Languages – Page 4

What’s The Point?

A reader writes:

I was wondering if you would have any insight into the contradictory translations of Isaiah 63:9 in the RSV-CE and the NAB.

While taking a class on the theology of the Holy Spirit, I came across the fact that this verse is rendered differently in the two Catholic translations:

Isaiah 63:9 (RSV-CE)
In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them; in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old.

Isaiah 63:9 (NAB)
in their every affliction.
It was not a messenger or an angel,
but he himself who saved them.
Because of his love and pity
he redeemed them himself,
Lifting them and carrying them
all the days of old.

In the RSV it was the angel that saved them; in the NAB is was not an angel.

A book used heavily in the class was The Holy Spirit: Growth of a Biblical Tradition by Fr. George T. Montague. Fr. Montague makes a passing reference (on page 54) to the verse:

"…depending on how the identical Hebrew letters are pointed, one can derive the [opposite] translation…"

I was wondering how Hebrew works, such that you can get an opposite translation from the same characters, differently "pointed."

Sure, no problem. First, take a look at this Hebrew word:

This is the word B’reshit, which is the Hebrew equivalent of "Genesis." It’s pronounced something like "bray-SHEET."

It’s the first word in the book of Genesis, and it’s customarily translated into English as "In the beginning."

Now, the thing about the Hebrew writing system is that it developed over time, and originally it didn’t have any vowels, just consonants.

In modern Hebrew script, the consonants are written in the large, black blocky letters that you see here. Originally, b’reshit would have simply been written B-R-SH-T (only in Hebrew letters). If you were an ancient Hebrew, you would have relied on your knowledge of Hebrew vocabulary and context to figure out what words you were looking at in the text from just the consonants.

KND F TH WY Y CN WTH THS TXT.

Only they didn’t have spaces between written words then, either, so it all would have run together.

Over time, the Hebrews noted something about writing their text this way with only consonants.

It sucked.

So they started coming up with different ways to indicate what vowels ought to go into words. One of the first attempts was to impress certain consonants into doing double duty, so sometimes they represented consonants and sometimes they represented vowel sounds. Kind of like our letter Y, which can be either a consonant or a vowel.

That happens in Hebrew, too. In b’reshit the next to last letter (starting from the right) is a yod, which can be either a Y or an I sound. Here, it’s an I, though it sounds like a long-E (as in "sheet’).

These double-duty consonants made it much easier to figure out how to read texts, and so they became known as "the mothers of reading" (Latin: matres lectionis).

Unfortunately, there were only four maters, and they didn’t help enough, so the scribes set about coming up with real vowels.

Instead of coming up new blocky letters to put in the middle of words, they decided to rely on little dots, like the ones you see under several of the letters in b’reshit. (Arabic and Aramaic use similar systems of little marks above and below their consonants, too.)

For example, under the second letter (counting from the right) of b’reshit has a couple of dots under it that look like a colon laying on its side. That’s the mark for a long-A vowel sound. (The A-sound in "bray-SHEET.")

Over time, they also came up with spaces between words (as you’d see in a modern Hebrew Bible) and other marks to help the reader out. For example, in the first letter of b’reshit there is a dot right in the middle of the letter. This is because the letter can be pronounced either B or V, but the dot tells you to pronounce it B.

Similarly, there is a dot over the right hand side of the fourth letter, which looks kind of like a stylized W. This letter can be pronounced either S or SH. If you put a dot over its left side, it’s S, but if you put the dot over its right side (as here) then it’s SH.

The guys who came up with these marks were known as the Masoretes, and they didn’t finish their work until the Renaissance, giving us the fully-marked or Hebrew Bible called the "Masoretic Text." Since the marks are (mostly) dots, the process of adding to a Hebrew text is called "pointing" it.

Pointed texts are much easier to read, but they are harder to write, and so today in Israel newspapers, street signs, and books are commonly written in unpointed form. Texts where getting the exact reading correct–like the Bible–are written in pointed form to eliminate ambiguity.

As you can imagine, there can be considerable ambiguity without the vowels, spaces, and other marks. Sometimes the meaning of a sentence can change dramatically or even reverse itself without these to help us along.

Unfortunately, the Masoretes were not (despite some claims otherwise) divinely inspired in their readings, and so it is possible for them to have gotten things wrong, and a translator who doesn’t simply accept the reading they gave a word will have to make a choice about how it should be understood.

That’s what’s happening in the case of Isaiah 63:9.

As you can see, there is a disagreement with the RSV translators and the NAB translators. I haven’t looked it up, but my guess is that the RSV is going with the Masoretic reading and the NAB is going with an alternate reading.

But What Do You Mean By That Woof?

So, you say you want to know how man’s best friend really feels? A South Korean cell-phone company will be trying to fill that void in your life:

"South Koreans hoping to communicate with man’s best friend could be getting help soon from their cell phones. KTF Corp., a South Korean mobile phone operator, said Thursday it will begin offering a service that will enable dog owners to know whether their pets are feeling happy or sad.

"The users must first connect to Internet with their cell phones, and then register information of their dogs such as the breed and age. The service will then record the dog’s bark.

"The owner will receive text messages telling them how their pet is feeling, such as ‘I am happy’ or ‘I am frustrated.’"

GET THE STORY.

You know, dogs are very capable of letting you know what they’re thinking. You really don’t need a novelty service to translate for you. The dog I had a few years ago would stand by the back door when he wanted to go out. If he was ill, he’d lay down and whine. If he was eager for a walk, and he always was, he’d yip and prance when a leash was produced. He would stare at me with wide, sad eyes when he was trying to beg a treat.

And that’s all I really needed to know about his inner dog, thank you very much.

But What Do You Mean By That Woof?

So, you say you want to know how man’s best friend really feels? A South Korean cell-phone company will be trying to fill that void in your life:

"South Koreans hoping to communicate with man’s best friend could be getting help soon from their cell phones. KTF Corp., a South Korean mobile phone operator, said Thursday it will begin offering a service that will enable dog owners to know whether their pets are feeling happy or sad.

"The users must first connect to Internet with their cell phones, and then register information of their dogs such as the breed and age. The service will then record the dog’s bark.

"The owner will receive text messages telling them how their pet is feeling, such as ‘I am happy’ or ‘I am frustrated.’"

GET THE STORY.

And that’s all I really needed to know about his inner dog, thank you very much.

Touto Esti

A reader writes:

I’m trying to counter the common anti-Catholic argument that Jesus’ words "touto esti" (at the Last Supper) actually mean "this stands for" or "this represents" my body. I tried searching on the Internet without a lot of luck and I don’t know the Greek language at all.

Could you tell me the real meaning of the phrase or point me to a website that might have more info?

Touto esti means "This (touto) is (esti)." Period.

The verb eimi (here in its third person singular form esti) does not mean "stands for" or "represents." Nobody with adequate training would translate it that way.

This is not to say that eimi cannot be used symbolically. Just as in English we can say of a king who is also a great warrior, "The king is a lion" (meaning that the king has the qualities in battle of a lion), so one could say "This is my body" (meaning that "this" represents one’s body).

The language thus means one thing but may be taken in one of two ways.

The debate thus graduates from the level of language to the level of meaning. The broader context, both of Scripture and the Church Fathers, shows that Jesus meant what he said literally, not symbolically.

Touto Esti

A reader writes:

I’m trying to counter the common anti-Catholic argument that Jesus’ words "touto esti" (at the Last Supper) actually mean "this stands for" or "this represents" my body. I tried searching on the Internet without a lot of luck and I don’t know the Greek language at all.

Could you tell me the real meaning of the phrase or point me to a website that might have more info?

Touto esti means "This (touto) is (esti)." Period.

The verb eimi (here in its third person singular form esti) does not mean "stands for" or "represents." Nobody with adequate training would translate it that way.

The language thus means one thing but may be taken in one of two ways.

Jesus The Nassraya

A reader writes:

I too have been enjoying your posts on Aramaic in the New Testament. While my Hebrew is fairly good, my Aramaic is non-existant except for the Mourner’s Kaddish.

But in this latest post it looks like you’ve opened a real can of worms. You state that in the Pshitta Acts Jesus’ name is literally rendered at "Jesus the Nazirite". This would tend to confirm the view that Jesus was originally a member of the ultra-ascetic sect of Judaism known as the Nazirim. And he may not have been from Nazareth at all, and that some archaeologists even have doubts as to Nazareth’s existance 2000 years ago.

For more on the Nazirim, please see: http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=142&letter=N

Any thoughts on the matter?

A few. First, I’m glad you’ve been enjoying those posts. I hope you find this one useful as well.

Second, what the text of the Pshitta actually calls Jesus in Acts 2:22 is a "Nassraya." In Aramaic, –aya is a common gentilic suffix, meaning that you use it to turn a noun into a word describing a group of people. For example, the word for a Chaldean is Kaldhaya (kal-THY-ah), the word for a Christian is Mshihaya, the word for a Catholic is Qatoliqaya. –Aya is thus similar to the –i gentilic suffix that one finds in Hebrew and Arabic, resulting in words like Israeli ("a person from Israel") and Suri ("a person from Syria").

(Indeed, it seems to be the same ending, spelled –ay since there is no simple letter /i/ in these languages, only with Aramaic’s characteristic –a noun ending stuck on it since Aramaic routinely uses the emphatic state even for non-emphatic words.)

While nassraya sounds similar to the word for Nazarite, and some have speculated that’s what was meant in this passage, I don’t think that’s what’s going on.

The Nazarites weren’t quite a sect (i.e., a group of folks who held religious views different than others). They were more like a religious order. They took the Nazarite vow either temporarily or permanently as a form of consecration to God. Samuel is the best known instance of a Nazarite from birth that most folks are aware of.

I have no problem with saying various New Testament figures were Nazarites–John the Baptist, for example, would be a good contender. Indeed, John is known for honoring one of the things that was part of the Nazarite vow: abstinence from wine (Luke 7:33).

This, however, is in marked contrast from Jesus, who in the very next verse is said to drink wine (Luke 7:34). He also made wine central to the Eucharist. It thus does not seem to me that Jesus was a Nazarite in the sense of one who had taken the Nazarite vow or who was made a Nazarite from birth like Samuel.

It seems to me that the origin of the word nassraya is more likely to be an attempt to form a gentilic noun based on the place-name nassrath ("Nazareth"), which is given in Acts 10:38. It’s thus nassrath + -aya = nassraya = "a person from Nazareth." (-ath being a feminine ending on the place name that would drop out when making a masculine gentilic noun.)

Unfortunately, when I was composing the post I was doing it quickly and my mind locked onto "Nazarite" as a translation of nassraya without remembering the Nazarite vow.

Sorry for the confusion. I hope the clarification is enlightening.

As to the idea that Nazareth didn’t exist in the first century, I frankly don’t hold much truck with that notion. It proceeds form a hermeutic of skepticism that wants to say everything in the New Testament is false unless it can be proven from independent sources. That is a criterion applied to no other historical text (except the Old Testament). Historians simply do not hold their sources in such contempt.

First, we have New Testament documents clearly and explicitly referring to it on multiple occasions. That of itself is evidence that can’t be dismissed. When folks were dating books like Acts absurdly late, it would have been easier to claim that Nazareth didn’t exist in the first century, but as archaeology has moved the dates of the books earlier and earlier, the claim gets harder and harder to sustain.

First, an unbiased look at the evidence strongly suggests that Acts dates to A.D. 61 or 62 and that Luke is earlier (possibly by a year or two), or about 65-70 years after Jesus was born. It also was written by a gentleman who was a close associate of one of the major apostles and who clearly interviewed a number of people in the apostolic community (and likely Mary herself) to obtain his material. The idea that a town called Nazareth could have sprang into existence in that 65-70 year interim and then got so famous that it could be so quickly confused with the hometown of a man whose followers regarded him as the Messiah simply strains credibility.

It is far more likely that, since Nazareth was apparently a pretty humble place, it simply didn’t show up in the independent records that we do have until later on (maybe because it became more significant and noteworthy to people and even more populous on account of its famous Resident).

Jesus, Mary, And The 12: What's In A Name?

A reader writes:

As a recent reader of your (extremely interesting and original) site, I’ve noticed that you have some knowledge of Aramaic. Could you answer some questions I’ve had since viewing the movie "The Passion of the Christ"?

What would be the spoken and written Aramaic form of "Jesus of Nazareth"? In the movie it seemed it was pronounced with slight variations by different characters, such as "Yeshua n’Zaret", or "Yeshua an’Zaret" or "Yehsua m’Zaret" (I writing this phonetically from memory, so please forgive the mistakes). I realize that spelling and pronounciation can change as to a word’s function and place in a sentence, but if one wanted to say or write simply, "Jesus of Nazareth" in Aramaic, seperate from any place in a spoken or written phrase, what would it be?

The phenomenon of actors pronouncing the name differently is caused by the fact that the actors in the movie weren’t native speakers of the language and, so I understand, didn’t even speak it as a second language. Thus their own accents tend to bleed through into their delivery of Aramaic.

I should also mention that there were no standardized dictionaries in the ancient world and folks tended to spell words more like they sounded to them, so you’ll get variant spellings from time to time.

As to how Jesus’ name is pronounced, that’s going to change over time and region. Just as we have different accents in English, they have different accents (pronunciation schemes) in Aramaic, and words can sound significantly different depending on where and when an accent was based.

In the first century, Galilee and Judea had different accents, as we know because Peter’s northern (Galilean) accent accent gave him down south in Jerusalem, when he was at the high priest’s house. ("Yew ain’t from aroun’ these here parts, are ya, sir?") Even villages not that far apart (by modern standards) probably had different accents, like the Aramaic-speaking communities in Iraq do today (a Mosul accent ain’t the same as a Zakho accent, though they’re both in northern Iraq).

The best I can do is show you how "Jesus of Nazareth" is spelled in the Pshitta and tell you how that would be pronounced by a speaker with an eastern (Iraqi) Aramaic accent (i.e., the kind of Aramaic I’m most familiar with pronouncing), so here goes.

First, "Jesus of Nazareth" gets written different ways. Here’s how it’s written in Acts 2:22:

This is literally something like "Jesus the Nazarite." I’d transliterate it Isho` Nassraya. Pronounced in an Eastern accent, it’d be something like ee-SHOW-ah* naas-RYE-yah, but it’s hard to get across the exact sound because English does’t have two of the sounds that are used. That final character on Isho` (read from right-to-left) isn Aeh, which isn’t really like an English "ah" sound, which is why I starred it in the pronunciation. It’s a harsh gutteral sound that, to tell you the truth, sounds like you’re being choked, the airflow through the throat is cut off so abruptly. Make a kind of gutteral grunt choking noise and you’re about as close as you can get without hearing someone say it.

The other sound is easier. It’s the second character in Nassraya–the one that looks line of like a backwards Y. This letter is Sadhe (SAH-thay), and it’s a "dark S" sound. I doubled it in the transliteration to convey the idea that it in’t an ordinary S sound. Pronounce an S at the very back of your mouth (instead of at the front) and you’ve got it.

I checked some other passages as well, and the closest I found to something that’s literally "Jesus of Nazareth" was in Acts 10:38, where we find this:

Hyper-literally, this would be "Jesus of-from Nazareth," but nobody would translate it that way. "Jesus of Nazareth" or "Jesus from Nazareth" would be the correct translation.

I’d transliterate it like this: Ishoa dmen Nassrath, and it’d be pronounced ee-SHOW-ah* dmen NAAS-rath. It’s hard for an American to pronounce dmen if you haven’t practiced, but just say the D really, really fast on the front of the word "men." Don’t forget the dark S in Nassrath, either.

The reader then asks:

Second, what would the name "Mary" be in Aramaic? I’ve heard it is "Miriam", but in the movie, Mary Magadaline calls out, "Marian". Which is it, if either? Also, isn’t the Blessed Mother also addressed as "Emi", "Mother" in the movie?

This one is easy. "Mary" in Aramaic is Maryam, but you pronounce the R as a tap or flap R, creating a false pseudo-syllable between the R and the Y, making it sound a little like MAR-(ee)-yaam. Strive not to pronounce it with three syllables. That tap or flap R in the middle doesn’t give rise to a full syllable.

Here’s what it looks like:

Oh, and about "Mother," what he’s saying is emmi (pronounced EM-mee), which is literally "my mother." The word for "mother" is emma and the –i suffix functions as "my."

Now the reader asks:

Third, and perhaps the most lengthy, what would be the names of all of the Apostles in Aramaic. The movie only gives us "Kepha" and "Yohanan".

Owww! Perhaps the most lengthy?

Okay ~~glutton for punishment~~obliging soul that I am, here are the names of the twelve apostles (plus a couple extra words I’ve circled for reasons that will become clear) taken from Matthew 10:2-4:

I would bore everyone to tears for me to give detailed pronunciation instructions for these, but here’s the gist:

Simon (Shem`on, shem-*on [it’s got that harsh Aeh sound in it])
Kepha (KAY-pha, though folks today pronounce it KAY-pah)
Andrew (Andareos, ahn-da-RAY-oss)
James (Ya`qob, YAH*-qobb [note: the two words that follow this are bar Zabday or "son of Zebedee")
John (Yohannan, yoh-HAN-nan)
Phillip (Pilipos, pih-LIP-poss)
Bartholomew (Bar Tolmay, bar TOL-may)
Thomas (Toma, TOE-mah)
Matthew (Mattay, matt-TAI)
James son of Alphaeus (Ya`qob bar Halpay, YAH*-qobb bar haal-PAI)
Thaddeus (Tadday, tad-DAI)
Simon the Cananaean (Shem`on Qananaya, shem-*ON qah-nah-NAI-yah)
Judas (Yhuda, yuh-HOO-dah)
Iscariot (Skaryota, skar-YO-tah)

Hope that helps! ‘Bout the best I can do on the fly, though I’m sure I could refine it if I had more time.

Again, I’m writing this from memory and phonetically with no real knowledge of Aramaic, so please forgive my mistakes. Thanks for your help.

No prob! And I’m impressed at how well you’ve done picking up stuff by ear from the movie!

Jesus, Mary, And The 12: What’s In A Name?

A reader writes:

As a recent reader of your (extremely interesting and original) site, I’ve noticed that you have some knowledge of Aramaic. Could you answer some questions I’ve had since viewing the movie "The Passion of the Christ"?

What would be the spoken and written Aramaic form of "Jesus of Nazareth"? In the movie it seemed it was pronounced with slight variations by different characters, such as "Yeshua n’Zaret", or "Yeshua an’Zaret" or "Yehsua m’Zaret" (I writing this phonetically from memory, so please forgive the mistakes). I realize that spelling and pronounciation can change as to a word’s function and place in a sentence, but if one wanted to say or write simply, "Jesus of Nazareth" in Aramaic, seperate from any place in a spoken or written phrase, what would it be?

First, "Jesus of Nazareth" gets written different ways. Here’s how it’s written in Acts 2:22:

I checked some other passages as well, and the closest I found to something that’s literally "Jesus of Nazareth" was in Acts 10:38, where we find this:

Hyper-literally, this would be "Jesus of-from Nazareth," but nobody would translate it that way. "Jesus of Nazareth" or "Jesus from Nazareth" would be the correct translation.

The reader then asks:

Second, what would the name "Mary" be in Aramaic? I’ve heard it is "Miriam", but in the movie, Mary Magadaline calls out, "Marian". Which is it, if either? Also, isn’t the Blessed Mother also addressed as "Emi", "Mother" in the movie?

Here’s what it looks like:

Oh, and about "Mother," what he’s saying is emmi (pronounced EM-mee), which is literally "my mother." The word for "mother" is emma and the –i suffix functions as "my."

Now the reader asks:

Third, and perhaps the most lengthy, what would be the names of all of the Apostles in Aramaic. The movie only gives us "Kepha" and "Yohanan".

Owww! Perhaps the most lengthy?

I would bore everyone to tears for me to give detailed pronunciation instructions for these, but here’s the gist:

Simon (Shem`on, shem-*on [it’s got that harsh Aeh sound in it])
Kepha (KAY-pha, though folks today pronounce it KAY-pah)
Andrew (Andareos, ahn-da-RAY-oss)
James (Ya`qob, YAH*-qobb [note: the two words that follow this are bar Zabday or "son of Zebedee")
John (Yohannan, yoh-HAN-nan)
Phillip (Pilipos, pih-LIP-poss)
Bartholomew (Bar Tolmay, bar TOL-may)
Thomas (Toma, TOE-mah)
Matthew (Mattay, matt-TAI)
James son of Alphaeus (Ya`qob bar Halpay, YAH*-qobb bar haal-PAI)
Thaddeus (Tadday, tad-DAI)
Simon the Cananaean (Shem`on Qananaya, shem-*ON qah-nah-NAI-yah)
Judas (Yhuda, yuh-HOO-dah)
Iscariot (Skaryota, skar-YO-tah)

Hope that helps! ‘Bout the best I can do on the fly, though I’m sure I could refine it if I had more time.

Again, I’m writing this from memory and phonetically with no real knowledge of Aramaic, so please forgive my mistakes. Thanks for your help.

No prob! And I’m impressed at how well you’ve done picking up stuff by ear from the movie!

Like . . . Whatever!

Analogies and metaphors supposedly found in high school essays:

1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.

2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.

3. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.

4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room temperature Canadian beef.

5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.

6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

7. He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree.

8. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife’s infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge free ATM.

9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.

10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.

11. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you’re on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.

12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.

13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.

14. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.

15. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan’s teeth.

16. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.

17. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant and she was the East River.

18. Even in his last years, Grandpappy had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.

19. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.

20. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.

21. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.

22. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.

23. The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.

24. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.

25. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.

26. Her eyes were like limpid pools, only they had forgotten to put in any pH cleanser.

27. She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.

28. It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall.

NOTE!: Add your own humorous metaphors and similies in the combox!

MLK

So the other day I was driving along in my pick-up truck, listening to country music, puffing my pipe, and thinking about Semitic languages (Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic, etc.).

Words in these languages tend to be built around roots that have three consonants, which then have a variety of prefixes, suffixes, and infixes shoved around and into them. (An infix is a affix that goes into a word, as you might imagine, instead of on the front or on the back, like a prefix or suffix.)

F’rinstance: the root K-T-B gets use in Semitic languages to make words like "write," "writing," "book," "bookkeeper," "library," etc.

‘Nuther instance: M-L-K gets used for a lot of royal words . . .

In Hebrew the word for "king" is melek, in Aramaic it’s malka, and in Arabic it’s malik.
In Hebrew the word for "queen" is malkah, in Aramaic it’s malktha, and in Arabic it’s malika.
In Hebrew the word for "angel" or "messenger" (i.e., a messenger of the king or the heavenly King) is mal’ak, in Aramaic it’s malaka, and in Arabic it’s malaak.

So lots of M-L-K words denoting kings and king-related things in Semitic languages.

Which got me thinking about this guy:

Mlkjr

America’s own M.L.K, or Martin Luther King.

Go fig.