Talk:Old Arabic

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Old Arabic article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Languages Low‑importance

	Language portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Languages, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of languages on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.LanguagesWikipedia:WikiProject LanguagesTemplate:WikiProject Languageslanguage articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Arab world Low‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Arab world, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of the Arab world on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Arab worldWikipedia:WikiProject Arab worldTemplate:WikiProject Arab worldArab world articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Ancient Near East Low‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Ancient Near East, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Ancient Near East related articles on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Ancient Near EastWikipedia:WikiProject Ancient Near EastTemplate:WikiProject Ancient Near EastAncient Near East articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Bayer

The oldest attestation of the Arabic language goes back to Bayer, Jordan written in Ancient North Arabian script …

This sentence was introduced 2021 Apr 08 by Kamal90012345 (who has not been active since). What the heck is Bayer? Is there a place by that name? —Tamfang (talk) 21:13, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Hm. Here's the actual ¶ from Al-Jallad that Kamal90012345 is drawing from:

The earliest documented Arabic speakers inhabited North Arabia and the southern Levant, perhaps centered on and around the Ḥawrān, in the early 1st millennium BCE. Little about this stage of the language is known; nearly all surviving fragments consist of personal names and, perhaps, a single proper noun. One inscription from this period and region -- from Bāyir, Jordan at the upper end of the Wādī Sirḥān -- has been discovered: a short prayer in an undetermined Ancient North Arabian alphabet (Hayajneh, Ababneh, and Khraysheh 2015). The text invokes in the Arabic language the gods of ancient Edom, Moab, and Ammon, suggesting a degree of cultural interaction between the Arabic-speakers of the eastern steppe and the Canaanite-speaking kingdoms east of the Jordan.

There's a footnote at the end of the first sentence which cites two works by Israel Ephʿal, one by MCA Macdonald, and one by himself. It seems to me like this slightly—& probably without ill intent—misrepresents Al-Jallad's words: He doesn't say that the inscription from Bāyir is the oldest attestation of Arabic. Rather, he says it's the earliest inscription from the period of earliest attestation. There is other onomastic material from the same period, & Al-Jallad does not compare these materials in age. Pathawi (talk) 23:54, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I'm going to edit that sentence to match the source, but actually I don't think it belongs in the lead ¶. Pathawi (talk) 23:55, 5 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]