Bahá'í in Malta

[pne]

I wonder whether Bahá'í in Malta use Persian, Arabic, or Maltese for Bahá'í terminology.

It would seem to me that since Maltese is related to Arabic, that they might use cognates in Maltese rather than "importing" Arabic or Persian words the way it seems to happen in English.

For example, would they use "Kitáb-i-Aqdas", "Al-Kitab al-Aqdas", or "Il-Ktieb l-Iqdes"? (Might have the last word wrong.)

If they do use Maltese terms, I wonder what they do for Arabic terms (a) which have no cognate in Maltese or (b) where the cognate is old-fashioned or out of current use. Use the "straight" Arabic term? Make up a cognate by sound changes? Use the cognate that exists but isn't in current use?

That's assuming there are Bahá'í on Malta in the first place.

(Edit: apparently so.)

*reads* What's the significance of the term "tablet" in the Bahá'í faith? And what's a Haziratu'l-Quds?

Comments

[wingflutter.livejournal.com]

intriguing. i had never even heard of the Bahá'í faith until now!

no idea what Haziratu'l-Quds is, but the last word sounds suspiciously like quddies which is the Maltese word for mass [religious celebration]

Bahá'í faith

[pne.livejournal.com]

I don't think I had, either, until I met pthalogreen, who's a Bahá'í.

iqdes?

[pne.livejournal.com]

Oh, and is "Il-Ktieb l-Iqdes" correct? (It means "The Holiest Book", but I don't know how to make the superlative of qaddis.

Re: iqdes?

[wingflutter.livejournal.com]

woah. good question. erm...it SEEMS ok... but in complete and utter honesty i have never used that superlative in my life so i cannot be certain. grammatically it seems correct though... although, admittedly, i didnt understand what you meant by it until you explained it in this comment!

[node-ue.livejournal.com]

"l-quds" is Arabic for Jerusalem... the same in the languages of most of the islamic world, including Farsi

[pne.livejournal.com]

I thought that was specifically "Al-Quds Al-Sharif"?

My guess at "Al-Quds" might be something like "the holy place" ... afaik q-d-s is the root for "holy".

I'd be surprised if the word is specific to Jerusalem.

[node-ue.livejournal.com]

Perhaps it's a short name -- everybody I ever talked to in Arabic just called it al-Quds.

But then, I don't have a very detailed knowledge, so it's quite possible it's al-Quds ash-Sharif.

[pne.livejournal.com]

*nods* according to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_Jerusalem#Al-Quds), I misremembered.

[pne.livejournal.com]

OK, apparently "Al-Quds Ash-Sharif" is a longer name and not commonly in use. But "Al-Quds" also, apparently, merely means "The Holy Place" and, while a common name of Jerusalem, is probably not specific to it.

(Perhaps a bit like "The Big Apple", which can refer to New York but to also to, well, a big apple.)

[pthalo]

Good question. In English, we call it "The Kitáb-i-Aqdas". In Hungarian, "A Kitáb-i-Aqdas". And I think "Kitáb-i-Aqdas" is actually a persianised arabic term. There are many phrases that were brought into persian from Arabic. So we use the Persian form "Kitáb-i-Aqdas" not "al-Kitab al-Aqdas"

[pne.livejournal.com]

Do you have answers for the last line of my entry?

[pthalo]

not really. ljbahai might be a better place to ask (and you'll get more input). I'm not sure what you mean by the questions actually. What do you mean what is the significance of a tablet? (to me this seems like asking the significance of the word "letter" or the word "paper", could you elaborate?)

and I have never heard the word "Haziratu'l-Quds" before.

On tablets

[pne.livejournal.com]

What do you mean what is the significance of a tablet?

I mean, usually for me "tablet" refers either to medicine or to the tablets on which Moses brought down the Ten Commandments; however, looking around at Bahá'í information, it seems to be used more frequently.

Does "tablet" mean, for example, that the contents is holy scripture? That it comes from a prophet? What distinguishes a tablet from a book, for example, or what qualifies a work to be called a tablet -- rather than, say, book or letter or work or proclamation or whatever?

Re: On tablets

[pthalo]

ah, I see. I /think/ that tablets are generally letters that a prophet wrote to a certain person which can be read as prayers but they are generally longer than prayers and shorter than books. For example, the Tablet of Ahmad was written to Ahmad. The Fire Tablet was written by Bahá'u'lláh to God (and the end of it is written by God to Bahá'u'lláh) but it can be read as if it were a prayer. Books are much longer and they aren't addressed to anyone in particular. But these are just guesses. In ljbahai you can get a lot of other people's guesses too and possibly a more official answer. Letters, generally, are written by the Universal House of Justice or Shoghi Effendi. They have authority and any laws outlined in them are binding, but they are not written by a Manifestation of God so they are not tablets. Prayers are written by manifestations of God, never by Shoghi Effendi or the House of Justice and they are rarely tablets, I think, though tablets can be read like prayers. It might also have something to do with the manner in which they were written originally in farsi or arabic... I know one tablet was written on a very large leaf which is preserved in the archives in Israel.

Books are just that. Very long texts with lots of little parts or sections and generally covering one or two subjects or areas of things (The Kitab-i-Aqdas is a book of laws. There's also the Kitab-i-Iqan, the book of Certitude, which I've never quite managed to read but I imagine it's about certitude...) Tablets are too short to be books.

A priori armchair guess

[(Anonymous)]

Obviously, the right thing to do is to scour the website you found and look. :)

However, given the tendency you have already noted for Baha'i to export terminology in the original Arabic in most of the languages of convert communities, and the extreme emphasis on (Standard/Classical) Arabic from the dominant faith of Baha'i's cultural milieu (namely, Islam) I myself would be somewhat surprised to see Baha'i terms get translated (or calqued) into Maltese--or Hebrew for that matter, were there ever to be Hebrew-speaking Baha'i (a strange thought). Would the Greek Orthodox church ever translate its terminology into Pontian or Cypriot 'Demotic' forms? And even faiths that go out of their way to provide translations of terminology into "every tongue" still end up with such forms as 'seléstio', 'terréstio' (Greek) and 'Élderes','líderes' (Spanish). But I'd be interested to be proven wrong.

As far as 'Al-quds' I've heard that used all the time as the primary way of referring to Jerusalem, and only rarely if ever have I heard Arabs use 'Al-quds Ash-sharif'. But 'Aqdas' makes perfect sense to me as an elative/superlative form for q-d-s 'holy', as the "af`al" pattern IS the standard way of forming superlatives in Arabic.

~~Christophoros Antonis

Hebrew-speaking Bahá'í

[pne.livejournal.com]

Welcome, Sir Guang3zhou1!

Hebrew-speaking Baha'i (a strange thought)

You think?

Given that the Seat of the Universal House of Justice is in Haifa in Israel, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that there are Bahá'í (beyond the members of the UHJ) living in Israel, nor to learn that those Bahá'í speak Hebrew.

Whether they carry on services in Hebrew or some other language (such as English, Persian, or Arabic), though, I do not know.

(Though given that ISTR reading somewhere that the Bahá'í Faith agreed not to proselytise in Israel -- or maybe even not to accept potential converts who are Jews? I don't recall exactly --, there may not be that many Bahá'í in Israel.)

Re: A priori armchair guess

[pne.livejournal.com]

such forms as 'seléstio', 'terréstio' (Greek)

Not to mention the strange beast that is το ενδάωμα.