dobra

Hans Stumme (1864-1936) was a German linguist whose work is is probably known to anyone interested in Berber and the North-African varieties of Arabic. Stumme travelled a lot and collected huge amounts of spoken data from - inter alia - Tunisians, Išelḥiyen and the Maltese. As far as I can tell, this is the more or less full list of his works containing such data:

Arabic

1. Albert Socin and Hans Stumme. 1894. Der arabische Dialekt der Ho̮uwāra des Wād Sūs in Marokko. Hirzel, Leipzig. Text
2. Albert Socin and Hans Stumme, editors. 1901. Diwan aus Centralarabien. B.G. Teubner, Leipzig. Text
3. Hans Stumme, editor. 1893. Tunisische Märchen und Gedichte: Eine Sammlung prosaischer und poetischer Stücke im arabischen Dialecte der Stadt Tunis; nebst Einleitung und Übersetzung. Hinrichs, Leipzig. Vol. 1; Vol. 2
4. Hans Stumme. 1894. Tripolitanisch-Tunisische Beduinenlieder. J. C. Hinrichs’sche Buchhandlung, Leipzig. Text
5. Hans Stumme. 1896. Grammatik des tunisischen Arabisch nebst Glossar. Hinrichs, Leipzig. Text
6. Hans Stumme, editor. 1898. Märchen und Gedichte aus der Stadt Tripolis in Nordafrika: Eine Sammlung transkribierter prosaischer und poetischer Stücke im arabischen Dialekte der Stadt Tripolis nebst Übersetzung, Skizze des Dialekts und Glossar. Hinrichs, Leipzig.
7. Hans Stumme. 1915. Fünf arabische Kriegslieder des berühmten deutschen Kriegsfreiwilligen Fritz Klopfer: Tunisische Melodien mit arabischem und deutschen Text. Hinrichs, Leipzig. Text

Berber

1. Hans Stumme. 1895a. Dichtkunst und Gedichte der Schluh. PhD Thesis, Zugl.: Leipzig, Univ., Habil.-Schr., 1895, Leipzig.
2. Hans Stumme, editor. 1895b. Märchen der Schluḥ von Tázerwalt. Hinrichs, Leipzig. Text
3. Hans Stumme. 1899. Handbuch des Schilhischen von Tazerwalt. Grammatik - Lesestücke - Gespräche - Glossar. Hinrichs, Leipzig. Text
4. Hans Stumme, editor. 1900. Märchen der Berbern von Tamazratt in Südtunisien. Hinrichs, Leipzig. Text
5. Hans Stumme. 1914. Eine Sammlung über den berberischen Dialekt der Oase Sîwe: Sitzung vom 12. September 1914. Teubner, Leipzig.

Maltese

1. Bertha Kössler-Ilg and Hans Stumme, editors. 1909. Maltesische Volkslieder im Urtext mit deutscher Übersetzung. Hinrichs, Leipzig.
2. Hans Stumme, editor. 1904a. Maltesische Märchen, Gedichte und Rätsel in deutscher Übersetzung. Hinrichs, Leipzig. Text
3. Hans Stumme. 1904b. Maltesische Studien: Eine Sammlung prosaischer und poetischer Texte in maltesischer Sprache, nebst Erläuterungen. Hinrichs, Leipzig.

It is quite clear that Stumme was particularly interested in collecting folk literature, such fairytales and songs, where his books remain an invaluable source of data for folklorists. At the same time, Stumme's work is extremely valuable for the study of the languages involved, since Stumme expended an enormous amount of effort on meticulously capturing the phonology of the varieties he studied. As a result, his work is regularly used by those studying the varieties he covered, in some cases being an object of study in itself.

 

This applies doubly to Maltese where there have been at least two major studies of the fairytales (1, 2). As far as I can tell, there is little focus in reevaluating Stumme's dialectological work (but that might change soon), which is a shame, because there is so much fascinating stuff in there. Like for example song no. 70 from the collection of Maltese songs (Kössler-Ilg and Stumme 1909, p. 27). I am reproducing the text below in standard Maltese orthography and Stumme's original German translation accompanied by my English one based on the Maltese text.

Ta' dobra sejrin isiefru,

kemm iħallu qlub miksura!

Kif ħarġu mill-port 'il barra,

tathom qalbhom, "erġgħu lura!"

---

Die Slawen wollen abreisen,

wie viele gebrochene Herzen lassen sie hier zurück!

Als sie aus dem Hafen hinausgefahren waren, 

gab ihnen ihr Herz ein: "Kehrt wieder um!"

---

The Slavs are about to leave,

how many broken hearts they leave behind!

As they left the port,

their hearts gave out, "Come on back!" 

A note here: the phrase tathom qalbhom is a bit of a mystery. It does bring to mind the idiom qata' + IO qalb + POSS 'be discouraged, loose faith', but the morphology does not make sense: the verb is PAST.3SGF - which works, since qalb 'heart' is feminine - and the noun bears the 3PL possessive marker. The -hom in tathom looks like the direct object (P argument) marker, but semantically it designates the recipient (R argument), so we have the IO component here. But then again, the form tat definitely looks like PAST.3SGF of ta 'to give' which recalls the idiom ta + DO ras + POSS 'to panic'. So maybe there is an entire class of such idioms to which ta + DO qalb + POSS belongs, I will need to look into that.

But that is not why we are here. We are here for the multi-word expression in bold that Stumme translates as the ethnonym "Slavs". The composition of the expression is clear: the element ta' is what Arabic dialectology refers to as genitive exponent, i.e. possession marker, the equivalent of 'of'. In North African varieties, it usually takes the form mtāʕ/ntāʕ etc., the apostrophe at the end of ta' is what remained of ʕ in Maltese. ta'  (or tal- with a definite article) + NOUN is how Maltese creates group names: ta' Lejber 'Labourists', tal-PN 'nationalists (lit. of Partit Nazzjonalista)" are perhaps the most prominent examples. Similarly, in a version of the Maltese translation of Bandiera rossa, the first verse goes Tal-pinna o ħutna, ukoll tal-mazza where pinna is 'pen' and mazza is 'sledgehammer', the two expressions meaning 'intellectuals' and 'workers'.

What the of the dobra? That is quite simple; as Stumme himself puts it on p. 11, we're dealing with "die Leute, die immer dobra 'gut!' sagen" ("the people who always say dobra 'good!'"). That we do so and that we are perceived as such I can attest to from personal experience, recalling for example an Albanian lady in a B&B in Italy who upon learning that I am Slovak went "Oh you are one of the dobre dobre people!" That this is also how the Maltese thought of us back in the late 19th century is fascinating. Now the question remains which Slavs are these, since the general adverb of agreement usually takes the form dobre/dobro. The only language I can think of where people use a form with an [a] at the end is Czech, but there the vowel is long and considering the geography of the region, it is more likely that Maltese would encounter South Slavs. So probably not Czechs and definitely not the Polish or Slovaks, otherwise it would either be ta' dopxe or, of course, ta' kurva.