This paper examines the formal prehistory of the cardinal numerals above “ten” from Proto-Iranian to Ossetic. Despite the widespread adoption in Ossetic of a vigesimal system of counting and semantic shift of “thousand” and “ten thousand” to generalized terms for large amounts, the evolution of these numerals may be reconstructed in detail. Noteworthy features are the general conservatism of the teens; retention of the nasal from Proto-Indo-Iranian in Digor insæj ‘twenty’, ærtin ‘thirty’ (cf. Vedic viṁśatí-, triṁśát-); survival of an older variant of ‘forty’ in Digor cæppors*, Iron cyppurs ‘Christmas’ < ‘(festival) of forty (days)’; and extension of Proto-Iranian *-āti from ‘seventy’ and ‘eighty’ to ‘fifty’ and ‘sixty’. Digor be(u)ræ, Iron biræ ‘many, much; very’ continues a thematized plural *baiwar-ai of Proto-Iranian *baiwar / n- ‘ten thousand’; if sædæ ‘hundred’ and ærzæ (ærʒæ) ‘countless number, myriad’ < ‘thousand’ also go back to preforms in *-ai, they were either remodeled after *baiwar-ai or generalized from duals, e.g. *duwai ćatai ‘two hundred’. The limited evidence for earlier stages of the language is given full consideration, including Sarmatian onomastics, word lists in early modern European sources, and the testimony of loanwords.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The research for this article has been supported by grant no. 2019/35/B/HS2/01273: “Ossetic historical grammar and the dialectology of early Iranian” from the Polish National Science Centre (NCN).

The purpose of this article is to explain the principle behind practice tests based on authentic short stories in English, describe their construction, and outline their ap­plication which aims to increase student knowledge and skills in a foreign language. The methodology employs digital practice tests created following a set of criteria for test development based on Bloom’s taxonomy. The results of the study indicate certain benefits of the practice tests: short stories introduce new vocabulary and the tests provide reinforcement, which both facilitates and motivates the students.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This paper is supported by grant MU21-FMI-015 from the NPD at the University of Plovdiv “Paisii Hilendarski”, financed by the Bulgarian Ministry of Education and Science.

Although the earliest Turkisms that entered Arabic go back to the 9th century – when the Arabs began establishing regular contact with speakers of Turkic languages – a significant number of Turkish loans in both written and spoken Arabic only dates from the time of the Ottoman Empire, which in the course of its expansion conquered and for centuries ruled a large part of the Arab world. This paper aims to examine the words of Turkish origin found in the dialects spoken in Egypt and part of the Middle East (Syria, Lebanon, Palestine), i.e. the Arabophone regions that have been most exposed to Turkish influence for historical and cultural reasons. Attempts have also been made to provide information about the etymology of the Ottoman-Turkish words (interestingly, as some of these come from Arabic, the Egyptian, Syrian, etc., words borrowed actually prove to be backborrowings).

In preference to the common assumption that Óðinn’s ravens daily gather general in­formation from around the world and report back to their master, this study identifies their principal informants as the newly dead (recently slain warriors and hanged men), and the information gathered not simply wisdom but tactical intelligence needed for the eventual cataclysmic battle of Ragnarǫk, in which Óðinn’s troop of fallen warriors, the Einherjar of Valhǫll (named in Gylfaginning in the same context as the ravens), will also participate. The study addresses the central questions of chthonic wisdom, of how the dead (are presumed to) know what is hidden from the living, and why Snorri, in contrast to the skalds, paints an innocuous picture of the ravens.