Ahalan-
Is there any connection to the German salutation Hallo? or the English: Hello? It would reason that such a greeting would have been based on some sort of blessing, just as Good Bye, Adios etc. mean: "G-d be with you". In another vein: 'ahalan' may mean: "continual tent" Nu?
I looked into a hello / ahalan connection, and didn't find one. It's possible, however, that ahalan became popular as a greeting in Modern Hebrew because of its similarity to hello, or maybe 'allo.
"In his entry on the root אהל, he says it means "to shine", and is related to the roots הל and הלל, which have the same meaning. He quotes Iyov 25:5, where יאהיל means "is bright""
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A new moon is clalled hillel in arabic, I always understood that "ahlan" comes from "hillel" ( new moon ) as to welcome the person as if they were a new moon, somthing that is waited for everymonth (!?)
Again, I enjoy your blog sooo much, I b"H speak Arabic and an Arabic dialect and Frnch as native languages, I also speak Hebrew and English and some german.
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There is a grain I used to grind and mix with coffee beans, I get in from turkey, called "hil" (heel) in Arabic, but I am not sure of the origin of the grain name.
HAVE A GREAT SHABBOS!!!
I guess הלל meaning "praise, laud, glorification," is related to the Arabic "ihlal" meaning to "raise voice praising Allah during Hajj."
I forgot the name of the shiny circle usually around Christ face, that is "haala" in Arabic. The "shine" meaning is present in Arabic.
Thinkin' about OHEL - tent:
In Hawaiian, "hale" (pronounced HAH-leh) means house or home.
ValHALLA (Old Norse Valhöll, "Hall of the Slain") is Odin's hall in Norse mythology, and is the home for those slain gloriously in battle.
HALL and HULL are other 'roomy' areas, not to mention HELL. (These are connected to Indoeuropean 'kel')
Kevin: The shiny circle is called a "halo" in English, and there was probably some collaboration between that word of Greek origin, and the Arabic in oder to derive "haala".
And yes, David, I also think it likely that ahlan's popularity was influenced by it's similarity to hello.
You seem to also have not noted that the "-n" on the end of ahlan is a possessive 1pl suffix (to my understanding). So one welcomes to "our family" or possibly "our tent".
I didn't understand Hoffman's explanation of "wasahlan", firstly because it's not clear where he gets "to" from. Is "sahl" a plain in Arabic? And the word has obviously been chosen because of its rhyme as well as its meaning.
Finally, one feels the need to ask Steinberg: how did people keep their tent sheets white, anyway?
According to Stahl, sahel is "plain" in Arabic. He says the root means "smooth, easy". So he says that the phrase means "we are like your family and your stay with us should be easy".
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