The Fus7a verb استطاع يستطيع "be able [to...]" has a really old variant اسْطاع يسْطيع, which must've been the prevailing spoken form of the word for quite some time. Its only well-known descendant today is the verb seta'–jista' in the Maltese language.
Other than in Maltese, where can اسطاع يسطيع or descendants of it be found?
Possible leads:
)
Other than in Maltese, where can اسطاع يسطيع or descendants of it be found?
Possible leads:
- What got me thinking about this in the first place is the Lebanese verb سطع, which more-or-less means "touch": ما تسْطَعْني is "don't touch me!" (Two people I've asked find it weird for the object to be a human being instead of something inanimate, apparently, which might mean something? Others have no issue with it, though.) It's suspicious for a few reasons, e.g. it has a really weird/unique set of conjugations for some speakers that could potentially be explained by an origin in اسطاع, but of course the problem is that "be able" and "touch" are pretty far apart in meaning. For that reason it could also just go back to the verb سَطَعَ, which still isn't a perfect match semantically but does have a few closer-ish meanings like "to spread".
- But either way, when I started searching for سطع online to check that hunch, I stumbled upon this tweet by someone Egyptian: walhy homa 2lolk 3ala 2adr ma tosta3 ma2lolksh 7lo klo 😂 ("God, they told you to do as much as you can, they didn't tell you to solve the whole thing 😂"), where I believe tosta3 can't represent anything other than تسطَع -- it seems like the phrasing was influenced heavily by the Fus7a on the worksheet in the picture, أجب قدر ما تستطيع, but I don't think there would be a reason to repeat تستطيع as "tosta3" if تسطع weren't a verb that the tweeter already uses colloquially. This seems like it could be some solid evidence that سطع يسطع exists with the meaning of "be able"*, and if it is, it doesn't seem like there's much it could go back to other than اسطاع يسطيع. Is anyone else familiar with this verb in Egyptian Arabic?
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