-əl-qaṛəṣ "he started making a sour face at me" (lit. "he started sucking a lemon for me").

PS: The Julian solstice is called əl-ʕənṣla; tradition has it that whatever direction the wind is in that day will be dominant for the rest of the year.

S/š-Ṭ-Ḥ in Algerian Arabic

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 whether I understand, I might reply šiṭṭuħ kan (ciṭuḥ kan) "just a little."

Can all these words be connected to one another? I think they might be.

Let's start with the easiest one: ṣṭəħ is obviously from Classical Arabic saṭħ سطح "flat roof, surface", a noun corresponding to the verb saṭaħa "spread out and level out". The root has cognates elsewhere in Semitic, notably Aramaic šṭaħ ܫܛܥ "to spread something flat" and Hebrew šāṭaħ שָׁטַח "to spread, stretch", so its Semitic origin is secure. (In the usual weird quasi-biradical way, it also fits into a wider pattern of "spread" words in s-ṭ, notably Arabic basaṭa "spread out".)

However, one notes that the sibilant elsewhere in West Semitic is, regularly, š. Could the various words with šṭħ somehow reflect an early parallel borrowing from Aramaic?

Let's start with Arabic: a verb šaṭaħa can indeed be found in Classical Arabic lexicons, meaning "to go too far". In Egyptian Arabic, Hinds and Badawi give šaṭaħ as "to veer, go off course". For Levantine Arabic, Neishtadt summarises a variety of sources as giving the range of meanings "to extend, lie down; to fell, slip (on the ground); to make a big step; to move away, depart; to go out, go for a walk, have a picnic, wander", while making the point that the verb must derive from Aramaic there.

A semantic link between "go far" and "spread out flat" is easy enough to envision: to be spread out flat is to be spread across the widest area possible. (Cf. English "stretch".) A priori, the easiest way to get from "go far" to "dance" is probably via the attested Levantine sense "to make a big step".

If Arabic šṭħ comes from Aramaic, then at some point one would expect it to have retained the original sense "to spread something out flat"; attested Levantine "extend" seems sufficiently close to this. Mašṭūħ would then be the past passive participle "spread out flat". Anything in such a state has been reduced to its minimum height; it would therefore be reasonable to call something particularly short məšṭuħ, or with the Berber nominal prefix a-məšṭuħ. From "short" to "small" to "little" seems sufficiently plausible.

The biggest remaining problem, then, is šṭiṭħa - are we to exclude this delicious dish from the lexical family? (Any direct derivation from "dance" is surely to be excluded, Wikipedia's fanciful proposal notwithstanding.) Neishtadt cites a suggestive Levantine form: šṭīḥ "flat plate usually made of sheepskin (which is used to cover the bread when kneaded / on which one puts the dough and then cuts it into small pieces)". Compare likewise Iraqi šaṭiħ "flat, shallow", used among other things to describe dishes. A plausible starting hypothesis, then, is that šṭiṭħa originally described the flat-bottomed pan in which the stew was prepared. The word has the form of a regular diminutive from a noun *šəṭṭVħ-a, which might be worth hunting for.

So, on a preliminary check, I'm inclined to say that yes: all the words discussed in the first paragraph derive from the same Semitic origin, one via Arabic proper, the rest via early borrowing from Aramaic. It's quite possible that wider lexicographic research would make it possible to fill in the missing steps in the semantic shifts directly, rather than speculatively - or that it would just complicate the picture further.

Addendum: Another member of this word family in Darja is ṭəħṭaħa طحطاحة "flat expanse (of land)". Good luck simultaneously reconciling both that and basaṭa with a biradical analysis.