Talk:Jamahiriya

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[edit] What does this word really meam?

I note, from other pages on Wikipedia, that "Arab Republic of Egypt" in Arabic is "Ǧumhuriyat Misr al-ˁArabiyah"; that "Tunisian Republic" in Tunisian is "El-joumhouriyya et-Tounisiyya"; that "Syrian Arab Republic" in Arabic is "Al-Jumhuriya al-`Arabiya as-Suriya"; and that "Republic of Lebanon" in Arabic is "Al Jumhuriyah Al Lubnaniyah". I also note that "Republic of Turkey" in Turkish is "Türkiye Cumhuriyeti", and "Islamic Republic of Iran" in Persian is "Jomhuri-ye Eslami-ye Iran."

Now, I'm no Arabic linguist, but from looking at this list, it appears to me that all of these Arabic words for "republic"-- Ǧumhuriyat, joumhouriyya, Jumhuriya, Jumhuriyah -- are pretty much the same word, with minor differences the result of different transliteration schemes or perhaps dialectial differences. The similiar words in Turkish and Persians for "republic" (Cumhuriyeti and Jomhuri) are no doubt loan words from Arabic. Again, my eyes are untrained, but "Jamahiriya" looks to me like just another variation on this Arabic word for "republic." So, my question is: is this really a distinct word from the others? Or is it the same Arabic word and Khaddafi is just insisting that it be translated differently? --Jfruh 21:45, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Thank you, Jfruh, for writing a great deal of what I was going to write. You are right, these are different transliterations of the same word. In addition it is also used for Yemen, the UAE, Western Sahara, Tripoli, the Czech Republic, Syria, Greece and Italy. At least those are the ones I found when I did a search of الجمهورية on the Arabic Wikipedia.

I suspect that this page is politically motivated. It should probably be deleted. -LambaJan 13:55, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Hi LambaJan-

If you look at the edit history, this page actually saw significant revisions after I posted the above material on the talk page, though it was never talked about here. Take a look at the main article page again -- jamahiriya is derived from jumhuriya, but they are not the same word. (The key is that there is another vowel between the "m" and "h" sounds.) As a different word -- and, more to the point, as the word that is often used even in English by official Libyan sources to describe the Libyan government -- it deserves an article of its own.

Can I ask what you find to be "politically motivated" about the article? --Jfruh 14:03, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

I see. This shows the value of taking a closer look. I skimmed it over and made a not entirely educated decision. The 'politically motivated' accusation was based on the assumption that it was the same word and this person was writing all of this because they did not like the current government of Libya. I'll remove the tag. -LambaJan 14:13, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Honestly, it would be like some English-speaking leader declared that his country would be called, say, the "Republics of Malta" rather than the "Republic of Malta" -- its a neologism that I bet sounds pretty odd to native Arabic speakers. But it does seem to be what they call the place. :) --Jfruh 14:17, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Could it not translate to something like the quite common 'People's Republic' ? --Richiau

[edit] This is a real linguistic difference

Due to the nature of the grammar of the Arabic language, related words in Arabic will often have the same consonants, but with different vowels in different places. This is highly-systematic within the Semitic languages, as discussed in article Triliteral (though Jumhuriyya and Jamahiriyya are actually technically Quadriliteral forms...). AnonMoos 16:45, 21 October 2006 (UTC)