TIL: There are actually TWO sets of Indo-Arabic numerals in Unicode 😅

Old Georgian words of the day (from a reading-session, delightful as always, w/ @chiaweilin.bsky.social & @avzaagzonunaada.bsky.social) ლახუარი lance დანაკი knife, sword შეგინება defile, pollute ჩჩჳლი tender, soft, gentle ჟივილი chirp, tweet, chatter 1/3

TIL a nice case of reanalysis in Swahili: For kitabu 'book', ki- is reinterpreted as the prefix of class 7. The plural of kitabu is therefore vitabu, with the prefix vi- of the corresponding plural class 8. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swahili...

github.com/chiaweilinun... I'm compiling a digital corpus of Tangut texts. The first batch of texts is extracted from academic publications in open-access journals and Academia.edu. If you'd like to join our transcription project, don't hesitate to send me a message :)

GitHub - chiaweilinunil/LCDTT-tangut: Lausanne Corpus of Digital Tangut Texts

Lausanne Corpus of Digital Tangut Texts. Contribute to chiaweilinunil/LCDTT-tangut development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

Tangut word of the day: 𘀟𘈷𗶇𘊣𗅆𘃡𗡶 推定胎兒男女法 “Method for determing fetal sex"

Some #Arabic words from this morning's reading: حدّة /ḥidda/ "fury" حظّ /ḥaẓẓ/ "fate, lot, share" اعجاب /ʾiʿǧāb/ "pride" كبرياء /kibriyāʾ/ "arrogance" كليم الله /kalīm ʾAllāh/ "mouthpiece of God" (epithet for Moses) تواضع /tawāḍuʿ/ "humility, lowliness" اتّضاع /ʾittiḍāʿ/ "humility, lowliness"

Old Georgian word of the day: მამათმავლობა mamatmavloba 'to be homosexual' მამათმავლობაჲ mamatmavlobay 'homosexuality' მამათმავალი mamatmavali 'homosexual' literally მამათ mamat 'fathers' + მავალი 'going' -> 'one who goes to the fathers'

Some nouns rel. to smithing in Old Uyghur from U 168 1r 9-13: /urdun/ anvil /bazgan/ hammer /kısgač/ tongs /takı ančulayu kaltı urdun bazgan kısgač, kim käntü ol ok tämirän etilmiš ol, yana kamag tämiräg käntü yančar/ turfan.bbaw.de/dta/u/images... ET ⬇️

In his new article, "Current Trends in Digital Corpora and Manuscript Archives of Classical Ethiopic (Ge’ez)", @somiyagawa.bsky.social writes about several digital initiatives that are transforming access to Classical Ethiopic (Ge'ez). Link below ⬇️

Longyu Zhang (Ghent University) and I are thinking about initiating a Tangut working group in the style of a Transcribathon or a crowdsourced transcription project, in which we collaborate to produce an open dataset of published Tangut text editions or manuscript images.* 1/3

Weekly Georgian Etymology: ღრუბელი ğrubeli 'cloud', from Old Georgian ႶႰႳႡႤႪႨ ğrubeli, from Palaeo-Georgian *ğruebeli, participle of Georgian-Zan *ğru- rumble, growl. Many languages' words for atmospheric phenomena come from verbs of sensing; it originally meant 'thunder cloud'.

77 Κλειώ τ᾽ Εὐτέρπη τε Θάλειά τε Μελπομένη τε /kleːɔ́ː t euté̞rpɛː te̞ tʰáleːá te̞ me̞lpo̞mé̞nɛː te̞/ Kleio and Euterpe and Thalia and Melpmene, | – – | – – | – ⏑ ⏑ | – ⏑ ⏑ | – ⏑ ⏑ | – ⏑ |

I’ve always thought it would be more fun to teach Pali using Sinhalese and Southeast Asian scripts rather than relying solely on Romanized script, so I compiled a list of electronic resources for the Pali Canon in different scripts :) 1/5

Arabic words of the day: jiḏr جذر (pl. ʾajḏār اجذار) '(square) root' murabbaʿ 'square' ḍilʿ ضلع (pl. ʾaḍlāʿ أضلاع) 'side (of a square)' zāwiyah زاوية (pl. zawāyā زوايا) 'angle' saṭḥ سطح 'surface' wa-ḏālika mā ʾaradnā nubayyina وذلك ما اردنا ان نبين 'and this is what we want to demonstrate'

Generated by Gemini. I always find the nature- and agriculture-based month names in Balto-Slavic very poetic, so I asked Gemini to create a table using data from Wiktionary.

🍄‍🟫🍄 in Syriac and Arabic, from Bar Bahlul, col. 1536 (citing ܪܒܢ /rabb-an/ "our teacher" = Ḥunayn b. Isḥāq) ܦܛܘܪ̈ܝܬܐ /peṭṭoryåṯå/ (pl; sg is ܦܛܘܪܬܐ /peṭṭortå/) فطر /fuṭr/ (coll.)

Check out this thread and all the quote posts and their threads. Here’s my 2 cents which comes from my years doing machine learning work for Coptic lit and language. I have submitted 2 grant proposals recently for Coptic machine translation leveraging LLMs, into English and Arabic+

Sarah E. Bond@sarahebond.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Anyways, the DH community + Classics are going to have to have a long discussion on the (lack of) ethics and IP morality of using AI (which has stolen countless translations published by humans) alongside 19th century Latin and Greek translations. We haven’t had that conversation yet, but we should.

Weekly Georgian Etymology: ალბათ albat 'probably', from Middle Georgian, from Persian البته albatte of course, from Arabic الْبَتَّةَ al-batta decision, from Proto-Semitic *BTT cut off, sever, from Afro-Asiatic *bit/but cut off, break. The initial al- is a fossilized article.

Georgian/Armenian phrases of the day: եւ մինչեւ ցայս վայր հայերէն էր լեզուն Վրաց. 'until this moment Armenian was the language of the Georgians.' აქამომდის ქართლოსიანთა ენა სომხური იყო, რომელსა ზრახვიდეს§ 'until this time the language of the Kartlosians was Armenian, in which they conversed.'

Sanskrit words of the day: कार्किन् karkin 'Cancer (zodiac)' <- Greek καρκίνος कुलीर kulīra 'crab' From Yavanajātaka 1.17 (ed. & tr. David Pingree) cf. zodiac-edit.fly.dev/6343?search=...

In our new article, "Loss by Omission: GenAI Summarization Tools and History Knowledge", Edward A. S. Ross critically examines text summarization with different commercial models (ChatGPT 5.1, Claude 4.5, M365 Copilot), using the Pali Milindapañhā as the test case. Link below ⬇️

Old Armenian wotd մուրճ, -ոց /murč/ hammer as (2x) in PO 5 462.10-11 Հրամայեաց Ներոն արքայն զի մրճօք կտրեսցեն զձեռսն եւ յոյժ աշխատեցան դահիճքն եւ մուրճքն խորտակեցան "Nero the king ordered them to sever their hands w/ hammers, & the executioners toiled away, but the hammers got smashed to pieces"

Adam Bremer-McCollum@acbm.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Arabic word of the day مطرق، مطرقة ج مطارق /miṭraq(ah)/, pl /maṭāriq/ "hammer" 🔨 as in PO 16 228.6 فامر ان يبسط علی الارض ويضرب بالمطارق التي بيد الجند "he commanded that he be stretched out on the ground and beaten with the hammers the soldiers had"

Old Georgian word of the day თავს-დება "bear, endure" as in Acts of Thekla, Abuladze, 108.27-30 და რამეთუ არა თავს-ვიდევ მე ცოლებაჲ თემეროზისა ქმრისა ჩემისაჲ, გამომჴადა მე ქალაქისა ჩემისაგან "since I didn't endure being married to T., my spouse, he expelled me from my city"

Old Georgian word of the day წინასწარმეტყუელი "prophet" as in Life of Kartli (ed. Rapp), 18.26-19.1 რამეთუ მას ჟამსა არა იყო წინასწარმეტყუელი და მოძღუარი სჯულისა ჭეშმარიტისა, რომელმან ასწავა და ამხილა "because at that time there was no prophet & teacher of the true religion to teach & reveal it"

Handwritings of great scholars: 1. Sanskrit-devanāgarī: David Pingree (ed.), Yavanajātaka 2. Arabic & Greek: Manfred Ullmann, Wörterbuch zu den griechisch-arabischen Übersetzungen des 9. Jahrhunderts 3. Tangut: К. Б. Кепинг, Тангутский язык: морфология

Arabic word of the day مطرق، مطرقة ج مطارق /miṭraq(ah)/, pl /maṭāriq/ "hammer" 🔨 as in PO 16 228.6 فامر ان يبسط علی الارض ويضرب بالمطارق التي بيد الجند "he commanded that he be stretched out on the ground and beaten with the hammers the soldiers had"

In our new article, Saniya Irfan argues that digital humanities should begin with voice, not just technical infrastructure. Saniya proposes the framework of “decolonial data narratives,” where data are understood as testimony, memory, and lived experience. Read more on our blog! (link below⬇️)

Weekly Georgian Etymology: კარადა ḳarada 'wardrobe', modern metathesis and reanalysis of *ḳardarebi wardrobes, from late Ottoman Turkish قاردروب gardırop or Russian гардероб, from French garde-robe, lit. protect-robe, from Frankish *wardōn protect and *rauba booty, robbery.

Arabic word of the day تلألأ /talaʔlaʔa/ "shimmer, glimmer, sparkle, glisten" (cf. لؤلؤ /luʔluʔ/ "pearls") as in PO 16 214.8 فابصر فيه ضِيا يتلالا قدّام القطعة المنقطعة منه "then he noticed a brightness there shimmering in front of the piece that had been cut off the cross"

In our new article, Zach Butler introduces Xeirographa (www.xeirographa.com), a platform that teaches users how to read Greek manuscripts developed by Jacob Peterson (www.jacobwpeterson.com). Read more on our website! 🔗 digitalorientalist.com/2026/03/06/x...