Talk:جعة

Etymology

@Metaknowledge: Following the remarkable etymology of شَطَّة (šaṭṭa), I wonder, although the present word is older: Is this word for beer from Hausa gíyàa (“beer”)? In ethnological works this is often described as an indigenous beverage of millet (contrasted with a word they write, while they write this giya, barukatu, the former being a cold and the latter a hot brew). We don’t have native words for alcoholic beverages in Arabic anyway, it appears. And this Arabic word is tendentially African Arabic. And I see Arabic ع (ʕ) ends up as ' or zero in Hausa. Fay Freak (talk) 16:10, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

@Fay Freak: I'm surprised that I can't find any other mention of this etymology, even in Souag's article about this kind of borrowing (well, except for Orel & Stolbova's ridiculous attempt to erect a PAA item based on the two words alone). What is the evidence internal to Arabic that it is of African origin, however? —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 17:40, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

@Metaknowledge: I don’t know much, thaŧ’s why I asked, maybe you know more about the Hausa. Words with the voiced pharyngeal fricative are a bitch to search, if one searches transcriptions to find discussions. The question also concerns that other word.

I note that I have never experienced جِعَة (jiʕa) being mentioned in medieval Arabic contexts – I have worked through Arabic terms for alcoholic beverages for Wiktionary, right, and feel like I have read the bulk of the German 19th century philologists’ lexicographic works on Classical Arabic, but this word never occurred to me, and the absence of a word in older Arabic is well the reason why discussions lack, for newer Arabic used to be snubbed. It lacks in the core medieval lexicographer’s works, too – which are digitized at lisaan.net –, although Freytag ascribes the source of his word to “Ğawharī”, which must be a late addition to his manuscript or one of the “elaborations” of it mentioned by the Wikipedia article on Jawharī or something like that, if see correctly that it is not included there. In lisaan.net it occurs in Muḥammad al-Fattinī, Majmaʿ Biḥār al-Anwār fī Gharāʾib al-Tanzīl wa Laṭāʾif al-Akhbār (d. 1578 CE) and Fayrūzabādī’s Qāmūs; well after the Arabs have penetred the Great Desert. There defined as something specific, a wine of barley (نَبيذُ الشَّعِيرِ)! (That the reading جعة in that sunna locus (for some reason vocalized with fatḥa) is correct is very doubtful, the same forbidments occur with other items, as the ones cited on قَسِّيّ (qassiyy), and the list should only contain apparel; the alleged **نَبِيذ الْجِعَة (**nabīḏ al-jiʕa) occurs only in a few Islamic books, indicating well this is misread).

It occurs in a list of Arabisms in foreign languages by Dāwud Sallūm, but this is of course because of the general presumption that Arabic is the donor if a similar word is present elsewhere, probably not a high quality book; the books listing a great amount of Persian vocabulary present in Arabic are also often mistaken.

So internal to Arabic is that it is a young word and that all the other words for alcoholic beverages and the more so for beer, which they didn’t even have, aren’t native either, while the oldest dictionaries define it even more specifically? And internals to Hausa seem more promising. Fay Freak (talk) 20:08, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

This is very promising, enough IMO to mention it in the entry, but I would like to do better if possible. The idea that the Hausa is from Arabic is clearly wrong, but that is all the expertise I can offer, and I cannot find the word in Songhay or Kanuri. I suspect the pattern might be clearer were we to have a map of "beer" words in Arabic (a pity the Wortatlas doesn't provide one, but we should make our own for the soon-to-come time when Arabic has dialectal maps on Wiktionary). —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 21:40, 25 September 2020 (UTC)