Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Hava Bas-Idis

@havabasidis.bsky.social

550 followers 400 following 810 posts

/ˈχɑvʌ bɑˈsɪdɪs/. she/her 🏳️‍⚧️. TESOL by day; by night, Afroasiatic languages, the Pleistocene-Holecene transition in Africa and the "ANE", and the complex relationships between linguistic academia, indigenous rights, and empire. Member of the SIL hate club.

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Hava Bas-Idis @havabasidis.bsky.social · 23h

I see the earth--bupkes! And I saw the heavens--double bupkes!

Hava Bas-Idis @havabasidis.bsky.social · 23h

Nu in the start of the creating the things, the earth, it was all fakakte!

2 2

Hava Bas-Idis @havabasidis.bsky.social · 23h

I see it as a fair compromise, sacrificing the syntax & rhyme of the nonsense noun but maintaining its function as an intensifying collocation. Alter's 'welter' works wonderfully to bring out the rhyming pattern, but it leans more towards 'waste' in the sense of 'wasted/lost/useless'.

Hava Bas-Idis @havabasidis.bsky.social · 23h

That's why I like "barren waste(land)". Barren forms a natural collocation that heightens the sense of waste(land), mirroring the hendiadys of תֹּהוּ וָבֹהוּ in an organic way. It also doubly emphasizes that תֹּהוּ has an earthly, geographic sense and not some pre-creation 'chaos' or 'void'.

1 2

Hava Bas-Idis @havabasidis.bsky.social · 1d

I guess "waste shwaste" would've been a little too on the nose...

1 4

Hava Bas-Idis @havabasidis.bsky.social · 1d

begins with a barren land without vegetation or rainfall. And it brings out a potentially significant contrast in Gen 1 between primordial ocean and primordial desert, which is totally overshadowed by more abstract translations like 'void' and 'chaos'.

1 1

Hava Bas-Idis @havabasidis.bsky.social · 1d

Whoah, did not know that! My preference for it is simply that תֹּהוּ is used elsewhere to refer to 1) uninhabited desert and 2) futility or vanity. 'Waste' is an excellent English match in both senses. Describing the early earth as a wasteland also lines up with the creation account in Gen 2, which

1 2

Hava Bas-Idis @havabasidis.bsky.social · 1d

Turns out no, he's not alone-- 'waste', imo the best English rendition of תֹּהוּ, shows up in some pretty unexpected places:

ASV, YLT: "waste and void"
Darby: "waste and empty"
TLV: "chaos and waste"

My personal take on תֹּהוּ וָבֹהוּ would be 'barren waste(land)'

1 1

Hava Bas-Idis @havabasidis.bsky.social · 3d

He does תֹּהוּ וָבֹהוּ as 'waste and welter' which I find astoundingly good

1 5

Hava Bas-Idis @havabasidis.bsky.social · 3d

Is Robert Alter the only English translator to render תֹּהוּ as 'waste' in Gen 1:2? (correctly imo)

4 6

Hava Bas-Idis @havabasidis.bsky.social · 18d

Not to my knowledge. It looks like a straightforward combination of /b/ (inanimate marker) + /(n)a/ (dative marker), that's what we learned from Jagersma. But it's clearly been syntactically reanalyzed, since sometimes /ba-/ can co-occur with other dative prefixes on the verb.

1 1

Hava Bas-Idis @havabasidis.bsky.social · 18d

Most of the time when we see it in class my teacher just says to ignore it entirely because it's just that vague. He suggested something about it maybe having some sort of function in discourse structure, too, but IDK the details. But it's a very, very frequent morpheme on verbs.

Hava Bas-Idis @havabasidis.bsky.social · 18d

No one can agree exactly what it is or does. I haven't formed my own opinion about it but sometimes it seems like a passive or mediopassive marker, sometimes like a 3sg.inan.dat., and sometimes it seems interchangeable with other morphemes like /mu/ and /i₃/ whose functions are themselves unclear

1 1

Hava Bas-Idis @havabasidis.bsky.social · 18d

The more Sumerian I learn the more I wonder if they really were aliens after all...I'm going to find the Martian who invented the /ba-/ prefix and give him a piece of my mind

1 1 13

Hava Bas-Idis @havabasidis.bsky.social · 24d

Very smart people ask me for my opinion about problems and then I give my opinion about the problem and they nod and say "That was a good opinion" and modify the project accordingly because these people who are all smarter than me value my input? And I pay my rent with this?

The Pokemon Totodile, a small, adorable blue-and-red creature resembling a baby alligator, dances joyously in a green forest, mouth agape in delight and little arms wiggling gleefully in the air.

Hava Bas-Idis @havabasidis.bsky.social · 24d

My boss hands me some ancient text that I love and I make some annotations about it and he says "hmm I see very good" and gives me dollars? What sorcery is this

1 8

Hava Bas-Idis @havabasidis.bsky.social · 24d

I got my first real linguistics research job this week :D (it's a pretty junior role but even so!! I'm being paid money?? to do research??)

2 13

Hava Bas-Idis @havabasidis.bsky.social · Sep 4

Me: "I just really don't want to learn to speak German...."
My gf: "But you already speak Yiddish."
Me: "That's the worst part, I speak German!"

Hava Bas-Idis @havabasidis.bsky.social · Sep 4

My Sumerian teacher told me I have to learn German, sink or swim. I'm sinking about it...

1 9

Hava Bas-Idis @havabasidis.bsky.social · Aug 23

Oh snap!! I had no idea, very cool!

Reposted by Hava Bas-Idis

Maarten Kossmann @maartenkossmann.bsky.social · Aug 21

Now that this got a solid 4 likes, I think I’ll follow the trend and offer *1 opinion about Libyco-Berber for 1 like*

Maarten Kossmann @maartenkossmann.bsky.social · Aug 21

A few years ago, Mansour Ghaki published a new Libyco-Berber text from Dougga, which consists of 7 lines of Libyan text, 1 line of (unrelated) Punic text, and two lines that are unreadable.
In line 2, he reads SYN GLDT W MQLZ GLDT WTQN MWSNT
"ŠYN the gld, son of MQLZ(?) the gld, son of ṬQN the mwsn"

1 6 41

Hava Bas-Idis @havabasidis.bsky.social · Aug 21

Recently learned that Gilgamesh's name 𒀭𒄑𒉋𒂵𒎌 is supposed to be read "Bilgamesh" and I'll never recover

Meredith Rose @mrose.ink · Aug 19

Ok folks: what is your favorite fact that you share with people (maybe a bit too) eagerly?

5 6 26

Hava Bas-Idis @havabasidis.bsky.social · Aug 21

I'm getting ready for an intro to Sumerian course next week. But I still believe that hundreds of weird little birds is a better writing system than hundreds of evil little triangles

1 12

Hava Bas-Idis @havabasidis.bsky.social · Aug 21

Peeping out my cave to tell you all that I have overcome my fear of the evil little triangles. 𒋗𒌌𒈬𒌝!

1 10

Hava Bas-Idis @havabasidis.bsky.social · May 9

(By Stephen Stern & Steven Gimbel)