Dictionary of Post-ClassicalYemeni Arabic
The Yemeni dialects of Arabic have untilquite recently received little scholarly attention. Apart from theimportant work of Count Landberg at the start of the century andEttore Rossi in the 1930s, there was a major hiatus until thepublication of Werner Diem's Skizzen Jemenitischer Dialekte(Wiesbaden: Steiner) in 1973. In recent years serious attentionhas been given to Yemeni dialects by Peter Behnstedt, Otto Jastrow,Hamdi Qafisheh, Janet Watson, and others. Yet in all of this no oneattempted a dictionary of Yemeni Arabic until the recent (1990-91)publication by Moshe Piamenta (Dictionary of Post-Classical YemeniArabic. Leiden, Brill, two parts, xxiv, 541 pp.).
Piamenta, Professor of Arabic Language andLiterature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, "presents thevernacular vocabulary and phraseology of mediaeval and modern Yemencomplementing R. Dozy's Supplément aux dictionnairesarabes" (p. v). In short, the coverage would seem to apply tothe Islamic era in Yemen. Well over 250 sources are cited in thebibliography, consisting of major dialect studies, published booksand articles on Yemen, and a considerable amount of material fromJudaeo-Arabic. The compiler has also compared many, but certainlynot all, of his terms with the well-known Arabic-English lexicons ofLane and Hava, as well as Dozy's supplement. The choice of Hava'sdictionary is somewhat odd, since it has no bearing on Yemeni usage. The terms are arranged according to the Arabic order of the alphabet,with Arabic script and transliteration provided throughout.
The purpose of the compilation, according tothe author, is to preserve the "post-classical Yemeni vernacularbefore it is regrettably late" (p. vi). It would thus seem to be aworthy goal that should result in a major contribution to the fieldof Yemeni Studies. But at the risk of being labeled an incurableiconoclast, I must say that I regrettably find this effort adisservice to the field. I am also curious as to why Piamentaassumes that Yemeni dialects are on the road to extinction. Apartfrom Judaeo-Arabic, I see no evidence that less "Yemeni" Arabic isbeing spoken these days. I realize that it is convenient to have somany Yemeni terms documented in one source, but my examination of thework reveals so many errors, questionable judgment on choice ofsources, and such an incompleteness that I hardly know where to beginin this review. Given the rather hefty price Brill has placed onthese two volumes, this is a book many scholars will want to thinktwice about before buying.
My specific objections to the present volumerelate both to the rationale for the volume and the technical andprinting errors. These may be summarized as follows:
Of the many problems I intend to discussin this review, perhaps the most offensive in my view, is theoutdated, close-minded "orientalist" (as Edward Said might use theterm) attitude of the compiler. It seems ludicrous to me that ascholar would seek to put together a major dictionary of a livingdialect without ever having studied this dialect in the field. I amwell aware that Prof. Piamenta has not had the opportunity to visitYemen. But this work is not presented as a dictionary solely of theJudaeo-Arabic dialect of Yemen, which is its main value. While awide variety of sources written by Yemenis or individuals who haveworked in Yemen (including one of my own articles) have beenconsulted, this gives the work a derivative scope where the potentialfor transcription error or simple misunderstanding is high and quitereadily found. While the author thanks a number of researchers whomhe has visited, this is hardly a substitute for studying the dialectin context. To be frank, the author has attempted to do somethingwithout what he needs to pull it off. This results in a very poorscholarly product.
In point of fact there are many moresources, particularly the hundreds of books published in Yemen, whichwould be invaluable for this dictionary. What is striking is that themajor Yemeni lexicons have been completely ignored. The compilerseems to think that it is enough to consult the derivative lexiconsof Lane, Hava and Dozy, none of which are particularly useful forYemeni Arabic. I find it hard to imagine that a dictionary ofpost-classical Yemeni Arabic would not consult the superb 18thcentury lexicon of Muhammad Murtadâ al-Zabîdî(Tâj al-'arûs), or the 15th centuryal-Qâmûs al-muhît ofal-Fîrûzâbâdî, or the seminal Shamsal-'ulûm of the 12th century savant Nashwân ibn Sa'dal-Himyarî. These works are essential for any properunderstanding of the history of Yemeni dialects. A work is not"richly documented" (p. v) simply because it has a largebibliography. Nor is a dictionary justified by relying on derivativesources, such as Lane's lexicon. Lane, it should be noted, quotedquite a lot from Tâj al-'arûs, although thishardly renders the Arabic source as something that can beignored.
The compiler says he has chosen to preservethe form of the English transcriptions derived from other sources,which I read as his simply copying terms verbatim as they appear insources. While Piamenta thinks this is a "scientific impartial view"(p. vi), it strikes me more as one of convenience and laziness. Ican not quite understand what would be the problem in standardizingthe chaotic forms found in a literature stretching across severallanguages and well over a century. It appears that the compilercannot decide if he wishes to point out dialectal varieties (a ratherdelicate task to do from afar) or simply put together a dictionary ofthe written language. The end result is an uneven and virtuallyunanalyzed mishmash of Yemeni words often through the eyes ofnon-Yemeni recorders.
A number of words are included in thisdictionary even though they have nothing to do with Yemeni dialect. Piamenta includes a reference to tûnî as a "fabricmade in an Egyptian town in the island of [tûna] nearDamietta" (p. 55). The source for this is a work of Goitein,published in Hebrew in 1983. All well and good, but what does thishave to do with Post-Classical Yemeni Arabic? Should one includeevery foreign word that Yemenis have ever been exposed to in the pastmillennium or so? Compare the inclusion of this word to the factthat the word bunn (for coffee) is not recorded. Which wordhas been used more often in Yemen: the esoteric tûnîor the everyday bunn? I'll take a cup of coffee; howabout you?
As is clear both from the introduction andthe bibliography, the primary focus of this dictionary isJudaeo-Yemeni Arabic. However, rather than stick to this focus,which is a contribution the compiler can make, Piamenta deludeshimself into thinking that a dictionary of the Yemeni Arabic dialectcan be made simply by adding in a range of vocabulary from secondarysources on Yemen. While I believe the present book will be useful tothose who work on Judaeo-Yemeni Arabic, it is not satisfactory forYemeni Arabic in general. The scholar who is looking for vocabularyapart from the Judaeo-Yemeni sources will be frustrated rather earlyon. The beginning student will be often misled as to the nuance andrange of meaning of the terms cited in this dictionary. I mostdefinitely would not recommend these two volumes for lexicalpurposes, except for the indication of a source where one might findmore information on the word.
While time prevents me from going over everyline of the book in detail and checking with relevant sourcematerial, a cursory reading results in a plethora of errors, someprinting but many misreadings by the compiler or his assistants. Perhaps the first page of the General Introduction was skipped by theproofreader? In the second paragraph the comma is missing after"quite unknown beyond its boundaries" and formerly appears as"fomerly." The term San'ânî is given with an i insteadof an î (also on p. vi, xiv). The Arabic rendering ofal-Yuhûd is missing the letter "h" on p. x. These are minorirritants, but the lack of careful proofing so early on calls intoquestion the usefulness of the dictionary as a referencetool.
There are also a number of errors in theBibliographical Reference Abbreviations (pp. xv-xxiv). Under AD,Muhammad becomes Muhmmad (!), târîkh (!) underASDY'T, LAM, de Slane, WTY, Hûth [with a dot under theh] is mispelled under KQ, Bîr (!) under Leiden Or. 2377,etc. The compiler also misreads Brinkley Messick's name (under BTI), assuming that the last name was Brinkley. Muhammad 'Al al-Akwa'al-Hiwâlî is cited in one place as al-Akwa' and inanother as al-Hiwâlî. The author under ZL should be Zaydb. 'Al 'Inân, not 'Affân (!). Should Icontinue?
As an example of the arrogance of thecompiler, consider a misreading he makes of the glossary provided byAbdulla Maktari in his 1971 study (Water Rights and IrrigationPractices in Lahj, Cambridge University Press). Maktaricorrectly notes that nasd [with a dot under the s] isa term used in Lahj for the act of cutting a crop, but Piamentaapparently assumes this is a error on Maktari's part (in this I findgreat irony given the proofed state of his dictionary) forhasd [with a dot under the h and s] (p. 96). Thecorrect term in the southern dialect is in fact nasd[witha dot under the s], a term I have documented in the mediaevalRasulid agricultural texts. This term is also referenced inLandberg's Études sur les dialectes de l'Arabieméridionale (1901-1913), published by Brill at a time whenthis company apparently had more diligent proof readers. Thisinvaluable source of Landberg is not mentioned in Piamenta'sbibliography; perhaps he is unaware of it. Landberg's study is aninteresting parallel, because it was also based on working withYemeni speakers outside of Yemen! But Landberg seemed to know whathe was doing.
If you would like yet another example of thecompiler's ignorance of Yemeni Arabic, take a look at his treatmentof the term matlam (p. 52), used for a sowing season. BothSerjeant and I refer to the variant reading matnam found inthe Rasulid sources, yet Piamenta places a ! after this term toindicate that it is in error in our readings. In fact the transitionfrom the l to the n is well known in the Tihama dialect. Thisreading can hardly be called an error, since it is a known feature ofthe dialect and appears as such in written texts from the medievalperiod. Had Piamenta actually been to a village in the Tihama, thissort of mistake might not have been made. Similarly, the referenceto bayzara as agriculture (p. 46) is totally wrong. Thefootnote referred to in Serjeant's article does not equatebayzara with filâha [with a dot under theh], but simply suggests that the term in the book title mentionedin a manuscript may be bayzara, which as any competent Arabistshould realize is in reference to falconry! Are Yemenis supposed toplant their falcons? With constant misstatements of the sources hequotes, Piamenta does a disservice to the scholarly community. Thereare so many careless mistakes that it is hard to trust anything.
Not that many people would note or care, butthe reference to my Arabian Studies article on p. 55 (underthâbir) mispells al-Ahjur, my fieldwork site, asal-Ahjûr. "Picky, picky," you might say, but this issymptomatic of the errant trend within this dictionary. Sometimes itlooks as if the compiler simply gave his notes to his secretary andasked her to make the corrections.
One of the disturbing things about adictionary, especially when it is the only one of its kind, is thatit becomes by default an authoritative source. I regret thatPiamenta's volumes will be consulted for some time in reference toYemeni Arabic. One of the aspects that is especially poor concernsthe identification of Yemeni plant names. Since this is a subject Ihave been interested in for over 15 years, I naturally looked up afew of the plant names mentioned in the dictionary. Piamentarecognizes that many of the terms noted in the earlier text ofSchweinfurth, published in 1912, are inconsistent and "phoneticallyunreliable" (p. xvii) yet many of these terms are simply repeated asSchweinfurth lists them without serious effort at validating orupdating the information. Piamenta notes that he will use an * whenreferring to the unreliable terms in Schweinfurth. While I am notanal enough to check each reference, a random choice ofblêsemân (p. 39) shows no evidence of an *. Isthis reading then reliable?
Unfortunately, many of the scientificdesignations given by Schweinfurth at the start of the century havebeen superceded. Nowhere in the dictionary is the reader warned thatthese identifications are often out-of-date. It is also notsurprising, given the haphazard way in which the dictionary has beenput together, that a number of important Yemeni plant names have beenleft out. For example, I see no reference to 'affâr,used in Yemen for the butterfly bush or Buddleya polystachya, nor to 'ar'ar for the important juniper tree. The compilerrecords (p. 306) mitlâh(î) [with a dot underthe t and h] as "thorny (thicket)," but fails to note thattalh [with a dot under the t and h] is one of the morecommon terms for acacia in the highlands. I am not familiar with thespelling tîl for Cynodon dactylon; in myexperience this nasty and well-known weed is referred to asthîl or, more commonly, wabal. In fact, Piamentafails to define wabal as Cynodon (p.516).
A variety of published information isavailable on Yemeni plant names, but this may be rather difficult toaccess outside of Yemen (hence the need to do this kind of project inYemen itself). Had the author actually been in Yemen, he would havebeen able to consult several sources which give details onsignificant Yemeni plant names, such as Al-Hubaishi andMüller-Hohenstein's Introduction to the Vegetation ofYemen (Eschborn, 1984), published through GTZ. The point is thatthe coverage of plant names is out-of-date and hardly representativeof Yemeni dialect. The same could be said of agricultural andirrigation terminology, which is poorly represented in thisdictionary.
I find it incredible that anyone wouldattempt a dictionary of Yemeni Arabic and not examine most, if notall, of the references of R. B. Serjeant on Yemen (only four articlesand two joint publications are listed in the bibliography); surelythis is one of the richest sources on actual usage. Similarly, thecompiler has not used the work of Eduard Glaser, whose publicationsare quite useful for Yemeni dialects, especially regarding starnames. By the way, the Yemeni month name tis' (literally "9,"which the compiler does not bother to point out) is not "the month ofMarch" (p. 51); this is a misreading of the comments of al-Akwa' onthe proverb. The point is that the compiler has no clue about thistraditional Yemeni star calendar, which is based on the conjunctionof the new moon and the Pleiades. Piamenta could have profitablyconsulted a number of the sources listed in the bibliography to myArabian Studies article which he consulted.
Another shortcoming of the text is itsconfused inclusion of geographical terms. Although the compilerunderstandably has not set out to produce a gazetteer, there arescattered and incomplete references to tribes and placenames. Thereference to Bakîl (p. 37), one of the major tribalconfederations of the highlands (Hâshid [with a dot underthe h] is not mentioned), refers twice to the "robbery" of thistribe, as though somehow this is a defining element. The importanceof Bakîl on the Yemeni tribal map is not indicated. Thereference to al-Ta'kar (p. 51) glosses this as a tribal name ormountain; it was in fact an important medieval fortress inYemen. This could have been easily verified by looking at the lexicon ofYâqût or the important geographical text ofal-Hamdânî's Sifat jazîrat al-Yaman. Needless to say, this invaluable linguistic source ofal-Hamdânî was not consulted. To ignoreal-Hamdânî (the only reference is to the English versionof Book Eight of al-Iklîl) in constructing a dictionaryof Yemeni Arabic is similar to ignoring Shakespeare in compiling thegreatest plays in English literature.
The compiler stated as his goal a desire topreserve a dialect used in a country he has never visited andapparently has little familiarity with apart from the Judaeo-YemeniArabic, about which I am not qualified to speak. With preserverslike this, who needs enemies? If you have need to consult thisdictionary, please do so with a grain of salt. Actually, take theentire salt shaker with you to the library. Whatever you do, thinktwice before you buy it.
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