PhDniX's blog

Hṃṃṃ emphatic *m in Proto-Berber?

Berber languages share a feature with Semitic in that plural formations are a bit... weird. You have suffix formations, internal formation (by insertion of a before the last consonant) a combination of both (though arguably only in a few languages) and then there's the suffix formations that have emphatisation of a root consonant in the plural.

A good example of this emphatisation is the word for 'dog' in Central Atlas Berber sg. iydi pl. iyḍan. As you can see, this word has masculine plural suffix -n, vowel change of the final vowel i to a and also change of the consonant from d to ḍ.

The phoneme /ṃ/ is nonexistent in most Berber languages, but Zénaga has a [ṃ], people have wanted to analyse this consonant as subphonemic but have thus far been unsuccesful. What's more, is that some words actually show emphatisation in the plural with the consonant m.

As is found in the word for 'beard': sg. taʔmmärt pl. tuʔṃṃuṛaʔn 'beard'. Central Atlas Berber sg. tamart pl. timira. It seems clear that this is the same morphological process as the emphatisation that we find in other Berber languages. If this is true, than surely /ṃ/ should be reconstructed for the Proto-Berber languages as *ṃ.

Zénaga also has an emphatic [f̣] (that is a f with a dot below it, fonts aren't kind for such foreign characters). I'd have to search for plurals with a similar alternation, but I expect to find something similar as with the *ṃ.

You are my only one! #6

Well then! The last part of this translation. I still have some parts that need clarification (especially in episode #5).

I'd like to know this from you, the reader: Did you enjoy this series?
Should I do it more often, but then with different languages and stuff?
It's not as academically interesting, but on the other hand it's working with actual language for a change, rather than endlessly reconstructing forms without a real connection to the language.

Let me know! Also open to suggestions.

4.
wc-ayi-dd fus-ennem,  mayemmi axemmem
a ḏam-yeεjeḇ řḥař aḏ ifaaḥ wuř-ennem
beεεeḏ i yewḏan ḏaneγ-yaanin řhemm
εemmaas a nemseḇḏa εemmaas a nendem

wc-ayi-dd fus-ennem,  mayemmi axemmem
wc-ayi-dd wc is the imperative 2sg. of 'give' -ayi is the dative 1sg. pronoun -dd deictic particle 'towards here'
fus-ennem, 'hand'+ 2sg.f possesive suffix.
mayemmi 'why'
axemmem Verbal noun 'thinking' derived from xemmem 'to think'

Give me your hand, why (all this) thinking?

a ḏam-yeεjeḇ řḥař aḏ ifaaḥ wuř-ennem
a future
ḏam-yeεjeḇ 3sg. of  εjeḇ from Arabic εajiba 'to wonder, marvel be astonished'. ḏam is the fronted dative 2sg. suffix.
řḥař from Arabic ḥāl'condition, state, situation, etc.'
aḏ future, not sure why this allomorph shows up here, this is the usual form you see in other berber languages.
ifaaḥ 3sg. 'to be glad' from Arabic fariḥa
wuř-ennem 'your heart'
It will astonish you, your heart will be glad

beεεeḏ i yewḏan ḏaneγ-yaanin řhemm
beεεeḏ 'to keep away' in the imperative. From Arabic baεuda 'to keep away'. The geminate Ayn is strange, could simply be a Berber process or this word could be from the Arabic stem II which means 'to remove someone, to banish, to exile'. Or I'm simply hearing a geminate while it isn't there. Currently leaning to the last option.
i yewḏan particle i 'to' and Annexed State of iwdan 'people' plural of
ḏaneγ-yaanin ḏaneγ is the fronted dative 1pl. suffix  -aneγ , yaanin is a participle, surprisingly no i is found that marks the raltive class, yet this must be one. I'm not sure what the original root of this verb is, arni maybe? Either way I can't find it, but it means something like 'to cause'
řhemm 'troubles' from Arabic hamm 'concerns, troubles'.

Stay away from the people who cause us trouble.

εemmaas a nemseḇḏa εemmaas a nendem
εemmaas 'never'  Before I interpreted this as εemmaa + as but that definitely doesn't work here, so apparently this whole construction means 'never'. What exactly the elemen s is in this word is unclear
a future
nemseḇḏa 1sg. of the verb mm-ss-bda with reciprocal prefix mm, and causative prefix ss on the verb bda. Which looks a lot like Arabic 'abada 'to say' but has the meaning 'to go apart'

εemmaas 'never'
a future
nendem 1sg. of ndem 'to regret' from Arabic nadima with the same meaning.

Never will we go apart and Never will we regret

You are my only one! #5

3.
ṯzeḏγeḏ-ayi ḏi řefkaa,  řeεqeř waa γari ca
uřa ḏ uř-inu qa waa yedji ḏi ca.
ṯcedciγ i yiṯran iḍes waa tteṭṭṣeγ ca
qqaaγ-as a rebbi a cem-ẓaaγ ṯiwecca

ṯzeḏγeḏ-ayi ḏi řefkaa,  řeεqeř waa γari ca
ṯzeḏγeḏ-ayi we've had this root before zḏeγ in 2sg. present. 'to live' ayi is the dative 1sg. suffix.
ḏi řefkaa, ḏi is 'in' řefkaa is a loan from Arabic afkār plural of fikr 'thinking, contemplation, thought'
řeεqeř from Arabic εaql  'sense, sentience, rationality, mind, intellect'
waa ...  ca negative + 'something' which carries the meaning 'not at all'
γari γar 'with' +1sg suffix -i. Typically used for possesive sentences.

You live (to me) in (my) thoughts, I don't have rationality at all (anymore).

uřa ḏ uř-inu qa waa yedji ḏi ca.
uřa 'also'
ḏ Predicate marker
uř-inu 'my heart'
qa typical Riffian particle which defies a good description. Let's call it a particle that makes a sentence more 'emphatic'.
 waa ... ca 'not at all'
yedji 3sg. imperfect of iři,  idji (<illi) 'to be'  But I distinctly here a schwa rather than idji.. so not sure.
ḏi I am not sure about this word. Is this the pre-pronominal form of i 'in'? If so does ca count as a pronoun?

The whole meaning means 'My heart doesn't get any rest at all'. I don't see how it's supposed to work. Very happy to hear any suggestions.

ṯcedciγ i yiṯran iḍes waa tteṭṭṣeγ ca
ṯcedciγ Couldn't find this word in any dictionary, but it's 1sg of a verb with means something like 'to bewail'.
i yiṯran 'to the stars' An nexed state of iṯran which is the plural of iṯri
waa  ... ca 'not at all'
iḍes tteṭṭṣeγ Maybe hard to see, but this is a Figura Etymologica
iḍes is 'dream'. tteṭṭṣeγ is the imperfect derrivation of this root with typical imperfect prefix tt- and gemination of the root consonant ḍ to ṭṭ. Ending is 1sg.

I bewail the starts, I don't dream the dream at all anymore.

qqaaγ-as a rebbi a cem-ẓaaγ ṯiwecca
qqaaγ-as Imperfect of ini 'to say' in 1sg. With dative 3sg. pronoun encliticised.
a rebbi 'o god!'
a future
cem-ẓaaγ 'to see' aorist 1sg. with fronted clitic pronoun cem for 2sg.f.
ṯiwecca 'tomorrow'

I say to him "O god!" will I see you again tomorrow?

You are my only one! #4

2.
uř-ennem marra yexwa s lḥubb a ṯ-εemaaγ
a ḏiyes zeḏγeγ i řeḇḏa, necc εemaa s a ḇeḏřeγ
amma  řxaḍaa-nnem, min ṯexseḏ a ṯ-eggeγ*
waa ḏayi-qqaa "lla", a xam-buheřyeγ

uř-ennem marra yexwa s lḥubb a ṯ-εemaaγ
uř-ennem heart + 2sg.f. possesive suffix.
marra 'if'
yexwa Loaned verb from Arabic xawā 'to be empty' 3sg. m.
 s lḥubb 'with love'
 a ṯ-εemaaγ 'to fill' a is the marker of the future, t is the direct object 3sg. m. pronoun in fronted position due to a. εemaaγ is 1sg loaned from Arabic εamara 'to fill'. My informant actually pronounced this word with an /r/.

If your heart is empty I will fill it with love.

a ḏiyes zeḏγeγ i řeḇḏa necc, εemaas a ḇeḏřeγ
a marker of the future
ḏiyes  this is the fronted preposition i 'in' in its prepronominal form ḏiy, with the 3sg.m pronoun -s.
zeḏγeγ 1sg. 'to live in' 
i řeḇḏa, i is the locative preposition řeḇḏa is a loanword from Arabic al-abad 'always' with metathesis of the second a. I'm not sure if that is a Morrocan Arabic feature or whether this is Berber's doing.  It's weird that Berber has a for a short Arabic a  as these are reduced to schwa in Morrocan Arabic too.
'forever' is the eventual meaning.

Check the comment section for some comments by Lameen Souag on this word.

necc Independent 1sg pronoun. This pronoun must be a topicalisation belonging to the first of the two sentence, placed on the right side of it. If it was a topicalisation placed on the left side of the second sentence, the verb would've had to be a participle.

εemaa as a ḇeḏřeγ this construction too me ages to figure it out. But I think I have it now.
εemaa which must be related to the word 'to fill' too means 'never'. Apparently this word attracts object suffixes.

Lameen Souag suggested that Arabic εumr is the underlying form, which formally works perfectly, yet the meaning of this word is 'life(span)', which seems closer to the meaning 'forever' than 'never'.

as must then be the dative 3sg.m. suffix in fronted position.
a must be the future marker which also takes fronting, but apparently is ignored due to εemaa
ḇeḏřeγ 1sg. loan from Arabic badala 'to replace'.

The full meaning will then be:
I will always live in it me, I will never replace it.

waa ḏayi-qqaa "lla", a xam-buheřyeγ
waa Negative particle that attracts verb suffixes. Also seen in other berber languages as ur or wer which explains the long vowel.
ḏayi fronted form 1sg. dative suffix -ayi in its fronted  form.
qqaa One of the few of Riffian's suppletive verbs.This is the Imperfect form of the verb ini' 'to say'. For imperatives usually the Aorist is used, but negative imperatives take the imperfect. In both case the 2sg. does not take any suffixes.
"lla", no
a future marker
 xam-buheřyeγ
xam is the prepronominal form xa of the preposition x 'on'. This is typical, we find zzi 'from' besides zzay, and γer besides γar (though invisible in these forms in Riffian, when suffixed we'd expect γri if the underlying prepronominal form was γer but we get γari so it must be there).
the suffix is the pronominal suffix -m 2sg.f.
buheřyeγ is a denominal verb from abuhali a Morrocan Arabic word for 'idiot'. It means 'to go crazy' 1sg,
It was interesting to hear that my informant would use the l variant for abuhali, but the ř in te verb.

Do not say "no" to me, I will go crazy over you (litt. on you)

A Heart full of Proto-Afro-Asiatic

Last friday I held a talk on my upcoming paper on the Glottal stop in Proto-Berber, and completely unrelated to some extent, I got to talk about cognates in Proto-Berber and Proto-Semitic.

I personally feel this is one of the most difficult things about PAA, it's obvious from a grammatical point of view that Proto-Berber and Proto-Semitic are very closely related, yet somehow the cognates are hard to find.

As I was talking with Sasha Lubotsky about this issue, I gave one obvious cognate PB *īls 'tongue' besides PS *lisān. And said: "But for instance the word for 'heart' is clearly unrelated. You have ul beside qalb." then I fell silent for a second and realised that in languages that retain the PB phoneme *β like Mali touareg ulh this word has it at the and of the word.

And let's be honest *ūlβ besides *qalb does look rather similar doesn't it?

Maybe the Proto-Berber word should be reconstructed as *uwlβ (or *wVylVH/m- (just kidding)) instead. Is it imaginable that a PAA phoneme shifted to *q in one language and *w to the other? What would that phoneme be then? *qʷ maybe? Wikipedia doesn't mention such a phoneme, but then again, it's Wikipedia.

I know next to nothing about PAA, because I honestly think it's too early to seriously work on it, and as long as Starostin & Co. are the leading voices in the field, it's bound to be way to riddled with quackery and nonsense.

That's not going to stop me from presenting this nice little possible etymology. But let it be clear that I am by no means implying that this is certain, we'll need a lot more *q ~ *ø or *q ~ *w correspondences to be certain about this reconstruction.

I personally think it's a good idea for Proto-Afro-Asiatic reconstruction to limit oneself to just Berber and Semitic, which are probably the likeliest candidates of forming a subgrouping within PAA. Proto-Berbero-Semitic so to speak.

Just as a sidenote the plural of 'heart' in Arabic is qulūb while Berber languages have plural extension -aw-en. Maybe this semivocalic quality of the extension as something to do with the Arabic u's in the broken plural? Then again many monosyllabic Berber words, especially body parts have the aw extension in the plural.

 Any thoughts?

You are my only one! #3

REFRAIN

cemm, weḥḏem-inu, a zinn-inu
i izeḏγen ḏaxař  i wuř-inu
cemm weḥḏem-inu, ṯuḏaaṯ-inu
ettmenniγ akiḏem i γa ṯeεḏu

cemm, weḥdem-inu, a zinn-inu

cemm, extrapositioned 2sg.f. pronoun

weḥdem-inu loan preposition from Arabic waḥd 'only' with the same meaning. -em is the 2sg.f. dependant pronoun marker and -inu the possesive 1sg. pronoun

a zinn-inu. a is simply an exclamation 'o!'. zinn is beauty

You are as my only one, o my beauty

i izeḏγen ḏaxař  i wuř-inu

i pronominal-like particle that introduces the relative clause

izeḏγen participle of 'to live'

ḏaxař  loanword from Arabic root DXL 'to enter' from what derivation it comes exactly is unclear. It looks like dāxāl, but that's not a formation which is allowed in Classical Arabic. It may be some dialectal formation. It's interesting to note that my informant pronounced this word ḏaxal. When I asked him about it he said 'it's both possible, my version sounds a bit more Arabic'. The meaning together with i is 'on the inside of ...'

Lameen Souag pointed out, as I had forgotten, or never learned that schwa (written e in this transcription) is colored to a before ř every time, a very normal shift. Then it is easily explained. This word comes from Arabic dāxil 'inside, interior, within, in etc.'

i preposition that means 'in'. My informant when reciting the sentence would use ggʷ which is an alternative preposition with roughly the same meaning

wuř-inu 'my heart' in annexed state.

...who lives inside my heart.

cemm weḥḏem-inu, ṯuḏaaṯ-inu

cemm weḥḏem-inu, you are as my only one.

 ṯuḏaaṯ-inu my life
This word has an interesting Riffian feature, that is the vocalisation of the /r/ in coda in this case forming a long vowel a. It's actually quite a lot like the vocalisation of /r/ in German. der is pronounce [dea].
In central atlas Berber for example this word is  ṯuḏerṯ.
er and ar vocalise as aa
ir vocalises as ia
ur vocalised as ua
Needless to say, verbs with final /r/ get really difficult paradigms. Because as soon as something vocalic follows the /r/ will reappear.

you are as my only one, as my life

ettmenniγ akiḏem i γa ṯeεḏu
ettmenniγ 'to hope' in 1sg imperfect. tt- is a typical prefix of the imperfect.

akiḏem a preposition which means 'together with' and -em 2sg.f.
i relative clause introduction
γa allomorph of future marker aḏ when following i.
ṯeεḏu 3sg.f. aorist of εḏu `to pass' congruating with the feminine word for 'life'.

This cleft clause is really difficult to describe for me. One thing to know about clefts is that the participle is only used if the clefted element is the subject of that sentence otherwise the full verb is used that corresponds to the subject. Here a prepositional phrase has been clefted.

Thus a literal translation would be:
I hope it is with you that it (my life) will pass.

It feels that ṯuḏaaṯ-inu is still the subject of this phrase. The two lines should probably be considered two separate sentences, but the construction still feels somewhat like an enjambement.

that I hope will pass with you.

You are my only one! #2

1.
ma ḏ uř-inu i cem-yexsen?
ma ḏ ca i ḏayi-ixeřqen?
ṯeḇřiḏayi s lḥubb a ṯen-wayen hewřen
εecqeγ ḏayem s wuř ḏ řweqṯ i ḏayi-dd-yiwyen
nniyeṯ i yeṣfan, a nesmun uřawen

ma ḏ uř-inu i cem-yexsen?

Starting of difficult right away, a typical Berber cleft sentence.

ma This is simply the marker of a question.
ḏ Predicate marker. This particle is placed before the predicate of a copulative sentence. Note that this does not make it the copula. If a sentence is used which uses a copulative verb like 'to become',  or even if one wants to use the verb 'to be' outside of anything other than the present.

Example:
iři ḏ aryaz 'Be a man!'

uř-inu The word uř 'heart' together with the 1sg. possessive suffix.

i a 'hinge' that introduces the cleft sentence. Originally an indefinite pronoun, but no longer serves this function in Riffian berber. This particle, as many preverbal particles, attract verbal suffixes to turn into verbal prefixes.

cem-yexsen The verb xes in the participle form with circumfix y- -n. Cleft constructions always take the participle.
cem is the 2sg.f. direct object suffix. Yes suffix. It is moved to the from by the i.

So the sentence translates as

is it my heart who wants you?

ma ḏ ca i ḏayi-ixeřqen?
ca 'something'

ḏayi-ixeřqen once again a participle with a fronted direct object pronoun. The verb is xeřq 'to happen, occur'
ḏayi is the fronted variant of the 1sg pronoun suffix -ayi.

or did something (else) happen to me?

ṯeḇřiḏayi s lḥubb a ṯen-wwyen hewřen

ṯeḇřiḏayi 2sg. of ḇři 'to make addicted' -ayi 1sg. direct object suffix.

s preposition that can express two meaning 'with' or 'toward'. If the noun is in the 'Annexed State' it means 'with', otherwise it means 'toward'.

lḥubb a loanword from Arabic that means 'love'. Unassimilated loanwords are not distinguished in state. But from context it's obvious that this must be the annexed state. It's intersting to see that not even the article l- was assimilated. In Riffian berber the l shifted to a ř [r] and often the article is too even in new loanwords.

a ṯen-wyen hewřen
I could not figure this out at all.
a seems to be the prefix that marks the future, the fronted 3pl.m. prefix  ṯen seems to indicate this too (a fronts verbal suffxes).

wyen is the 3pl.m. of awey 'to be interested'
But future marker a is expected to take the aorist. The aorist if awey is awey. I've tried really hard hearing an a but I don't. But I don't here an i of the perfect form either. So maybe I'm looking at the wrong verb all together.

hewřen is the 3pl.m. of hewř 'to be preoccupied'.

So technically it says something like: 'they will be interested in them they are preoccupied'

My informant said it meant something like 'but you do not care at all', it is somewhere there in the sentence, but it seems idiomatic. Anyone who can clarify please do.

you have addicted me to love but you don't even care

εecqeγ ḏayem s wuř ḏ řweqṯ i ḏayi-dd-yiwyen

εecqeγ 1sg. of εecq 'to desire' loan from arabic εaciqa  'to love passionately'. It's fascinating how loaned verbs are always assimilated to the Berber morphology, and nouns hardly ever are.(<c> stands for [ʃ]).

ḏayem ḏay means 'only' -em is the 2sg.f. pronoun that occus after prepositions and these kinds of 'preposition-like' words.

My informant actually pronounces this word as ḏaḡem [ðæʝəm] which is the typical fricativisation of Proto-Berber *g. In most Riffian dialects this ḡ shifted on to become y. My informants speech retains some archaisms which the original song doesn't have. I'll point them out as I come accross them.

s wuř clear example of s in the meaning 'with' since it is followed by the word uř  in the Annexed State (visible by the w-). 'with heart'.

This line is actually two sentences. The above translated part is the first part.

I desire only you with (my) heart.

ḏ once again the predicate marker
řweqṯ loanword from Arabic waqt 'time'. This time with shifted article l-.
i Here comes a cleft sentence! (They love 'em).
ḏayi-dd-yewyen, -ḏayi still is the fronted version of -ayi 1sg. direct object pronoun. dd is the fronted directional suffix.

The directional suffixes are one of the coolest things in Berber. They show the perspective of the speaker towards an action. -dd means ''towards the speaker', and -nn (far less common in Riffian) means 'away from the speaker'. These elements become especially interesting when stories are told in third person. Fairy tales and such. You can see by these elements where the speaker is mentally positioning himself during an action.

yewyen is the participle of wey 'to bring' (another meaning, and main meaning, of the above mentioned verb. 'to be interested'.

it is the time that brings me here.

nniyeṯ i yeṣfan, a nesmun uřawen

nniyeṯ 'truth'
i this time not a marker of a cleft sentence but a participial relative clause introducer.
yeṣfan participle of ṣfa 'to be pure'. Loaned verb from Arabic ṣafā 'to become clear, pure'.
a marker of the future
nesmun 1pl. of smun. smun is a factitive/causative derivation of  mun 'to accompany' ss-/s- prefix is probably related to the causative s- prefix also found in Semitic (and apparently other Afro-Asiatic languages). 'to cause to accompany' > 'to bring together'

Due to the marker of the future the aorist of this verb is expected. And this is what we find. smun is the aorist,

uřawen plural of uř 'heart'. Quite an irregular plural. Regular would be just the suffix -en but instead -aw- is added. This is quite common for very short common words though. See also iles 'tongue, language', ilsawen. This word is found in the Free State because it is the object. Had it been the subject of the sentence it would have taken the Annexed state.

This is a difficult sentence with a topicalisation of the subject (Normal word order is VSO). nniyeṯ i yeṣfan is therefore the subject. It should be seen as a metaphorical way of referring to the us.

As the pure truth, (our) hearts will be brought together.

Well that's it for today. Any questions, Suggestions, corrections etc. are more than welcome!

Tomorrow, all my troubles seemed so far away.

The Gothic word gistradagis 𐌲𐌹𐍃𐍄𐍂𐌰𐌳𐌰𐌲𐌹𐍃 (Unicode Gothic because we can) 'tomorrow' has always puzzled me.

Obviously the word is cognate to English yesterday and Dutch gisteren which both mean 'yesterday'. Strangely the exact opposite meaning.

I've never really understood how this worked. Was the Proto-Germanic meaning something like 'one day from now, either in the future or in the past'? Isn't that a bit ambiguous?

And today I found a reason why this isn't ambiguous at all from a rather unexpected direction. Namely: The Ewe language. A language spoken in Ghana and Togo by about 3 million people.

This language has a 'one day from today' word namely etsɔ. But the way one distinguishes between Yesterday and Tomorrow is completely unambiguous. Simply from the aspect of the sentence one can deduce the meaning. The aspect is approximately split along Perfective and Imperfective.

É-vá etsɔ
3sg.-come one.day.from.today
`S/he came yesterday'.

É-le và-vá gé etsɔ
3sg.-be.at:PRES RED-come PROSP one.day.from.today
`S/he will come tomorrow'.

As you can see the aspect dictates the interpretation. Since Germanic has the simple split between Preterit and Present such a interpretation should work perfectly for Germanic.

So for a second I wondered whether the interpretation could even work for Gothic, so I looked up the word. One attestation.

Matthew 6:30
jah þande þata hawi haiþjos himma daga wisando jah gistradagis  in auhn galagiþ guþ swa wasjiþ, hvaiwa mais izwis leitil galaubjandans?
𐌾𐌰𐌷 𐌸𐌰𐌽𐌳𐌴 𐌸𐌰𐍄𐌰 𐌷𐌰𐍅𐌹 𐌷𐌰𐌹𐌸𐌾𐍉𐍃 𐌷𐌹𐌼𐌼𐌰 𐌳𐌰𐌲𐌰 𐍅𐌹𐍃𐌰𐌽𐌳𐍉 𐌾𐌰𐌷 𐌲𐌹𐍃𐍄𐍂𐌰𐌳𐌰𐌲𐌹𐍃 𐌹𐌽 𐌰𐌿𐌷𐌽 𐌲𐌰𐌻𐌰𐌲𐌹𐌸 𐌲𐌿𐌸 𐍃𐍅𐌰 𐍅𐌰𐍃𐌾𐌹𐌸 𐍈𐌰𐌹𐍅𐌰 𐌼𐌰𐌹𐍃 𐌹𐌶𐍅𐌹𐍃 𐌻𐌴𐌹𐍄𐌹𐌻 𐌲𐌰𐌻𐌰𐌿𐌱𐌾𐌰𐌽𐌳𐌰𐌽𐌾

Which is the translation of Greek:
εἰ δὲ τὸν χόρτον τοῦ ἀγροῦ σήμερον ὄντα καὶ αὔριον εἰς κλίβανον βαλλόμενον ὁ θεὸς οὕτως ἀμφιέννυσιν, οὐ πολλῷ μᾶλλον ὑμᾶς, ὀλιγόπιστοι;

Let's give a word for word gloss.

jah þande þata hawi haiþjos himma daga wisando jah gistradagis  in auhn galagiþ guþ swa wasjiþ, hvaiwa mais izwis leitil galaubjandans?
and if that.n.acc.sg hay.n.acc.sg. heath.f.gen.sg. this.m.dat.sg. day.m.dat.sg. be.pres.ptc.n.acc.sg. and tomorrow.adv. in oven.m.acc.sg. lay.in.prt.ptc.n.acc.sg. god.m.nom.sg. as.such clothe.pres.3sg. how more you.acc.pl. little.n.nom.sg. believe.pres.ptc.m.nom.pl.

And if god clothes the hay of the heath that is today and tomorrow lain in oven, will he not (clothe) you much more, you of little faith?

Kind of interesting is the leitil which does not have the right inflection. the word should probably be read as a compound leitilgalaubjandans mimicing the Greek text ὀλιγόπιστοι.

Nothing in this sentence that would disprove that maybe in Gothic both meanings were still there (both tomorrow and yesterday). But nothing speaking for it either, sadly.

Either way, it must have worked somewhat like the Ewe situation in Proto-Germanic.

You are my only one! #1

As I  hinted at a while ago, I wanted to do a little translation series on the song I've recently translated sung in Tarifiyt Berber. I hope to make it a sort of preliminary primer of Berber languages, hoping to keep it somewhat accessible. I will translated about 4 lines per update, giving as much grammatical information as possible.

This first entry will just have the full lyrics:
Great thanks go out to Mohamed Bensiali who helped me with the translation of this text.

Najim Aghrib - Cemm weḥdem-inu

1.
ma ḏ uř inu i cemm-yexsen?
ma ḏ ca i ḏayi-ixeřqen?
ṯeḇřiḏayi s lḥubb a ṯen-wwyen hewřen
εecqeγ ḏayem s wuř ḏ řweqṯ i ḏayi-dd-yiwyen
nniyeṯ i yeṣfan, a nesmun uřawen

REFRAIN

cemm, weḥdem-inu, a zinn-inu
i izeḏγen ḏaxař  i wuř-inu
cemm weḥdem-inu, ṯuḏaaṯ-inu
ettmenniγ akiḏem i γa ṯeεḏu

2.
uř-ennem marra yexwa s lḥubb a ṯ-εamaaγ
a ḏayes zeḏγeγ i řeḇḏa, necc εemaas aḏ ḇeḏřeγ
amma  řxaḍaa-nnem, min ṯexseḏ a ṯ-eggeγ*
waa ḏayi-qqaa "lla", a xam-buheřyeγ

REFRAIN

cemm, weḥdem-inu, a zinn-inu
i izeḏγen ḏaxař  i wuř-inu
cemm weḥdem-inu, ṯuḏaaṯ-inu
ettmenniγ akiḏem i γa ṯeεḏu

3.
ṯzeḏγeḏ-ayi ḏi -řefkaa,  řeεqeř waa γari ca
uřa ḏ uř-inu qa waa yedji ḏi ca.
ṯcedciγ i yeṯran iḍes waa tteṭṭṣeγ ca
qqaaγ-as arrebbi a cem-ẓaaγ ṯiwecca

REFRAIN

cemm, weḥdem-inu, a zinn-inu
i izeḏγen ḏaxař  i wuř-inu
cemm weḥdem-inu, ṯuḏaaṯ-inu
ettmenniγ akiḏem i γa ṯeεḏu

4.
wc-ayi-ḏ fus-ennem,  mayemmi axemmem
a ḏam-yeεjeḇ řḥař aḏ ifaaḥ wuř-ennem
bεεeḏ i yewḏan ḏaneγ-yaanin řhemm
εemmaas a nemseḇḏa εemmaas a nendem

REFRAIN

cemm, weḥdem-inu, a zinn-inu
i izeḏγen ḏaxař  i wuř-inu
cemm weḥdem-inu, ṯuḏaaṯ-inu
ettmenniγ akiḏem i γa ṯeεḏu

1. and Half of refrain

ma ḏ uř inu i cemm-yexsen?
ma ḏ ca i ḏayi-ixeřqen?
ṯeḇřiḏayi s lḥubb a ṯen-wwyen hewřen
εecqeγ ḏayem s wuř ḏ řweqṯ i ḏayi-dd-yiwyen
nniyeṯ i yeṣfan, a nesmun uřawen

cemm, weḥdem-inu, a zinn-inu
i izeḏγen ḏaxař  i wuř-inu

*The ḍ is actually a fricative, but font problems refuse to place a line and a dot under the d.