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Hava Bas-Idis @havabasidis.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

Trying it in Zohar style ומה בין הכי והכי לאחר דהא חזינא אינון תנינין רברבין על רוחות צפרא

Hava Bas-Idis @havabasidis.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

Found a complete recording of the entire Samaritan Torah on YouTube by a man named מאיר ששון from Holon. Been listening and following along with Ze'ev ben-Hayyim's transcriptions from 1975. They're virtually identical down to the smallest details. Chills. www.youtube.com/watch?v=ek3q...

youtube.com

הסבר על קריאת התורה מאיר ששוני

YouTube video by אייל כהן אייל כהן

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Hava Bas-Idis @havabasidis.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

A hidden Ea-Nasir joke in the game Dune Awakening

A quest from the video game Dune Awakening. It reads:

SCRAP METTLE: COPPER REQUIRED

Issued by Sarem Urchok

Attention, Scrap Collectors! Miners! Prospectors!

There is many to be made from delivering copper ore to Griffins Reach Tradepost.

NOTE: Due to previous bad experiences, payment will be made only upon complete delivery. No advances! No partial payment! No promises of delivery tomorrow for payment today! If you find these conditions too restrictive, you can thank our friend Nasir!

(You still owe me a load of quality copper ore, Nasir!)

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Hava Bas-Idis @havabasidis.bsky.social · 24/05/2026

Deleted last post because idk how the surviving families would feel, so I'll anonymize. But I've been doing family research and discovered that my great-uncle was involved with the Nimes Committee in 1941, helping some figures knoen to me escape internment camps in unoccupied Southern France. 😲

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Hava Bas-Idis @havabasidis.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

Hot take I didn't know I had until recently is that Daniel 10-12 might be the worst reading experience in the whole Tanakh for a Hebrew reader

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Hava Bas-Idis @havabasidis.bsky.social · 16/05/2026

pe'al, pa'el, af'el, itpe'el, itpa'al, ittaf'al

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Hava Bas-Idis @havabasidis.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

The wording of this is so broad that it is not just a threat against trans people, it is threatening to bring the full force of state violence down against allies.

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Hava Bas-Idis @havabasidis.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

Me making mistakes and flying up in the air like a balloon

Zohar I:5b.

English:

"For many are those she has struck dead, and numerous are her victims." (Proverbs 7:26, NJPS) Who strikes dead? It is this sin which kills people. Who causes it? A student who is unprepared to teach, and teaches. Compassionate One save us!

Aramaic:

רַבִּים חֲלָלִים הַפִּילָה, מַן הִפִּילָה, דָּא הַהִיא חַטָּאָה דְּקָטלִית בְּנֵי נְשָׁא. מָאן גָּרִים דָּא, תַּלְמִיד חָכָם דְּלָא מָטֵי לְהוֹרָאָה וּמוֹרֶה, רַחְמָנָא לִשְׁבֵּזָן!

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ε manning (he/they) @esmanning.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

love when I get to blow my linguist friends' minds by pointing out that it's [grilled [cheese sandwich]], not [[grilled cheese] sandwich]

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Adam Bremer-McCollum @acbm.bsky.social · 07/05/2026

The Pearlsong made an appearance on the Agade list yesterday, so I'll take it as an excuse to say that you can find hard copies here and elsewhere www.hup.harvard.edu/books/978067... And you'll find the open-access pdf here cswr.hds.harvard.edu/publications...

hup.harvard.edu

The Pearlsong — Harvard University Press

The Pearlsong is an ancient poem that recounts the story of a Parthian prince sent by his parents on a mission to Egypt to retrieve a pearl from the clutches of a giant serpent. Along the way, the pri...

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Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 26/04/2026

My personal guess for an IPA rendering of the below: [yusab:ir ħo:ra:nu ya bini: yusab:ir ħo:ra:nu raʔʃaka ʕastartu ʃumu baʕli q'adq'udaka]

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Hava Bas-Idis @havabasidis.bsky.social · 26/04/2026

If I had a nickel for every philosopher named John Scotus who are remembered for their strange and heterodox theologies, I'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happened twice.

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Maarten Kossmann @maartenkossmann.bsky.social · 17/04/2026

May I introduce to you some really impressive Libyco-Berber monuments? In Bordj Hajar, close to Chemtou in Tunisia, three fragments of massive obelisks have been found. They have been reconstructed in the Chemtou museum (thanks, wikipedia!). Their original height was probably around 3.5 meters 🤯

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Seth L. Sanders @nabalkattu.bsky.social · 23/04/2026

"The hallmark impact of imperialist archaeologies was the appropriation of the other’s historical arc and its incorporation into the western one as antecedent [e.g.] ancient civilizations of the Mediterranean and Mesopotamia constructed as the cradle of (western) civilization"

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Dr. Nick Posegay @nposegay.northsky.social · 21/04/2026

1,000,000 people displaced, about 20% of Lebanon's entire population.

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Michael Israel @subcontrarian.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

Hot new historical sociolinguistics of Persian out from Cambridge Core. Seems like a good time for it probably. Kairotic even. 🐦🐦

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Hava Bas-Idis @havabasidis.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

This isn't even a joke, this is quite literally how Aramaic education works in traditional Jewish settings for those unaware. One day someone just puts the Talmud in front of you and says "You'll figure it out if you stare at it long enough". And it...kinda works.

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ariel @toomuchpiano.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

like generations of Hebrew learners before me, i will throw myself at an Aramaic text with reckless abandon, double-fisting a dictionary and some notes on morphology, and pray that the rest isn’t too different

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Hava Bas-Idis @havabasidis.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

This is a fun feature of the Targums, which render these infinitives verbatim, even though it's unidiomatic. Onqelos: ביומא דתיכול מניה ממת תמות bəyomā dətekol minneh məmāt təmut "On the day you eat of it, die you will die." It's as odd in JPA as in English, but the Targums are fond of it!

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Peter Tarras @petertarras.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

Blau's Dictionary of Mediaeval Judaeo-Arabic Texts online 👀

blau-dict.netlify.app

Blau Dictionary of Judeo-Arabic

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Hava Bas-Idis @havabasidis.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

One of the only Aramaic sentences in the Mishnah, attributed to Hillel (M Avot 6:2) beholding a skull floating in water, contemplating the cycle of violence: על דאטפת אטפוך וסוף מטיפיך יטופון "Because you drowned [people], they drowned you; and in the end, the ones who drowned you shall drown."

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Lameen Souag @lameensouag.bsky.social · 18/04/2026

A nice Punic coin from Sicily: b-ʔrṣt (*b-ʔarṣūt?) = "in the lands" A bit like Devanagari, Punic tended to hang letters from the top of the line, rather than build them up from the bottom; only a couple, like lamed, went over the top. Modern Phoenician fonts rarely convey this feel.

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Hava Bas-Idis @havabasidis.bsky.social · 19/04/2026

Visited a love one in with cancer in the ER today. The hospitalist told us that just a few days ago he had to deal with a family on the oncology floor who insisted the doctors follow directions they got from ChatGPT, which "led to catastrophe". People are following oncological advice from ChatGPT...

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Hava Bas-Idis @havabasidis.bsky.social · 18/04/2026

I promise this is going to be about Targum Onqelos

Slide from a PowerPoint presentation. Title: "Prolegomena: Pronunciation, (para)text, and authenticity". To the right is Leonardo DiCaprio in a floral Hawaiian shirt, smoking a cigarette and staring forlornly into the distance, from his role as Romeo in Baz Luhrmann's modern movie retelling of "Romeo and Juliet". Beneath him as a video clip linking to the prologue of that movie. Next to this is an old portrait of William Shakespeare, beneath which is a link to a recording of the prologue of "Romeo & Juliet" in historically reconstructed Elizabethan English pronunciation, recoreded by A.Z. Foreman.

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Dr. Chance Bonar @chancebonar.bsky.social · 17/04/2026

Was asked to fill in today to give a brief intro to Gnosticism & the Apocryphon of John Apologies in advance to students

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Dan Batovici @danbatovici.bsky.social · 16/04/2026

Strange paragraphs to write: "In JRL Syr. 10, in the left margin of fol. 304r, aligned to the top of the column, there is a transfer-sticker representing an anthropomorphic green frog dressed as a medieval soldier with breastplate, sword, and chainmail head protection, topped by a feathered hat. 1/

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Markˣ @shjsat.bsky.social · 17/04/2026

אָתָא עוֹג דְאִישְׁתֵּזֵיב מִן גוּבְרַיָא דְמִיתוּ בְּטוּבְעָנָא וּרְכַב עִילוֹי תֵיבוּתָא (!!) www.sefaria.org/Targum_Jonat...

sefaria.org

Targum Jonathan on Genesis 14:13 | Sefaria Library

And Og came, who had been spared from the giants that died in the deluge, and had ridden protected upon the top of the ark, and sustained with food by Noah;...

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Hava Bas-Idis @havabasidis.bsky.social · 17/04/2026

Targum Pseudo-Jonathan to Genesis 14:13. It just adds an entire extra paragraph ranting about the antedeluvian giant Og in the middle of the Battle of Siddim

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Hava Bas-Idis @havabasidis.bsky.social · 16/04/2026

The American Philosophical Society in 1888 going off against Germans for introducing German terminology into the sciences. From the "Reportof the Committee (D.G. Brinton, Henry Phillips, jr., Monroe B. Snyder) appointed October 21, 1887, to examine into the scientific value of Volapük".

"The presence of a number of these jargons in different parts of the world testifies to the desirability for some one simple form of discourse which could be of general adoption. Another and higher testimony to the same effect is now the need now frequently and loudly expressed for a uniform terminology in the sciences. For many years it has been urged both in this country and in Europe, that the neologisms required by the sciences be derived according to a uniform plan from the Greek, and that those heretofore obtained from Greek or Latin be brought into one general form. There is no practical difficulty about this except that which arises from the Chauvinism of some nations which are blinded by egotism or narrow notions to the welfare of the whole. Such a tendency is observable in Germany, a country once noted for its cosmopolitan sympathies. Its medical teachers, for example, have of late frequently dismissed the terms of their science derived from the Latin and Greek, in order to substitute in their place long, awkward and inharmonious Teutonic compounds. No effort at a uniform international scientific terminology can be successful if the learned in each nation be governed by national prepossessions."

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Hava Bas-Idis @havabasidis.bsky.social · 14/04/2026

A super obvious one that I somehow never noticed, גלף from Gr. glýphō. I'm so used to seeing it in the Zohar (esp in phrases like שמא קדישא גליפא 'the holy inscribed name') that I just never stopped to think about it

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Moudhy Al-Rashid (she/her) @moudhy.bsky.social · 27/03/2026

We therefore learn from this learned commentary made by a Babylonian scribe over 2000 years ago, that in the Akkadian language, the word shitti means "shit"

Photo of a cuneiform tablet with some dark spots on it.

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Hava Bas-Idis @havabasidis.bsky.social · 14/04/2026

Researching loanwords in Onqelos in preparation for teaching JPA for the first time (😵‍💫) and I never knew that זין 'weapon' is from Middle Persian zên? So what was the original name of the letter ז if not *zayn?

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ⲉⲓⲕⲟⲛ @touskonkouda.bsky.social · 06/04/2026

Does anyone know any good research papers on the phenomenon of folk linguistics and the way it intersects with ethnonationalism and ethnic writing? You know, the type that claims language X is the oldest language & the origin of all world languages?

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Hava Bas-Idis @havabasidis.bsky.social · 05/04/2026

Zoharic Aramaic and I share a mutual uncertainty on how all the different JPA and JBA demonstratives work. Just use דא for everything and hope no one notices

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Hava Bas-Idis @havabasidis.bsky.social · 04/04/2026

The virgin Semitic triliteral root vs the Chad Central Chadic Root Tesseract

Diagram from Wolff (2022) displaying different forms of diachronic root alterations in Central Chadic. The diagram is extremely complex. It describes all combinations of one to three root consonants, plus the possible positions of the vowel *a.

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Lameen Souag @lameensouag.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

Imagine a world where, when a state openly tried to do ethnic cleansing - on land that it doesn't even pretend to own, to boot - the rest of the world actually tried to prevent it. Crazy utopianism, I know.

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SamuelJBeer @samueljbeer.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

It’s wild how much power language affiliation narratives can have—and how many afterlives they can live!

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Hava Bas-Idis @havabasidis.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

This has also been me recently (definitely wasting my time) trying to track down the origins of some Egypto-Bantu crankery

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aohsu @aohsusometimesy.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

Unpopular opinion but there should only be eight Nvidia chips total, and seven of them should be employed folding proteins to cure diseases and stuff and the eighth you have to check out from the library

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Hava Bas-Idis @havabasidis.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

No one I have ever asked knows where the "historical linguistics can only go back 10,000 years" thing comes from. I've heard it from professors, I've read it in papers. Sometimes the number is 10,000 or 7,000 or 12,000 but the core idea is that the comparative method has a specific time limit.

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Hava Bas-Idis @havabasidis.bsky.social · 31/03/2026

Just saw one of my translations being quoted out in the wild for the first time :D it's some racist conspiracy nutjob on Reddit :(

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Benjamin Suchard @bnuyaminim.bsky.social · 27/03/2026

OK, so from Kuntillet ‘Ajrud, a northern-Israelite-associated site in Sinai(!), we've got some Yahwistic plaster inscriptions in Phoenician(!) script in what looks like good Judahite(!) Hebrew… how are we supposed to classify this stuff??

Colour photograph of a black ink Phoenician inscription on a fragment of pinkish plaster. Transliterated, it reads ... רכ יממ וישבעו... , next line היטב יהוה ...

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