Lisan

On 28 Nov 2001, Roger Mills <romilly@...> wrote:

wayne chevrier writes: "lisan"

Steg Belsky wrote: "In my Arabic class we were taught to use the
word /luGah/ for "language"... is there a difference between /luGah/
and /lisan/?"

Confusingly, my Indonesian dictionary gives: 1. tongue, followed by an ex.
where it means 'oral' (opp. written); 2. speech, language, with an ex.
where it means 'colloquial'. Nice lexicography!  A verb form, me/lisan/kan
means 'to recite'.

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I dunno about Arabic, but the root of lisan is the term for the physical
object, i.e., the tongue, and by extension to language (as in 'the English
tongue'). Hence Egyptian y-S-n, Hebrew leSon, Aram. leSan, etc.

I also dunno about luGah neither.

Anna J. Johnson
Mystif & Scrat Inscrutable
*************
Somtyme one of mankynde is both man & woman & suche … in englyssh is called
a scrette. - Caxton, Trevisa's Higden (1482)