Michael Knüppel

Following on from a previous contribution in this journal, the article gives three additional examples of lexis in the field of funeral terminology among Chinese Muslims (here from those collected from Chinese Muslims in the Malay Archipelago) as well as various considerations regarding the socio-linguistic environment.

Je schärfer eine Kritik formuliert wird, je polemischer ein “übelmeinender Rezensent” wird, desto überlegter und gründlicher sollte seine Besprechung gehalten sein – “anderenfalls wird es lächerlich”. So jedenfalls lautete einer der Grundsätze von G. Doerfer (der ja bekanntlich ein Freund besonders deutlich formulierter Kritik war). Dessen nun posthum erschienenes “Etymologisch-ethnologisches Wörterbuch tungusischer Dialekte”, an dem mitarbeiten zu dürfen, dem Vf. dieser Zeilen eine besondere Freude war, wurde in einer der vorangegangenen Ausgaben der Ural-Altaischen Jahrbücher von R. A. Miller besprochen (oder besser gesagt: verrissen).

The Yukaghir language as a member of the Nostratic family of languages

The article deals with the treatment of Yukaghir languages (Tundra-Y., Kolyma-Y., Chuvan, Omok) by several prominent Nostraticists (H. Pedersen, V. M. Illič-Svityč, J. H. Greenberg, A. R. Bomhard, K. H. Menges, V. Blažek, A. B. Dolgopol’skij). The author gives an overview on their attempts of different quality to relate the Yukaghir languages with the Nostratic family and sketches some omnicomparativists’ hypothesises on macro-families such as “Uralo-Yukaghir” or “Eurasiatic”.

In the article the author once again deals with the title/address for Hui Muslim imāms, Āhōng (阿訇), – a topic about which he already gave some information in a miscella published in Knüppel (2020). To this some further details on historical attempts of etymology are given in the text presented here.

Yakut elements in the Tungus languages X-XII: Yakut in Urulga-Ėwenki (X), BarguzinĖwenki (XI) and Nānaj (XII) (according to S. M. Širokogorov’s “Tungus Dictionary”)
The following article deals with Yakut elements in Nānaj and two Ėwenki dialects (Urulga-Ėwenki and Barguzin-Ėwenki) as well as some Yakut-Tungus “parallels”, and it is based on the material included in S. M. Širokogorov’s “Tungus Dictionary”.

Yukaghir-Tungusic loanword relations.

The following article deals with the Tungus-Yukaghir lexical relations. For this the Tungus materials from S.M. Širokogorov’s “Tungus Dictionary” (TD), which are possibly borrowed from Yukaghir languages and traced back to Yukaghir forms in G. Doerfer’s “Etymologisch-ethnologisches Wörterbuch tungusischer Dialekte vornehmlich der Mandschurei” (EEW), which is based on the TD, are discussed.

Im vorliegenden Aufsatz wird – ausgehend von einem Eintrag in dem von K. H. Menges nachgelassenen Manuskript des “Etymologischen Wörterbuchs der türkischen und anderen orientalischen Elemente im Serbokroatischen” – den möglichen Ursprüngen von Serbokroatisch čêrga ~ čȅrga ‘(kleines) Zelt, Teppich, etc.’, Bulgarisch čérga ‘(gemusterter) Teppich, Läufer (mit Fransen) etc.’ sowie verwandten Formen in verschiedenen slaw. und türk. Sprachen (sowie im Ungarischen, Rumänischen und Albanischen) nachgegangen. Diese werden hier auf ein Bulg.-Türk. *čärgäg ~ *čärgä- zurückgeführt.

Once more on the origin of SCr. čȇrga ~ čerga ‘(small) tent, carpet etc.’
The present paper investigates the possible origins of SCr. čȇrga ~ čerga ‘(small) tent, carpet etc.’, Bulg. čérga ‘(patterned) carpet, long narrow carpet (with fringes), etc.’ and related forms in Slavonic and Turkic, as well as in Hungarian, Romanian and Albanian. The starting point is an entry in K.H. Menges’ posthumous Etymologisches Wörterbuch der türkischen und anderen orientalischen Elemente im Serbokroatischen. The forms are derived here from Bulg.-Tksh. *čärgäg ~ *čärgä-.

Postscript to „Sprachtabus in tungusischen Sprachen und Dialekten“

In the article some additions to the author’s work Sprachtabus in tungusischen Sprachen und Dialekten. Am Beispiel von S. M. Širokogorovs „Tungus Dictionary“ are given. These addenda comprising some further information on taboos for purulence, bear (three examples), fox, hawk and measles from Širokogorov’s dictionary.

In the article, which forms the first part of a series on Chinese Hui-Muslim religious terminology, the authors are dealing with the Hui Muslim prayer terminology, that can roughly be divided into direct and indirect loans. While the direct loans are bor­rowings from Arabic or Persian, the indirect loans are formed by the means of the own languages (so-called calques).

* The present paper results from some fieldwork in the context of socio-linguistic research on the Hui-Muslim communities in the province of Shāndōng in 2018 and 2019.

With this paper the writers continue their series of articles on Chinese Muslim elementary vocabulary. As already mentioned in the first part, in most Chinese dictionaries the specific elementary vocabulary of Islam is omitted. The paper in hand deals with the funeral terminology of Chinese Muslim. In contrast to the prayer terminology, we can only find one direct borrowing in Sino-Arabic, but no Sino-Persian transcription (Arabic and Persian loanwords phonetically transcribed with Chinese characters) among the funeral terms. More often the common Chinese terms are also used in the specific Muslim context. Furthermore, it is obvious that the number of terms is somehow limited comparing to the prayer terminology.

The miscellanea deals with the use of the title of / address to Imāms, Āhōng (阿訇), among China’s Hui Muslims. The title/address of Persian origin is used by different groups of speakers in various ways of pronounciation.

In his miscella the author deals with the problems of scattered notes and remarks on Károly Rédei’s work Nord-ostjakischen Texte (Kazym-Dialekt) as well as with several reviews of this work and shows with which difficulties we are still confronted when dealing with all these materials. Indeed, there are still some remarks and corrections to be done on Rédei’s work which have been overlooked by all the reviewers, but besides all criticism the work is still worth reading since it is one of the most important collections of Northern-Ostyak texts.

In the report the author explains his aspired project of the edition of Edward Sapir’s Com­parative dictionary of Indo-Chinese and Na-Dene, kept as a manuscript in the Franz Boas estate in the library of the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia. The manu­script forms one volume of Sapir’s Com­parative dictionary of Na-Dene languages.

Although African territories constituted, for instance in the 19th c., nearly a half of the Ottoman empire, little attention has been paid to the Ottoman Turkic and other Turkic influences (e.g. the Mamluk-Kipchak ones) in that particular region, and if any, then rather their influence on the Arabic dialects and rarely on Swahili. Yet, it appears to be a very rewarding area of study, as is for instance indicated by the fact that, among others, one can come across mixed Arabic-African languages in Africa, but with a Turkic name, e.g. Turki ~ Turku in Chad or Bimbaši-Arabic (< Ottoman T. binbašı ‘major’) in southern Sudan and in northern Uganda. The present paper reports on the author’s work on the influence of the Turkic languages on the Amharic language. The results of these studies have at present a partly working character, as this is the first work in the world devoted to this subject. Among others, the author discusses the following issues: [1] the history of Ottoman-Amharic contacts; [2] the problems with defining the concept of the “Ottoman Turkic word”; [3] the possible ways in which Turkic vocabulary penetrated the Amharic language; [4] the principles of collecting the lexical material – altogether ca. 300 items – both from the printed sources and the field work in Ethiopia; [5] the division into semantic categories according to the model by A. Kannisto (1925) and a commentary to the obtained results.

Nothing new since Lichtenstein? – Or, the idea of a common origin of Arabic and German
The following review article deals with the dilettantish attempts of cAbdal-Ḥaqq Fāḍil to connect German and Arabic in the sense of genetic language relationship. The author of the book under review is neither able to clarify whether he means “German” or “Germanic”, nor whether he wants to postulate Arabic as a kind of worldproto-language or to create a new language family. In addition, he ignores all well-known Lautgesetze (sound laws) as well as all researches in the field of historical linguistics of the last two hundred years.

Obgleich die Situation der Tungusologie in Deutschland heute als eher “bescheiden” betrachtet werden muß und sich die Frage nach dem gegenwärtigen Stand der tungusischen etymologischen Forschungen in Deutschland – so der Eindruck – gar nicht erst stellt (– scheinen solche in der Wahrnehmung der Vertreter der der Tungusologie benachbarten Disziplinen gegenwärtig überhaupt nicht betrieben zu werden –), möchte der Vf. des vorliegenden kleinen Beitrags (– ungeachtet der scheinbar hoffnungslosen Lage –) doch so etwas wie einen Zustandsbericht liefern.

Comment on V. Blažek’s review of a monograph dealing with “Macro-Altaic”
The author presents a discussion with V. Blažek’s (2006-2007) review of a monograph by M. I. Robbeets (2003).

The following short article deals with an unpublished comment W. Bang wrote on a passage from “Des Minnesangs Frühling”. Bang was sending this short note for a journal edited by E. Schröder who used it for his own comment of the same passage but without referring to Bang.

In the article the author deals with the meaning of the Buddhist-Uyghur term ürlüksüz nomlar in a passage of the so-called “Manichaean Poṭhī-book”. As many specific Buddhist terms ürlüksüz nomlar can be found in no other Manichaean-Uyghur texts and has to be translated in this context as “momentary elements of consciousness”.

In his article the author deals with the meaning of uč, which appears in lines 44 and 46 of the so-called “Manichaean Pothī-book” and not only means “end” but can also point to the “exterior / the beginning (of your path [= your teaching])” in that text.