A Collection of Jibbali/Śḥərɛ̄́t Proverbs from Ali al-Shahri’s Publication The Language of Aad/لغة عاد

Abstract Jibbali/Śḥərɛ̄́t is a language belonging to the Modern South Arabian ( msa ) branch of Semitic. It currently endangered and spoken by an estimate 50,000 ~ 70,000 people living in Omani governorate Dhofar. Similarly other languages, it unwritten, survival its speakers’ traditional knowledge rests on their ability memorise retain large amount information form poetry, songs, folk-tales proverbs. In 2000, ʕAli al-Shahri, Dhofari historian native speaker Jibbali/Shahret, published bilingual English/Arabic monograph named The Language Aad /لغة عاد which intended as introduction wide array aspects local culture, ranging from toponymy Dhofar, dances, poetry proverbs, more unusual topics such star-names, children games, land allotment more. This paper focuses one most prominent question, namely collection 210 Each proverb this provided with translation English Arabic, presented al-Shahri’s work means idiosyncratic transcription system based Arabic script, linguistic sounds specific are represented coloured characters, detriment comprehension. aims at providing linguistically viable description these presenting them standard Semitic transcription. proceeds analysis original recording (which features al-Shahri himself uttering proverbs one) stored Semitische Tonarchiv (SemArch) University Heidelberg. Additionally, translations reported. These followed brief commentary containing each relevant term, well general account meaning proverb. conclusions pinpoint some phonetic, phonological, morphological, syntactic lexical characteristics material examined, identify number divergences commonalities present-day ancient subgroups bear witness long unwritten history language.