Russian roots and Yemen's Socotra language

Socotran 'desert roses', whose obese trunks are adapted to store water, stand on a hillside on Socotra island [Reuters]

Moscow, Russia - The Semitic language spoken by more than 50,000 inhabitants of Yemen's Socotra island is a linguistic time machine.

Socotri is the most archaic and isolated of several archaic and isolated tongues spoken in Yemen and Oman known as "modern South Arabian languages". Its vocabulary is immensely rich - for example, there are distinct verbs for "to go" according to the time of the day, or for "to give birth" depending on the animal involved.

Socotri's roots are close to the oldest written Semitic tongues that died out thousands of years ago - and it has grammatical features that no longer exist in Arabic, Hebrew or Aramaic. The study of Socotri helps understand the deep, prehistoric past - and the subsequent evolution - of all Semitic tongues.

"This is a very archaic linguistic and literary system that in many ways, I think, has preserved what we, the scholars, are used to perceive as the Biblical world or the ancient Arabic world," Leonid Kogan, professor of Semitic languages at Moscow's Institute for Oriental and Classical Studies, told Al Jazeera.

South Yemen separatists

"All of it is very much alive on today's Socotra."

Then how is it that Socotri's first alphabet was invented five millennia after the cuneiform tablets in Akkadian - the first written Semitic tongue - and it happened some 5,000km north of Socotra, in Russia's Moscow?

A neglected tongue

Driven by greed, curiosity, and monsoon winds, countless sailors and merchants have for centuries passed through Socotra, a major trading hub between the Gulf of Aden and the Horn of Africa.

But the language of its inhabitants - fishermen, semi-nomadic herders, and date-palm growers - remained off scholars' radar.

Medieval Arab travellers who reached the distant corners of Europe, Indonesia, and sub-Saharan Africa - describing dozens of ethnic groups and the tongues they spoke - wrote next to nothing about Socotri and its linguistic siblings, although they realised the radical difference of the language from Arabic and its tantalising complexity.

"Despite historical contacts and a common culture, there is no mutual understanding between native speakers of Arabic and native speakers of any" modern South Arabic languages, wrote Marie-Claude Simeone-Senelle, a French expert on Socotran folklore.

Western linguists "discovered" Socotri in the early 19th century, and thought the Biblical Queen of Sheba (the Quranic Bilqis) spoke it.

Austrian orientalist David Heinrich Muller used the Arabic script to write down several examples of their oral poetry in 1889, but modern Socotrans have trouble understanding them now.

Southern Yemen became a socialist, pro-Moscow state in 1970.

Huge red stars appeared on public buildings as the nation's leaders adopted Marxist ideology and tried to de-Islamise the nation.

Russia-Yemen ties go back to 1970 when Yemen became a socialist, pro-Moscow state [AP]

Strategically located Socotra hosted a Soviet military base, which meant Soviet scholars had unlimited access to the island's historic and linguistic treasure trove.

Russians step in

One of them was Vitaly Naumkin, an acclaimed Arabist and the current head of Moscow's Institute of Oriental and Classical Studies. For several decades, he studied Socotran ethnology, archaeology, and linguistics and painstakingly classified Socotri's extremely complicated and diverse grammar.

His team also invited Socotri-speaking "informants" to Moscow - where they spent months retelling their mother island's oral poetry and folk tales, or conjugating verbs for the Socotri grammar tables.

There, in 2010, one of the informants named 'Isa Gum'an used the Arabic script to write down a story he'd heard from a friend.

"It was our major surprise … when one November evening in 2010, 'Isa Gum'an somewhat timidly revealed to us that, in order to better preserve an interesting story he had heard from a friend a few days earlier, he had decided to put it in writing using Arabic script," Naumkin wrote in the preface to the 2014 book of Socotran folklore.

The eureka moment prompted the invention of an easily accessible Socotri alphabet based on the Arabic script. To reflect the phonetics of Socotri, Russian linguists decided to add four letters to the Arabic alphabet - using symbols that denote non-Arabic phonemes in the languages of the Indian subcontinent.

Socotran folklore helps understand many themes, literary features of written ancient Semitic traditions - the Old Testament, Ugaritic epics, and even Assyro-Babylonian, Mesopotamian literature. Leonid Kogan, Institute for Oriental and Classical Studies

But it was not the use of the Arabic script and additional symbols that make the new alphabet matter - it is the comprehensive scientific effort that followed it.

"One should not overemphasise the importance of these additional symbols, that, after all, are not that hard to invent," Kogan said.

"What is really important and challenging is the general concept of Socotri as a written, standardised literary language. That's what we call 'the new Socotri writing system', and that's the most complicated, most controversial task."

The new script was shown to Socotri speakers who had no difficulties reading it.

It also "has enabled the direct, active and creative involvement of Socotrans in the linguistic investigation of their mother tongue, allowing them to check, approve and, not infrequently, correct the work of Western researchers collaborating with them", Naumkin wrote.

Together with several scholars from his institute, in 2014, Naumkin published a 750-page book with Socotran folklore that utilised the new alphabet and contained Arabic and English translations of the texts.

Part two of the compendium is to be published this year.

Roots and ties

Although the Socotri language was isolated, the folklore was not. Some of its themes are similar to those found among Algerian Berbers, in India, Africa, and Europe.

"There is an absolutely obscene plot that has distinct parallels with the Dravidian [folklore] of Middle India and [the speakers of] Mofo-Gudur near Lake Chad," Yuri Berezkin, professor of anthropology at the European University in St Petersburg, told Al Jazeera.

"This could be traced to early Asian-African contacts of the 2nd-1st millennia BC, but could be later."

But more importantly, it still retains some themes that date back to the dawn of human civilisation and religions in the Middle East.

"Socotran folklore helps understand many themes, literary features of written ancient Semitic traditions - the Old Testament, Ugaritic epics, and even Assyro-Babylonian, Mesopotamian literature," Kogan said. "And vice versa, a trained philologist acquainted with those traditions is capable to see the world of Socotra from a completely different, unexpected angle."

Arabisation or synthesis?

Socotra, dubbed by some as "the Indian Ocean's Galapagos", is famed for its landscapes, blood trees, plants that produce frankincense, and hundreds of endemic life forms - some of which face extinction.

Socotri is just as endemic - but is it endangered?

Children play among fishing boats on the beach at Qalensiya, the second biggest town on Socotra island [Reuters]

After the fall of the pro-Soviet government and Yemen's reunification in 1990, the southerners were reintroduced to Islam, largely thanks to neighbouring Saudi Arabia. Socotrans were especially zealous to learn proper Islamic practises - and overcome the stigma of a "backwards" people, Kogan said.

But the Islamisation did not bring about Arabisation, something that has been happening in the Middle East for centuries with the gradual conversion of those who spoke Aramaic, Coptic, and Berber languages.

Socotrans do adopt political, technical, and religious terms from Arabic, but their language stands strong.

"What we are able to see now is a rather harmonious synthesis, and there are good chances that Socotra and Socotris find their appropriate place in a broad Arab and Islamic context without getting rid of most of their - to be sure, highly esteemed and cherished - traditional values," said Kogan.

Source: Al Jazeera

UN: Iraq violence kills at least 1,100 in February

The UN mission to Iraq says violence in the country claimed the lives of at least 1,100 Iraqis in February, including more than 600 civilians.

In a statement released on Sunday, the UN Assistance Mission in Iraq (UNAMI) said 611 civilians were among 1,103 people killed last month. The rest were members of the security forces.

UNAMI said at least 2,280 people were wounded, including 1,353 civilians. Last month's death toll was at least 1,375.

It said the most violent city was the capital Baghdad, with 329 civilians killed and 875 wounded.

The UN numbers do not include the third of the country held by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group.

According to UNAMI, last year was the deadliest in Iraq since 2006-2007, with a total of 12,282 people killed and 23,126 wounded.

The news came a day after a series of attacks targeting public places and Shia militia checkpoints in and north of Baghdad killed 37 people, according to authorities.

The first bombs exploded near the market in the town of Balad Ruz, 70km northeast of Baghdad, killing 11 people and wounding 50, police and hospital officials said.

Two suicide car bombers later attacked checkpoints manned by Shia militiamen near the city of Samarra, killing 16 Shia fighters and wounding 31, authorities said.

Samarra and surrounding areas have been under constant attacks by ISIL, which holds about a third of Iraq and neighbouring Syria in its self-declared caliphate.

Source: AP

Iraqi forces advance on ISIL strongholds in Tikrit

Iraqi government forces and their allied fighters are continuing to advance towards the centre of Tikrit as part of a major offensive to recapture the strategic city from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group.

Video obtained by the AP news agency showed troops and Shia militiamen marching alongside Humvees flying Iraqi military and Shia miltia flags in the city.

Al Jazeera's Imran Khan said Iraqi officials had told local media on Wednesday that they were confident of taking control of the entire city by the end of the day.

Our correspondent added, however, that the battle for the city was by no means over and that the fighting was continuing "street-by-street" as the Iraqi forces moved closer to ISIL-held areas of the city.

The Tikrit Military Hospital was one of the latest key installations re-captured from ISIL fighters on Wednesday.

In the last few days, Iraqi forces and allied Shia fighters have captured several towns in the outskirts of the birthplace of former president Saddam Hussein, including al-Alam and al-Dour.

Government troops have also reportedly taken control of the oil fields in al-Ojail, another town near Tikrit.

More troops are also reportedly standing by further out, in Samarra and Beiji, as well as outside the town of Garma in Anbar.

Al Jazeera's Jane Arraf, reporting from Sulaymaniyah, said on Wednesday: "The word is that while the Iraqi army is indeed in Tikrit, they have not yet managed to control the entire city.

"What they've done is clear the way to the city and clear surrounding areas.

"What we're hearing is really quite a lot of concern about the damage that is being done and could be done ... There are reports coming from politicians chatting to their constituencies that entire villages have essentially been destroyed along the way."

Our correspondent said those reports could not be independently verified. 

Counting on victory

The Iraqi government is hoping that a victory in Tikrit will help persuade Sunnis in other places to rise up against ISIL as the operation proceeds further north into Mosul.

Analysis: Liberators or Invaders?

The Iraqi armed forces and the Popular Mobilisation Forces offensive to retake Tikrit from ISIL is as strategically significant as it is politically charged.   Strategically, Tikrit will prove to be a test of wills and a preview of future battles. How the fight goes and how it ends will have major ramifications on the rest or Iraq, most notably the fight for Mosul.   Taking over Tikrit will prove costly, especially to its resident who fought bravely and suffered gravely during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Its association with the former leader, Saddam Hussein al-Tikriti, does not go unnoticed.     Click here to read the full analysis by Marwan Bishara, Al Jazeera senior political analyst

The battle over Tikrit, a Sunni stronghold, is crucial for Iraqi forces in their advance towards Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, which is controlled by ISIL.

Tikrit serves as an important hub because it is on the main highway leading to Baghdad.

But the advance of government forces and Shia militias into Tikrit has also stoked sectarian tensions.

On Tuesday, Iraqi Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr issued a statement urging the Iraqi government to investigate and punish anyone using "excessive violence" against the Sunni residents from areas recently liberated from ISIL.

The statement came after reprisal attacks in al-Ojail, where fighters from an armed group, the League of the Righteous headed by Qais al-Khazali, reportedly ransacked and burned houses belonging to Sunni residents.

Al-Khazali had said that his group was working under the guidance of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the elite Quds Brigade, who has been seen directing operations on the eastern flank of Tikrit.

Elsewhere in Iraq, ISIL on Wednesday launched a coordinated attack on government-held areas of the western Iraqi city of Ramadi, involving seven almost simultaneous suicide car bombs, police say.

At least 10 people were killed and 30 wounded in Wednesday's attack, according to initial reports by police and hospital sources in Ramadi, capital of Anbar province.

Source: Al Jazeera and agencies

The World's Richest People 2015

Despite plunging oil prices and a weakened euro, the ranks of the world’s richest defied global economic turmoil and expanded yet again. Forbes found a record 1,826 billionaires with an aggregate net worth of $7.05 trillion, up from $6.4 trillion a year ago. The total includes 290 new billionaires and a record 197 women, up from 172 last year.

Bill Gates is once again the richest person on the planet, a title he's held for 16 of the past 21 years. His fortune grew $3.2 billion since last year to $79.2 billion, in spite a gift of $1.5 billion in Microsoft shares to Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg moves up 5 spots to number 16, his first time ranked among the world’s 20 richest.

At age 30 Zuckerberg is also the leader in a youth revolution that has minted a growing number of billionaires under the age of 40. The youngest billionaire in the world is Evan Spiegel, 24, co-founder of photo-messaging app Snapchat. Silicon Valley tech companies have spawned other young new billionaires including cofounders of car-hailing service Uber, Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp, and their first employee Ryan Graves. Elizabeth Holmes, who runs blood- testing firm Theranos, debuts on the global list as the youngest self-made woman at age 31.

Gainers outnumbered losers: 819 billionaires are richer than a year ago while 519 are poorer. The year’s biggest loser in dollar terms is Aliko Dangote of Nigeria, whose fortune dropped to $14.7 billion from $25 billion last year, propelled downward by a weaker Nigerian currency and shrinking demand for cement, his largest asset. He still retains the title of Africa’s richest man. America’s biggest loser was casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, who fell out of the Top Ten to No. 18 amid a drop in the price of Las Vegas Sands shares.

One hundred thirty eight people from the 2014 list dropped out of the ranks, including fashion designer Michael Kors, Zulily’s Mark Vadon and many Russians. The number of ten-figure fortunes in Russia plunged to 88 from 111 last year due to the weak ruble and lower oil prices. Guatemala has a billionaire for the first time, and Iceland returns to the club after a seven-year absence, the result of a comeback by Thor Bjorgolfsson, who’s still the only billionaire in the country’s history.

There’s no doubt that entrepreneurship is thriving globally. Fully 1,187 members of the list are self-made billionaires, while just 230 inherited their wealth. Another 403 inherited at least a portion but are still working to increase their fortunes.

Our estimates show a snapshot of wealth on Feb. 13, when we locked in stock prices and exchange rates from around the world. If a stock market wasn’t open on that day, we used the stock price from the previous trading day.

Click ahead for the world's 10 richest people.

More at Forbes:

See the full list of The World's Billionaires 2015

The World's Youngest Billionaires

New Billionaires For 2015

source msn.com

The economic boost from lower oil - that's it?

The oil price plunge has been touted as a global growth elixir, but so far the impact on the economy has been subtle and it's unclear when that will change. "Local fuel prices have almost fully adjusted to lower crude oil prices," Goldman Sachs (GS) said in a note last week after tracking data from 24 countries. But it expects the stimulus impact on the economy won't be straightforward, depending on whether low prices are perceived as likely to persist and government policy responses.



 "Income gains of households might not necessarily translate into significant spending rises," it said, adding that corporate gains would likely be reflected more slowly. For companies, "the price pass-through mechanism is quite complex, with oil windfalls spread out to dividends, wages, and retained earnings, not necessarily spilled over directly to consumers via lower retail prices," Goldman said. "The use of oil is also quite diverse, entailing transportation, feedstock, and energy and a significant part of final goods are exported, with any spillover of windfalls going overseas." What spending boost? These factors appear to be playing out in the U.S. economy. Households there don't appear to be spending the oil largesse just yet, Paul Dales, an economist at Capital Economics, said in a note Monday. Real disposable income in the U.S. rose by 0.5 percent on month in both November and December, but "these extra funds, however, have not made it into the cash registers in the shopping malls or the bars and restaurants on Main Street," Dale said, adding households are saving, not spending their windfall. Indeed, U.S. households in January bought 6 percent more gasoline than a year-earlier, but they spent $120 billion less doing it. The windfall appears to have gone to savings as the savings rate in January rose to a two-year high of 5.5 percent, Dale noted. Brent oil prices (@0BDC15J) for April delivery are trading around $56.88 a barrel, off the lows under $49 touched in January, but they remain sharply down from their level over $115 a barrel in mid-June of last year. "Households just want to make sure that lower gasoline prices are here to stay,


" Dale said. "Assuming that gasoline prices stay close to current levels, as we expect, then it is only a matter of time before real consumption rises more rapidly." Elsewhere, spending is on the rise In other regions globally, however, Capital Economics noted that households are starting to loosen the purse strings. "Household spending has picked up sharply in response to the collapse in oil prices," it said in a separate note last week. "In January, the growth rate of underlying retail sales in advanced economies reached its highest level since 2006," Capital Economics said. "Even consumers in the euro zone are participating in the upturn, though Japanese households are not.


 Business surveys suggest that broader economic activity has also rebounded." With the cost of motor fuel in major developed economies down by an average of 30 percent compared with last summer, consumers in the four largest advanced economies should see around $250 billion annually get freed up for other spending, Capital Economics said. Uneven growth recovery But while Capital Economics sees signs the oil savings will spur economic growth ahead, the economic recovery is "highly uneven" globally. "The threat of deflation continues to hang over the euro-zone while Japan is yet to get back to its pre-tax-hike levels of consumption or gross domestic product (GDP)," Capital Economics said, citing data showing economic growth slipped to 2.4 percent in the last quarter of 2014. —By CNBC.Com's Leslie Shaffer; Follow her on Twitter@LeslieShaffer1

Will China's 'money garrote' strangle the global economy?

HONG KONG — In this new era of all-powerful central banks, it is hard for investors to look past who will be next to take out the big gun of quantitative easing. This week, all eyes are on the European Central Bank, which follows the Bank of Japan as the latest of the major monetary-policy makers to embark on its own aggressive bond-buying program. In contrast, China appears to be entering a “new normal” era, in which its central bank only has a pea-shooter. While most headlines at the ongoing National Peoples Congress meeting focused on the “approximately 7%” economic growth target, the benchmark money-supply growth target of 12% was also the lowest in decades. Another part of China’s new normal is not just lower growth, but also an era where the central bank is no longer able to magically speed its money-printing presses. Conventional wisdom holds that the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) has a gargantuan monetary arsenal, given that the country has the world’s largest stash of foreign reserves at $3.89 trillion. This cash mountain is routinely used to justify how Beijing has nearly unlimited firepower to backstop its economy. But according to some analysts, this reserve accumulation is merely a byproduct of another form of quantitative easing. Rather than strength, its size indicates just how staggeringly large China’s domestic credit expansion has become in recent decades. According to strategist Albert Edwards at Société Générale, such foreign-reserve accumulation — which typically takes place in emerging markets — is equivalent to quantitative easing. The PBOC’s historic mass-printing of money to buy foreign currency and depress the yuan’s value is little different from what the Federal Reserve and others have done, Edwards said. This would mean that China has already embarked on a major monetary expansion after three decades of trade surpluses and reserve accumulation. Furthermore, the recent reversal in such reserve accumulation points to a significant turning point in monetary conditions. Indeed, Joe Zhang, author of “Inside China’s Shadow Banking System,” argues that China’s credit expansion has in fact been far more aggressive than the quantitative easing attempted in the U.S. or Europe.

Zhang, a former PBOC official, calculated that China’s money supply is already 372% of what it was at the beginning of 2006. And if you add up official data between 1986 and 2012, China’s benchmark M2 money supply has grown at a compound rate of 21.1%.

While 7% economic growth is slow for China compared to the double-digit rates of the past, such data makes 12% money-supply growth looks positively measly.

Another reason to believe that China is at the tail end of a huge monetary expansion is found in a recent study by McKinsey & Co. advisers. They estimated that total credit in China’s economy has quadrupled since 2008, reaching 282% of gross domestic product.

But now the conditions that enabled this debt habit have turned.

Edwards argues that foreign-exchange accumulation by central banks is the key measure of global liquidity to pay attention to — and it is currently in free-fall. Further, while markets are focusing on the ECB’s easing announcement, they are missing this Chinese liquidity garrote that is strangling the global economy, he says.

Data from the IMF shows that central-bank foreign-reserve accumulation has been declining rapidly. China is at the center of this, with a $300 billion annualized decline over the last six months, according to Edwards.

The stress point for China is now its currency, which has fallen to a 28-month low against the dollar.

The dilemma facing the PBOC is how to keep growth and liquidity sufficiently strong, while also maintaining its loose currency peg to a resurgent dollar .

As China defends its currency regime, it must do the opposite of printing new money: using foreign reserves to buy yuan  , contracting money supply in the process.

Such a gradualist depreciation of the yuan is likely to stoke fears of capital flight. Despite China’s strong February export figures and trade surplus, the market remains concerned about the yuan’s value as U.S. and China interest-rate policies appear set to diverge.

While the Federal Reserve is expected to raise rates as early as the summer, China has just cut key rates for a second time.

Meanwhile, the other complicating factor is China’s credit expansion in the latter years of its credit boom was not just domestic. Over $1 trillion was raised overseas.

This debt will become more onerous as the U.S. dollar rises, especially when many Chinese corporation have only yuan-based revenues.

The question for investors is where China’s liquidity squeeze will be felt next.

It has already sent a range of hard commodities plummeting and caused steep falls in business at the baccarat tables of Macau and the high-end malls of Hong Kong. Potential future casualties to consider include real estate and high-yield Chinese corporate bonds.

Craig Stephen is a MarketWatch columnist and author of the column, "This Week in China".

source msn.com