some oriental abjads

14.vii.MMIX - 21.vIi.MCDXXX

download spreadsheet file (177 736 bytes).

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etymo note: basta -> بس

09.Iv.1430

'nuff said.

bas is the colloquial egyptian for "enough". ... Read more

etymo note: diwan douane

2.III.1430

diwan btw is not turkish as i thought it was.

it is the fa3laan wazn/sarf/verbal form
of diyah, which is what is due - possibly (and apparently) also related to dayn , whence debt and "religion". ... Read more

etymo note: بقول فول فاصوليا fava Fabaceae Phaseoleae

11.II.1430

Phaseoleae are a tribe of the subfamily of Faboideae, commonly the legumes (ar. بقوليات ) that comprises most of the beans raised for human and domestic animal consumption, including peanuts, and fava beans, the common bean, lentils, soya, peas, among others.



Faboideae is one of the three subfamilies of the family of Fabaceae.

There does not seem to be a direct link between بازلاء and فاصوليا , but the latin name of the former is Pisum sativa. And it seems to take after the near eastern name rather than vice versa, since the basilla or peas are originates in the near east.

At long last this also explains the arabic name for peanuts "sudanese fava", because they come from the same.

Beans, fava, lentils, peanuts and peas belongs to genus Phaseolus (of a subtribe (Phaseolinae) of the Phaseoleae tribe), Vicia (of the tribe of Vicieae), Lens, Arachis and Pisum of the subfamily Faboideae alias Papilionoideae of the family Fabaceae alias Leguminosae.



Scruntch! scrunch scrunch ...

ps. of course we see no connection between ful or fa[v|b]a and fasolia.

... Read more

P مـ م Ρόδος Ruːdes عامود rod

12.I.1430

Rhodes was known for its colossus which to be truly colossal and on a harbor for the far flung to see, it must have stood on a pillar.

In taking the semitics/phonoecian's `amoud, they mapped the glyph due to simil of form to P the letter Rho, and mistook the with a R phoneme,

Remaining text. ... Read more

Etymo note: cube cubus kybos cubit كعب مكعب

04.iI.1430

cube cubus κύβος (dice) cubit كعب مكعب


and obviously الكعبة . ... Read more

etymo note: @ الربع

02.Ii.1430

The @ symbol comes via portuguese "arroba," from the arabic word "Al-rub`" pronounced Ar-rub` (=quarter,one fourth). The glyph has been used in iberian practice since the 18th cent. to denote the much older spanish unit of measure (11th cent.).

Known in English as the @ sign, it is called in French "L'arobase "
and equivalently: arrobase, arrobe, arobas, arrobas or "a commercial"

According to http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/@ The name originates from the Portuguese unit of weight and capacity measure.

Just to save time I quote:

"Ce terme vient de l'arabe الربع (ar-rubʿ, « le quart », un quart de quintal, soit 25 livres, poids équivalent à 11,502 kg – 12,5 kg en Aragon)."


... Read more

etymo note: ψυχή , روح

the greek ancestor of psyche is ψυχή , ps-u-kh-é (we deliberately maintain the latin grapheme u for the greek υ which otherwise is expressed in latin with grapheme y and phoneme i)

I wonder if sukh is not derived from rukh , they differ in only one letter.

as an aside there is a symbolic - or rather shambolic - linkage: i wonder also whether there is a link between the spirit , pneuma, and the fish . though the general agreement is that the salted fish (fisikh) of Paque -> Pasc and pisces -> Pesakh = فصح in arabic (sham el nesim feast has roots in the christian miracle of the fishes. This is an unecessary line of imagination ,since the goal is to link sukh to ru[h|kh] not link ruh to fsooh. the possible linked is noted however.

it is called to mind because it resembles the weird greek cognate .Sukh of Ru.h

are there are any other instances where psi, ψ , replaces R in cognates. i would have thought it was cognate of the .Sad . ... Read more

etymo note: chlor- خضر + other H/ηemial elements

1. Chlorine , Chloros
Chloros is greek for pale green.
whereas the arabic trilit. root for green (akhdar) is Kh-D-R
if we line it up with an hypothetical greek trilit. root for khloros (xloros),
we get X-L-R , Kh-L-R (greek) and Kh-D-R (arabic)
which suggests a possible connection between the two names of the same color.
What is needed is to check whether the L in XLOR is a phonological transformation of the D in KhDR and whether there are other examples of a D to L transformation from semitic / afroasiatic to Greek.
If this is the case than Chloros and Khadar could be cognates.



2. Sodium (Na), comes from lat. Natrium , with symbol thus Na, from greek Natrios , comes from Arabic / egyptian Natron
eg, the huge Wadi al Natron , natron valley , south of Alexandria in Egypt.
Natra has come to be synonymous with salts in ancient chemical nomenclature.

3. Potassium (K), comes from lat. Kalium, thus symbol is Ka , from the Arabic Qalja , which is the ash of plants. ... Read more

Etymo note: the glyph R and Rei, Rex , Ric , rich, Roye , Roy , Roi , Reg, Regular, Regn. , Reign, Reich , Raïs, Ra'is

Proto sinaitic may have had a considerable genealogic influence on proto-canaanite , whence phonoecian and its descendants come (nearly all non-logographic alphabets (as the wikipedia article, "Genealogy of scripts derived from Proto-Sinaitic", also notes.

There is a clear descendance from the hieroglyphic Ra's (head) representation of a head and the proto-sinaic glyph to the proto-canaanite then phonecian P pointing left, then the greek Rho with the glyph P .


the origin of this letter in proto-cananite and phoneician was rather pictorgrammic or ideographic , originally taken from a graphic refernce to "head" part of the human body. this relation persists through proto-sinaitic and to hieroglyphic where the pictogramm is derived.

as such the glyph's logogramic ancestor was a morpheme which semantic content got sublimated abstracted or removed while some graphic form was retained.

so it is ironic that the european term for the monarch , at least starting with latin
"rex" and "regula" would come to be represented with an initial R .

though it is difficult to look at Rex , Rei, ric and ra'is or ra's and not get ideas.

compounding this is that ra` and rais and ra's and the pictogram all originated in the same country, the antecedent in a direct line to the european alphabets.

compound this further with the persistence of the morpheme "ra's" head in semitic language such as arabic. though, here, in the semitic language the glyph is far from the P or R glyph.

On another strain , that is however more tenuous and speculative , the egyptian word Ra' denoting at least a sun god , if not a brahman-type or godhead deity , may have been at the origin of the transition to the latin Rex, a name which would also written with the letter Rho and glyph P which descends from the writing 'head' in proto sinaitic.

This is only one reason to surmise an afro-asiatic origin to the latin Rex .

Another reason could be the glyphic link itself. ... Read more

egypt mother of the world + synthesis from a probabilistic clou

there is another reason to vindicate the proverb / adage "egypt is the mother of the world"

the first reason i'd thought and mentioned before on past blogs is the genetics view that current humanity hail from a stock of a few tens of thousands originating in africa (perhaps east africa) - who thus must have fanned out onto the rest of the ma`moura. This means that they must have passage this passage mostly through Egypt.
Such movement being essentially generational and slow , most if not all of the people of the earth today have had egyptian-born ancestors who may have lived all their lives in egypt - bona fide egyptians.

now the other reason, in light of an earlier language note , would come from a proto-sinaitic script origin to the proto-canaanite->phonecian script .
Such a vector seems to agree with the genetic conjecture that modern humans have come from an original african stock that migrated through egypt.

the proto-canaanite script , via its phonecian and aramaic script descendants has led to most of the alphabets or abjads used in the world today from indochina to europe to the native americans.

this observation also lends credence to the deduction of genetic links that accompany script lineages and divergences.

thus earlier i conjectured earlier that a glyphic lineage link might exist between south arabian and ancient berber and that it might indicate a genetic or ethnic lineage also between the arabian bedouins and the berbers.

now by the same mode of the thought we can also conjecture that a glyphic lineage from proto-sinaitic to proto-canaanite corresponds to a genetic / ethnic lineage between the egyptian people (themselves a link in the genetic chain from the east african stock) and the canaanites and their descdendants who populated the fertile crescent.

Update:

3.XI.2008

It must be recognized that Egypt was not (or could not possibly be) the only route out of Africa. The close relationship between the South Arabian and Ethiopic scripts leaves little doubt as to direct contact across the strait Between Southwestern Arabia and Africa's eastern pseudopod, so-called its horn, that was as intense as that between Phonecians and Greeks. This is in addition to the much-recorded common history of both regions.

Likewise, movement across the Gibraltar strait is not inconceivable, and some suggest that

this raises questions like but whence came the felix arabs? In such trangenerationally slow processes, did south arabia first become inhabited by a population drift from the north and ultimately via sinai? Or was colonialization started by early east african seafarers?

We find that in this transgenerationally slow process of population movement and ethnolinguistic genesis ,

a. more fidelity may be found in a continuum model were movement could have reached there simultaneously or nearly so from both west and north.

b. such movement would likely be bidirectional and indeed omnidirectional. This is after all human activity accumulated over many generations.

The continuum model thus postulates movement of people pretty much in all directions, including a continuum of motion or flow closing the path geographically circumscribing the red sea into a closed cycle of population movement. Even like a vortex. This blurs the certitudes on whether the earliest south arabians came from the north or the west (or even from the east), giving instead a probability distribution. Though I wonder if this would hold up to genetic and protegenic data on the regions involved.

Just taking the physical analogy a qubit further , in its own context (which is inferred from religious text to be open), it is not insignificant historically that the continents were connected, bridged as it were, at Egypt and not in the south. And that the Sinai passage has been in the stewardship or fief of rather than that of others. ... Read more

etymo note: some cultural notes

many western words cognate with counterparts in the indian languages, particularly hindi , have a B sound in their western branches, that is
substituted with a V sound in the indian languages.

This pattern is also found in some languages neighboring the indian subcontinent such as farsi and turki.

Indeed we find that identity between an eastern V with a western B (phoenician greek romance and germanic - don't know about celtic yet) in the russian or slavic languages as well.


Incidentally this division is more of a true (more literal) east-west division with russia, persia, turkic asia, india on the east * (not mentioning the far east, the more easterly half of this "east") ; and europe , at leastthe western levant ** , and africa on the western side.

As if


* this includes the caucasus, being a region comprising the extensions of three nations, the russ, the turks, the persians (kurds are a turkic people) and perhaps those of arab or semitic nations too.

** the arab world would happen to be smack in the middle looking onto both sides - though the linguistic implications thereof do not concern us here.


then we have to think what does it take for a person to sound a B as a V.

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in the process of imagining realizing the hindu religion is as it were to its people it helps to think of ancient greek religion.

firstly, we must ask whether we can talk of a greek "religion" in the first place. it seems to me from past encounters in reading that individual regions bestowed their own religious elements, not least bringing / adding their regional deity(ies) to the relgious dogma of "belief". it would thus appear that greek religion which we know chiefly via mythology related to us by poets (maybe they weren't poets
at all) was in fact my fragmented regional religions and cults sharing a common general pantheon that rather liberal in its admission policy and a general cosmogony. these common religious elements become closely tied / entertwined with linguistic features (such as greek names for hell like hades and to culture in general (contributing to a large canon of poetry dramaturgy folklore and philosophy).

It seems reasonable that hinduism is similar in this way to its greek
contemporary.

as it were there may have been a brief and interesting encounter between indic culture and perhaps by extension hinduism and buddhism and greek culture in the moment of alexander the great.

another linkage bridging the two east and west localities (hind/sindh
and europe) is the famed indo-european , or indo-aryan connection
connection and ethnic.

a reasonable / useful reminder is the paradoxical disdain of those germanic aryans to the roma who by most trusted accounts hailed from india during the late middle ages.

i was once told that hinduism is a collection or agglomeration of numerous local cults sects and regional folk religions. an agglomeration that catalogues regional and recurrent elements such as deities and that embraces different scriptural books into a common persistent pantheon and textual canon.

it should be understood as such.

i would hazard that the degree of fragmentation not only in a typical "religion" 's divergent spiritual schools but als in its sects is much higher in hinduism than it is in islam (both now with comparable population sizes ).

that degree of fragmentation is a good measure of the aspect of religion concerning the solidity and consistency of its defining dogmatic idiosyncracies.

for instance compare the degree of fragmentation in divergence from central dogma in protestantism with that of its counterpart in catholicism.


hinduism is more fragmented than buddhism as well.


the modern (recent) spread of interest in hindu belief and practices - largely in the form of exceedingly peripheral orders and sect and schools - is trans-atlantic phenomenon. to a larger extent, the
persistence of the hindu collective religion despite the presence of more consistent forms of buddhism , and abrahamic religions , may have been also the effect of a western europe influence in the form of colonization (the dutch and then french and english east india companies , and the raj).

I could not help but notice the effect the raj has had on the displacement of a largely muslim predomination throughout the indian subcontinent , not only in terms of political power but also in terms of population size.

to appreciate the effect this kind of displacement or eradication has on the collective power and reach of the muslim religion,

we can use as an illustration the analogue of the effect displacing the arabic alphabet as the alphabet for many of the turkic languages from xin-jiang/turkestan in the east to turkey in the west,and replacing it with latin and cyrillic on the mutual reach and readibility between arabic and all those languages.

the displacement of both population (by expulsion or extermination)
and influence in many parts of the muslim worlds have been a recurrent pattern in the era european colonization that extends from the late midieval age to the present time. this has also been true in the case of latin american and australian nations and elsewhere.

in light of european colonization's displacement of social orders prevalent in the XVIth cent. the persistence of the archaic hindu system today may have been due to a revival and a patronage exercised over it by the brits.

this is not dissimilar to charges of british incubation of other religious trends such as arabian wahabism or ismaili and bahai religions.

one finds a pattern here, for it was in england as well that some of the more exotic offshoots of protestanism took refuge or were incubated.


Even if this is not true for the modern hinduism in the subcontinent, it would account for much of hinduism's interface with the "west"
(for it is through the residual colonial filter that hinduism comes in contact with arabs africans and latin americans in addition to europe)
particularly in the form of the exceedingly divergent sects and imitations of western-tinted persuasions such as the transatlantic movement of hare krisna - notably with charges of abuses among the western dominated communities.

P.S.

As if to support the argument , after posting the current entry i ran into this passage at wikipedia (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu_denominations
):
"Influential 19th to 20th century Hindu revivalist organizations include Arya Samaj, Tilak Mission Bhagwan Swaminarayan, Brahmo Samaj, Parisada Hindu Dharma, Prarthana Samaj, Ramakrishna Mission, Sadharan Brahmo Samaj, Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana, Swadhyay Movement, Swaminarayan Sampraday, Sathya Sai Organisation.

Hinduism was politicized in the context of the Indian independence movement, and has resulted in the rise of Hindu nationalism to a significant political force in the Republic of India." ... Read more

etymology note: Sherry

Sherry's spanish name is , el Xérès, sometimes also written el Jeres, after the name of its city of origin, Jerez de la frontera. These three variations on the same name comprise the brandname of the region's product Jeres-Xérès,-Sherry. Its land of origin is a trianglur region in the southernmost province of spain, cadiz, comprised of Jerez, the river guadalquivir (الجدول الكبير) and the city or town of sanlucar in the west, which is a producer of another wine made with the same process but whose brandname is Manzanilla-Sanlucar de Barrameda registered as the former in 1933, and puerto de santamaria in the south. Jerez is also known for its Jerez vinegars, made from the same wines of Jerez.

The region also produces vinegar out of the same wine. Of the three types of soil, the lightest and the best for the palomino grapes used in the production of the fino and orroso wines of Xérès , is called albariza (meaning standing out, en relief). In the step of the vinification process of Sherry wines, known as the solera system, three rows of barrels are arrayed atop each other, each containing the same wine but of a different age ordered youngest to oldest, from the top to the bottom row. Periodically, a third is removed (soutiré) from the bottom barrel, and replaced with a volume from the barrel above it, containing the younger batch. The removal of the liquor from the oak barrels is known as saka, which i only speculate may have derived from the verb saqa , ar. سقا.

The time of its adoption by its biggest fans, the brits, dates sometime between the 16th century and the 19th century.

The amount of stuff that interests the british in Spain, or in the Iberian peninsula in general, is bemusing. Some Brits apparently are also very fond of porto, which is another wine, originating from Portugal this time, whose production there is regulated since at least the seventeenth century.

Finally, and since all those etymology notes are largely conjecture, I'll venture tha t the namesake of the muted wine, el Xérès, may actually also come from the arabic word for beads, Kharaz , خرز . ... Read more

الخان و الخاقان و القان و القانون

ملاحظة لغوية

كلتا الكلمتان خان و خاقان تعدان مترادفتان بحيث أن معناهما واحد و هو حاكم أو ملك فى حين أن لفظ خاقان فيه تعاظم على لفظ خان حيث يشابه فى معناه اللقب الفارسى شاهنشاه و معناه ملك الملوك ، و يكتب اللفظ فى اللغات الرومانسية هكذا Khâgan

و اللفظ خان أو قان من أصول مغولية أو تركية و الأغلب من أصل مشترك حيث تتشابه اللغتان الى حد بعيد فى أغلب مفرداتهما. و لدى الصينيون تحوير ثالث للقب خان و تعريبه هان، و تكتب كلمة خان هكذا بالصينية

可汗 .


و الخان أو الخاقان إسم مذكر ، مؤنثه ختون و خانوم و ربما يرجع اللقب المؤنث هانم الى مؤنث النطق الصينى للكلمة، هان .
و فى حين أننا نجد أن كلا الإسمان مستعملان فى الخطاب التاريخى العربى ، نود الإشارة الى إستهجاء أسيوى لنفس الللقب ألا و هو القان (هذا الى جانب المرادف الصينى هان).



تجدر الإشارة أيضا فى هذا المضمون أن الأسم الذى إشتهر به موحد أمبراطورية المغول ، جنكيز خان أو جنكيز قان ، هو فى الواقع لقب ترجمته الحرفية هى حاكم المحيط بمعنى حاكم العالم
، فى حين أن إسم هذا القائد الأصلى هو طيموجين.

مع مقارنة المرادفات الثلاث ، خان خاقان و قان ، و التفكر فى معناهم نرى أنه ربما هناك علاقة بين هذا اللقب و معناه المشتمل على الحكم و أصل كلمة القانون.

هنا نرى إمكانية القرابة بين القان الذى يسن القانون. و هى قرابة إن كان حقيقية فهى تشابه القرابة بين بين كلمة السياسة و أصلها اللغوى و هو الياسا و هى التشريعات التى وضعها جنكيز قان عند جمع قبائل المغول تحت رايته و إنتصاره على ممالك الصين الشمالية.


نود أيضا مقارنة التركيب اللفظى فى الألقاب شاهنشاه و قائمقام مع تركيب خاقان ، أما فى اللفظين السابقين فلا يخفى الأثر التركى و إن كانت شاهنشاه فارسية ، أما فى اللفظة الثالثة فربما تدل على أن قان قد يمثل الجمع للمفرد خان.

من الممكن أيضا وجود قرابة لغوية بين لفظ خاقان و كلا من اللقب اليابانى شوغان و اللقب العبرى حاخام ، و إن كان فى الأغلب تشابه عابر . حاخام تتصل بالمصدر حكم و معناها حاكم أو بالأحرى حكيم ممما يدفعنا لمقارنة الأحرف حـ كـ م و الأحرف خ / ق ن
أما الحرفان ح و خ فهما قابلين للتبادل فى علم و تاريخ أنساب الأسماء , نجد كذلك تقارب صوتى بين الحرفين ك و ق الى جانب تقارب مكانى إن صلح التعبير بين الزوج م و ن حيث نجدهم متجاورين فى معظم الأبجديات

كنت أتسائل ما اذا كانت الحروف خ و ه و ح قابلة للتبادل مع حرف أو صوت شين مثلما هو الأمر مع والحروف أو الأصوات اللاتينية c ch kh k
فربما ساعد ذلك على يشير ذلك الى أصل مشترك للقب المغولى خان و قان و مقابله الفارسى شاه ، و لكن هذا غير صحيح لأن تسمية شاه إنما ترجع الى السانسكريتية گذشته.
يجدر التساؤل أيضا عن تاريخ استعمال هذا اللقب فى أراضى السند و فارس.

كذلك أفتقر الى أصول و تاريخ غستعمال هذا اللقب، و إن كا ن هنالك إشارات تعود الى ما قبل عصر جنكيز بزمن. فعلى سبيل المثال نجد أن البلغار النازحين من القوقاز الى أراضى التراقيين فى القرن السابع الميلادى تأسست إمبراطوريتهم اﻷولى حوالى عام 632 م على يد ملكهم المسمى خان أسباروخ ابن المك خان كوبرات .
و الذى انتصر من ضمن آخرين على مملكة اﻷفار فى الغرب و التى كانت أيضا تعرف بالخاقانية.
و قد قدم اﻷفار أو اﻷواريون و البلغار من القوقاز ، و يعتقد أن اﻷفار اﻷوربيون قد يعودوا فى أصولهم للروران ( تان تان أو شيانباى) ذوى الأصل المغولى و الذين إستعملوا لقب الخاقان منذ القرن الثالث الميلادى. هذا الى جانب أن البلاد التى سكنتها الشعوب التركية فى حقبة ما بعد إنهيار إمبراطورية الرومان كانت تعج بالخانات (خانقاه) مثل الخزر و الأفار .

و ﻻ يسعنى اﻻ أن ألمح الى تقارب الخاقان و بالتحديد اللقب اﻷقدم المستعمل لدى المغوليين اﻷول ، كيهان (可寒) مع الألقاب السامية كاهن و حاكم . و من التحوير العبرى لكلمة الحكمة ، خُخمة، نجد المرادف للحاكم أو الحكيم فى العبرية هو حاخام أو خاخام و هنا نجد وضوح قى تشابه اﻷخيرة مع اللقب المغولى ثم التركى ، خاقان.

... Read more