Re: Good/Beneficient (was: More Nyenya'a)

On Sat, 20 Oct 2001, William Annis wrote:

>         Yes, but in the Arabic, not English, where we have two
> latinate words beneficent, "good-doing/making," and merciful, fairly
> different meanings in my mind.  In the Arabic, the words are clearly
> related, but I have no idea what the real differences in meaning were
> to the prophet Muhammad and his companions.  It'd be interesting to
> see how that is translated in languages with a large number of Muslim
> speakers.  How close can you stay to the Arabic and still be
> understood?

Hm. I'll see if I can obtain a Koran written in Serbian (...or, should I
say, Bosnian, which is, like Croatian, jekavski dialect, but using
"Serbian" words like "voz" and "hljeb" instead of the "Croatian" words
"vlak" and "kruh"), and see what it says. Who knows, it might
help. Another thing: what exactly is that phrase is Arabic?

---frank

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