Lameen Souag
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lameensouag.bsky.social
Lameen Souag
@lameensouag.bsky.social
Linguist, mainly focused on historical change and contact in northern Africa (Arabic, Berber, Songhay - and now Nilotic...)
Reposted by Lameen Souag
It's Sunday, so maybe another Libyco-Berber (LB) tombstone?

Today we will take a look at RIL 803, a LB-Punic bilingual text. It was found in 1890 in Fedj Mzala (Mechta Beni Oukden), Mila region, Algeria, and published and explained by a certain Cpt. Mélix (copy copied from Chabot 1940).
December 7, 2025 at 10:14 AM
Hypercorrection in Arabic loans
Just saw something very interesting

Apparently the equivalent of tamajeq word təlxutbat ( religious sermon) in Tagdalt is talḥutbat with a ḥ while this word is from arabic خطبة

This case is also attested in tetserret in at least one word yarḥaš (to be cheap) from arabic رخيص
December 6, 2025 at 9:22 PM
Reposted by Lameen Souag
It is Saturday, so why not present you with a Libyco-Berber tombstone ?

This is RIL 145 from Kef Beni Fredj in northeastern Algeria - one of the more famous bilingual stelae. First an image of the stela as a whole (by Reboud; all images taken from Chabot 1940):
December 6, 2025 at 1:22 PM
Reposted by Lameen Souag
Abusin wǝr iha elam
wǝr il amagal ar aṇenam

Otrǝšǝn wǝr iyya ilǝm
wǝr il ašafaṛ ar iṣarǝm

My wound is not on the body
Its only remedy is seeing you
December 2, 2025 at 1:48 AM
Reposted by Lameen Souag
An excellent piece by Yasmin Khan in @theguardian.com – and I’m very relieved the preposterous case against her has been dropped. www.theguardian.com/food/comment...
I called my recipe book Sabzi – vegetables. But the name was trademarked. And my legal ordeal began
The granting of patents and trademarks to foods and words from the global south is part of a long colonial grab. It’s time to realise we share what we cook, and what we call it
www.theguardian.com
December 4, 2025 at 11:39 AM
Reposted by Lameen Souag
Correspondence

- To milk
- Milking

#Tamajeq :
- əẓẓəg
- taẓək

#Tetserret :
- oṣṣəg
- toṣəg
December 3, 2025 at 5:50 PM
"takubbanit n tukksa n lmelḥ i waman n yilel Bgayet"

Interesting that they went for a puristic neologism for "sea" (ilel instead of lebḥeṛ), but not for "salt" (lmelḥ instead of tisent).
December 3, 2025 at 12:20 PM
Reposted by Lameen Souag
5-year (!) postdoc opportunity: Join our Edinburgh team and do fieldwork on the Burun languages!

Deadline for application: 17 December.

Position starts March 1st, 2025

elxw.fa.em3.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...
December 3, 2025 at 10:44 AM
Reposted by Lameen Souag
Des conseils que j'ai regroupés pour ces concours (surtout section 1 2 et 3) : mathurinm.github.io/cnrs_inria_a...
Advice for CNRS and INRIA recruitment | Mathurin Massias' webpage
Mathurin Massias
mathurinm.github.io
December 2, 2025 at 1:51 PM
In Alur, "do you fight?" is apparently:

îíìíi̋
December 2, 2025 at 10:35 AM
رحمهما الله
They were 8 and 11 years old
December 2, 2025 at 7:53 AM
Reposted by Lameen Souag
CNRS cancels Web of Science in order to focus on qualitative evaluation and promoting the development of open databases.

www.cnrs.fr/en/update/cn...
The CNRS is breaking free from the Web of Science
From January 1st 2026, the CNRS will cut access to one of the largest commercial bibliometric databases, Clarivate Analytics'
www.cnrs.fr
December 1, 2025 at 12:31 PM
Reposted by Lameen Souag
🪨✋Abnaw n ifanen 🥘

Comment façonne-t-on les plats à cuire dans les #Babors ? Découvrez la procédure traditionnelle #amazighe avec notre vidéo :

▶️ youtu.be/zHL7tGwlcRM?...

Vous aussi, transmettez-nous vos vidéos, nous les diffuserons sur la chaîne @AmazighLanguages !
ⵣ🌟 tinemmirin ☀️ⵣ
November 30, 2025 at 1:23 PM
Reposted by Lameen Souag
The migrations of the pig from Europe to Africa .

The introduction of the pig happened in the Neolithic period in Northwest Africa from iberia .
November 30, 2025 at 12:52 PM
Wasn't expecting to find a critique of traditional pedagogy (the "memorise or get hit" approach) in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, but here you are.

www.tonyburke.ca/wp-content/u...
November 29, 2025 at 9:29 AM
Reposted by Lameen Souag
Excellent Mi’gmaq language flash card.
November 27, 2025 at 1:18 PM
Reposted by Lameen Souag
Remembering Helga Delisle on National Linguistics Day, who taught me something about linguistics, here's her article on Consonantal Symbolism in American Indian Languages
November 26, 2025 at 2:02 PM
Reposted by Lameen Souag
Linguistics DDRIG is also archived 🐦🐦

this could mean it will be replaced by some new program, but at this point in time we have to assume many DDRIG opportunities that are "out of alignment" with admin priorities are just being discontinued.
The NSF Bio Anthro Program DDRIG, Cultural Anthrpology DDRIG, and Archaeology DDRIG have all been archived (as of yesterday afternoon). Please speak with your grad students and plan accordingly. To say I am angry and depressed about this is an understatement.
November 26, 2025 at 3:54 PM
Reposted by Lameen Souag
Paris friends! Excited to speak here soon. I'll present data on negation in Gizey, and discuss the intriguing behaviour of a negative existential that is attested across the Northern Masa languages. Hope to see you there!
November 25, 2025 at 8:04 AM
Interesting article:

Algerian Migrations to the Levant during the mid-19th and early 20th Centuries

asjp.cerist.dz/en/article/2...
Algerian migrations to the Levant during the mid-19th and early 20th centuries.
• Abstract: This study examines the migration of Algerians to the Levant during the second half of the 19th century and the early 20th century as a result of colonial policies, particularly following the suppression of popular resistance in 1847. In its initial phase, migration was mainly limited to religious, political, and cultural elites. However, it expanded with the uprising of Al-Muqrani in 1871 and the transition to civilian governance, which saw settlers impose their dominance and monopolize power. This migration extended across all social classes in Algeria and was not confined to a specific region; rather, it encompassed the entire country—east, west, and south—both individually and collectively, with one of the most notable waves being the Tlemcen migration of 1911. The Algerian community in the Arab East, particularly in the Levant, had a significant political, social, and cultural impact on the local society, especially in the fields of education, journalism, and the establishment of associations. Additionally, Algerians in the Levant remained closely connected to the issues of their homeland, Algeria.
asjp.cerist.dz
November 24, 2025 at 6:07 PM
Reposted by Lameen Souag
The people who say "why this obsession with Palestine? why don't you post about Sudan?" never post about Sudan themselves.
What they mean is "it's fine you don't care about Sudan. You should be similarly indifferent to Palestine"

(of course, many people do post about both and other crises)
November 20, 2025 at 11:41 PM
Reposted by Lameen Souag
Some engravings and Tifinagh inscriptions from southern Libya
November 23, 2025 at 12:46 PM
People have been doing etymology for a long time!

...after a fashion.

The pun should kind of work in Berber (aṃucc / amcic "cat" vs. am "like"), but I'm not sure I understand the English sentence well enough to venture a translation into any other language...
"As for that great cat, beside whom the ished-tree was split in Heliopolis,
It is Ra, called 'cat' (mjw) from Perception saying, 'is he similar (mjwy) to this which he does?'
This is how his name of 'cat' came about"
(Book of the Dead 17, a.15)
There are some truly unhinged bits in the piece about Glasman, as to be expected when dealing with Glasman, but seriously what the actual? That's...one hell of a conflation of terminology.
November 23, 2025 at 7:26 PM
Reposted by Lameen Souag
this "cow" word—Proto-Semitic *θawr- "ox, bull" (here as the feminine ܬܘܪܬܐ tawrtā in Syriac)—is likely the source of Proto-Indo-European *(s)táwros, whence Greek ταῦρος (cf. Minotaur), Latin taurus (Sp. toro, etc.), Irish tarbh, English steer, etc. 🐂
in this Syriac version of Genesis 41, why are the first 7 cows in absolute state (tawrān) and the second 7 are emphatic (tawrātā)?

they're both the subject of ܣܳܠܩܳܢ sālqān "going out (f. pl. abs.)" and both follow ܗܐ hā "behold.."
November 21, 2025 at 3:44 PM
If you're going to add AI to a search engine, this is the only correct way to do it: a list of links with brief question-related annotations, not a prominent potentially-hallucinated "answer" at the top of the page.

scholar.google.com/scholar_labs...
November 21, 2025 at 1:24 PM