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From Siwa to Goulmima: A Date Palm Lexicon

  Some time ago, while I was working on a previous blog entry devoted to date palm tree cultivation in Goulmima (from a text in the A. Roux archives) , I leafed through a number of dictionaries, looking for words relating to said tree. I found little that was specific to the date palm, compared to the doum palm ( Hyphaene thebaica ). Benamara’s Figuig dictionary could have offered more, but without knowing tifiyyeyt lexicon, I had no entry points. As for Amaniss’s unpublished dictionary, there is some date palm vocabulary, with some overlap with Goulmima’s, but sometimes with a different realization. I initially decided to build a spreadsheet, using the ar.wikipedia page for “ نخلة التمر ” as a source vocabulary list, search through Chafik, and map onto the bilingual list the vocabulary of my home region. Unfortunately, in Chafik, I found more doum than Phoenix dactylifera . The same goes for the IRCAM dictionary, as well.   With the recent publication of Valentina Schiattarella

Izli n Edmond Jabès [Tasuɣlt]


A loose indirect translation of a short poem by Edmond Jabès* from The Book of Shares in Rosmarie Waldrop's English version (1989). I do not have the French at hand. I find it a fitting opening, when silence and words are both necessary.

ifsti

        g idrizn (~tasuġlt) n Edmond Jabès

Tidt n tudrt tlla g ifsti
da nttam
ifsti, nhaggum ad digs nfsy
maka, ur da nttawḍ ifsti
ġas s ubrid n wawal—
awal daġ ittawi s iġzr.


R. Waldrop's Text:

God's truth is in silence.
To fall silent in turn, with the hope of dissolving into it.
But we become aware of it only through words.
And words, alas, drive us ever farther from our goal.


* Edmond Jabès, Le Livre du Partage (Gallimard, 1987), translated by Rosmarie Waldrop, The Book of Shares (University of Chicago Press, 1989)

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