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Latest comment: 16 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion
The article says: "the Arabic word "xacca" (شاقة), meaning "water"." actually, that's not true, shaaqqa means "difficult", not water in Arabic. --Maha Odeh (talk) 06:02, 17 June 2008 (UTC)Reply
Oh, boy--one does encounter this sort of thing from time to time. Someone who doesn't know Arabic well (or at all) writes something they heard, then people repeat it endlessly. Are you sure there's no vernacular, Maghrebi, Amazigh, or whatever term exists that is anything similar to this? Arabic speakers usually can't ever know all the dialects, so maybe it's possible that this is from one of them? Badagnani (talk) 06:06, 17 June 2008 (UTC)Reply
Salvatore Giarrizzo's Dizionario Etimologico Siciliano says that the word "sciacca" (not necessarily the name of the city) comes from the Arabic word šaqq(ah), meaning crack, split. But as I said, that's for the word, which has the same meaning in Sicilian (another variant is sciaca). Camilleri's dictionary carries the same word as ciacca (with the same meaning) - that would be the usual way of writing it these days. As for the question at hand - haven't got a clue. πιππίνυ δ - (dica)12:25, 17 June 2008 (UTC)Reply
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