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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 As for Amaniss’s unpublished dictionary, there is some date palm vocabulary, with some overlap with Goulmima’s, but sometimes with a different realization.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

Tafirt (Tamdyazt)

Hamid Ouyachi

Qalam2

tafirt

mayd d ittllwun
ad issgrd
tussist n yils
igan tiwnt g imi n umxlul ?

laẓ ayd yuḍṛn arktu n wawal—
taġawsa isrfn g lhḍṛt n yils.

amẓ
talluḥt, tirrist, ssmx, d uġanim ;
accad igzm azzuġr n ufus :

bA… bA…

…tafirt, asirw n tguriwin
afaras n wafa ikrzn igr mzzuġ.

dġi,
iwa sfirs ism imṛṛẓi !


               My rough englishing of the poem :

Syllable

Who will come
to cradle
the rough tongue
stitching the bastard’s bleat ?

Hunger kneads breathwords—
the thing laddered in a game of tongues.

Clutch
tablet, clay, suint and reed,
lash and fire etched in every stroke :

bA…bA…

...syllabic pain furrows skull and membrane
stills the other tongue.

Now
trace the broken name.

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