From: "A.P. de Visser" To: "'Ancient Egyptian Language List'" Subject: RE: AEL an ethimological question Date: Mon, 6 Apr 2009 22:43:49 +0200 I think that resemblances with words in other languages could be found so often that ,though one has to be careful,it can not be only accidental,but I am an amateur also.Maybe you could add to your collection: ,child;jeune,giovane,joven. Regards Bram de Visser,Holland ============================================================================== Date: Tue, 7 Apr 2009 08:21:51 -0600 Subject: Re: AEL an ethimological question From: Stan Thomas To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Don't forget nTr (Nature). -Stan ============================================================================== From: "A.K. Eyma" To: "AEL" Subject: Re: AEL an ethimological question Date: Tue, 7 Apr 2009 21:14:26 +0200 >Can any of you tell me whether the ethimologies below are >obviously right or obviously wrong? ** The latter, none of the comparisons with European languages are even remotely valid, sorry. E.g., recall that many of the AE final -t's given in your list are feminine endings, which were no longer pronounced since a fairly early age. The comparisons with Arabic is another issue, as there could be a shared Afroasiatic origin. A (perhaps too) quick glance suggests to me also all those are invalid, except for this one, in an indirect way: >idn, lieutenant, written with the ideogram of the ear: wden is ear in >arabic. The word for lieutenant has nothing to do with it (it is just written with F21), but F21 itself, with value idn, is thought to be from an obsolete AE word for "ear", *idn, to be linked with a Semitic word for ear, *'uDn, to which your Arabic word may belong I suppose (can't judge). But both would be from Afroasiatic stock, so not a loan from one into the other. kind regards, Aayko ============================================================================== Date: Tue, 7 Apr 2009 15:13:09 -0000 (GMT) Subject: Re: AEL an ethimological question From: msore@albawaba.com To: "Ancient Egyptian Language List" Consider the possibility that the whole question of etymology has been skewed by the tendency by european students of ancient Egyptian to CHOOSE translations for poorly understood Egyptian words from the modern vocabularies with which they are familiar. In other words, critically thinking we should wonder whether the glyph(s) now taken by Euro/Anglo egyptologists to mean "seat" really does mean that, or if it is more probable that the English word "seat" FELT LIKE a nice translation because of the superficial phonetic similarity with Egyptian /st/ or /3st/? I am not skeptical of the reality of lexical spread - whether within language families or across - but the guessing and approximate nature of translation across a gap of thousands of years must be acknowledged too. matthew ============================================================================== Date: Tue, 7 Apr 2009 23:22:50 -0400 (EDT) From: Grant Hicks To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL an ethimological question Let's not forget, though, that the words we use today have (for the most part) well-known histories. It makes no sense, for example, to compare "nature" and nTr without reckoning with the fact that our word "nature" didn't just spring fully formed from the brow of Zeus; we know where it came from. Specifically, it's from Latin "natura", a form of the verb "nasci" (to be born), which itself comes from a common proto-Indo-European root "gen-". It's hard to imagine, in the progression of "gen-" to "nasci" to "natura" to "nature", where the Egyptian term for deity can have intervened. The proposed derivation of "mirror" from mAA-Hr suffers from the same deficiency. The French word "miroir" is clearly a "thing for looking", from "mirer" (to look at), from Latin "mirari" (to wonder at, admire) from "mirus" (wonderful), ultimately from PIE "smei-" (to smile). There's just no reason to abandon this perfectly reasonable etymology in favor of a speculative and (so far as I know) undocumented connection between medieval French and a phrase from Middle Egyptian. Skeptically, Grant ============================================================================== Date: Wed, 8 Apr 2009 10:09:43 +0200 (CEST) From: Ugo Bessi To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL an ethimological question Ehm, yes, I expressed myself badly. I was just wondering whether these words had a common root in some (hypothetical) language from which both the Indo-European and Afro-Asiatic languages stem; after all, it seems reasonable that a very basic word like "mother", which is highly preserved in the indo-european languages, comes from an incredibly ancient word which left traces also in the afro-asiatic group. But anyhow these questions are too complicated for a layman like me. Thanks a lot, Ugo. ============================================================================== Date: Tue, 07 Apr 2009 13:26:55 -0700 From: Stephen Fryer To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL an ethimological question Stan Thomas wrote: > Don't forget nTr (Nature). Oh PLEASE let us forget it. No connection whatever! Stephen Fryer ============================================================================== Date: Tue, 7 Apr 2009 19:28:08 -0500 (GMT-05:00) From: "Oscar H. Blayton, Atty. At Law, Inc." To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL an ethimological question I agree with Matthew.  Language is a social construct that is, by its nature, a culturally based convention; and we have to acknowledge that there is much that we do not know about this culture.  Our world view may differ so greatly from those held by the individuals who lived in the ancient Nile valley communities that we could possibly be way "wide of the mark" is supposing the idea meant to be conveyed by the word. Best regards, Oscar H. Blayton ============================================================================== Date: Wed, 8 Apr 2009 08:27:10 +0000 (GMT) From: Jerry McCarthy Subject: Re: AEL an ethimological question To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Aayko, A popular one that I heard a few times links the name "Mary" with "mr" (Gardiner U6 or U7), "beloved". Is there any justification for that one? I don't see it on your AELoans site. Regards, Jerry McCarthy, U.K. --- On Tue, 7/4/09, A.K. Eyma wrote: ============================================================================== From: "Chris Weimer" To: "Ancient Egyptian Language List" Subject: Re: AEL an ethimological question Date: Wed, 8 Apr 2009 15:58:43 -0500 We should create a website which lists these false cognates and explain in detail why they are not valid. Chris Weimer ============================================================================== Date: Thu, 9 Apr 2009 02:02:38 -0000 (GMT) Subject: AEL how many cognates are there really From: msore@albawaba.com To: "Ancient Egyptian Language List" In order to rank the reasonableness of any etymological explanation, a variety of factors must be considered and weighed. Very few proposed etymological explanations hold up against scientific or logical scrutiny. What kinds of tests would a good scientist apply? phonological similarity (not just phonetic) semantic similarity (very fuzzy) grammatical similarity (category, affixation, etc) membership in the same language family more cognates in more closely related languages, less in less appearance of cognates in related sets (not one at a time) participation in clusters of cultural rules or practices patterning consistent with diachronic phonological rules evidence of linkage between languages for borrowing similarities in spelling or other representations participation in clusters of cultural rules or practices Any other suggestions for criteria? If each of these criteria were the basis of assigning one point, then the strength of any posited cognate relationship would range between zero points and may be ten points. Proposing that AE /mr/ is related to the name of Mary or Miryam (or its variations) would not do well against such a list of criteria, would it? If we used only one or two of the above criteria, we could force consideration of cognates that are completely impossible. It might be valuable to examine what KINDS of AE words are likely to have cognates with surrounding Afroasiatic languages, with surrounding Semitic languages, and with surrounding non-related languages (through borrowing)? My guess (experts could verify) would be that we would find similarity between AE and Egyptian Arabic in semantic fields related to agriculture, but more similarity between AE and Greek in religious terminology. matthew ============================================================================== Date: Wed, 8 Apr 2009 17:33:35 -0600 Subject: Re: AEL an ethimological question From: Stan Thomas To: Ancient Egyptian Language List On Tue, Apr 7, 2009 at 2:26 PM, Stephen Fryer wrote: > > Stan Thomas wrote: > >> Don't forget nTr =C2=A0(Nature). > > Oh PLEASE let us forget it. =C2=A0No connection whatever! > > Stephen Fryer > > I suppose I should have put an ;) at the end. Perhaps that would have made the point a bit clearer. -Stan ============================================================================== From: "mluban@netzero.net" Date: Wed, 8 Apr 2009 19:45:53 GMT To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.org.uk Subject: Re: AEL an ethimological question From: Grant Hicks >The proposed derivation of "mirror" from mAA-Hr suffers from the same >deficiency. The French word "miroir" is clearly a "thing for looking", >from "mirer" (to look at), from Latin "mirari" (to wonder at, admire) >from "mirus" (wonderful), ultimately from PIE "smei-" >(to smile). The etmology may seem to be "clear" but the fact remains that French is evidently the only Romance language that did not adopt the *actual* Latin word for "mirror" which is "speculum". Why not? To wit: Italian--"specchio" Spanish--"espejo" Portuguese--"espelho" and even Germanic "Spiegel" It would seem strange that French did not follow suit but took a completely different Latin term to describe this item, which did have a name and was *supposedly* not known in Gaul until the Romans arrived there. >There's just no reason to abandon this perfectly reasonable >etymology in favor of a speculative and (so far as I know) >undocumented connection between medieval French and a phrase from >Middle Egyptian. It may be very speculative but one answer could be that the object was known previous to the advent of the Latin language in Gaul by a different name. The south of France is, after all, accessible by the Mediterranean and mirrors were Egyptian objects long before others used them. How, one might ask, did the Spanish latch onto the word "adobe", which very likely comes from Egyptian?? The term which we transliterate as "mAA" even from its very spelling [see Hannig, p. 314, col. 2] probably was vocalized something like "mar" or even "mir", evidenced by the Maru-Aten, short for Pa-maru-en-pa-aten [The Viewing-Palace-of-the-Aten]. From the transliterations, it would seem that it's been thought that the sign, the *eye* ["ir"]in the spellings was a mere determinative, even though its place in the word is not where determinatives most often were. More I cannot say and, as I stated previously, there is no way to prove a connection. I wonder if Carsten Peust had anything to say about "mAA". His book on Egyptian phonology is downloadable, but too great a file for my, at present, too-slow connection. Marianne Luban Author of "The Exodus Chronicles: Beliefs, Legends & Rumors from Antiquity Regarding the Exodus of the Jews from Egypt", Second Edition, New and Revised (2008) ============================================================================== Date: Wed, 08 Apr 2009 16:38:21 -0500 From: Robert Myers To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL an ethimological question msore@albawaba.com wrote: > > Consider the possibility that the whole question of etymology has been > skewed by the tendency by european students of ancient Egyptian to CHOOSE > translations for poorly understood Egyptian words from the modern > vocabularies with which they are familiar. > > In other words, critically thinking we should wonder whether the glyph(s) > now taken by Euro/Anglo egyptologists to mean "seat" really does mean > that, or if it is more probable that the English word "seat" FELT LIKE a > nice translation because of the superficial phonetic similarity with > Egyptian /st/ or /3st/? > > I am not skeptical of the reality of lexical spread - whether within > language families or across - but the guessing and approximate nature of > translation across a gap of thousands of years must be acknowledged too. > > matthew Hi; This is a really good point, though sometimes, a translator simply is not always outstandingly intimate with his own language. I remember once in Latin class where we were translating _sterno_, and the professor said it was to "crush" or "smash". Since this case was in a battle scene in the _Aeneid_, I ventured that it probably meant, "squash", and she readily agreed. One word that leaps out at me is _bAk_, which has an equivalent in Sanskrit. In PtahHotep, it occurs in an instance where it seems to me that it can only mean to issue rather than receive orders (i.e., "govern" your son, later on in the text), leading me to believe that the meaning of the word is at least occasionally more causal and implicative of real ability than it is generally given when translated "serve", or similarly. I wonder if there is an expert who could look at bAk n.k idbwy to see if it might rather mean "as you govern the two shores"? I think we will get more sensitive translations of Egyptian classics as more and more scholars see Egypt with an appreciation toward their observe-and-report values. It seems to me that certain modern axioms might have to give way to a more empathetic approach; and this does seem to be happening. Donald Redford's anthology on Egyptian religion is full of entries that are surprisingly free of the old tendencies. Cheers, Bob ============================================================================== To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.org.uk Subject: Re: AEL an ethimological question Date: Wed, 08 Apr 2009 20:33:38 -0400 From: tokapu@aol.com Specifically in the case of nTr, we must remember that Egyptian was a fully developed and written language centuries before Rome emerged even as village. Trade has been proven. Ideas travel with trade. Factor into this that as a function of etymological studies over the centuries between the silencing of Egyptian and its revival, Egyptian influence was unknown and, for them, unknowable. Our calendar came to us from Egypt via late Roman contact. Perhaps the concept of "divine nature" came from early Roman contact? R.L. Wheeler ============================================================================== From: "A.K. Eyma" To: "Ancient Egyptian Language List" Subject: Re: AEL an ethimological question Date: Thu, 9 Apr 2009 13:43:20 +0200 Hi Jerry, >A popular one that I heard a few times links the name "Mary" with >"mr" (Gardiner U6 or U7), "beloved". >Is there any justification for that one? Mary comes from Maria < Mariam, the Greek form of the Hebrew name Miriam (mrim; cp. sister of Moses). So you will see there is a pesky -m at the end. ;) The meaning or origin of the Hebrew name is not fully clear (the rabbis linked it with a word for "bitter", many modern scholars with a word for "rebellion"). I've no opinion on that. Aayko ============================================================================== From: "mluban@netzero.net" Date: Sat, 11 Apr 2009 18:25:46 GMT To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.org.uk Subject: Re: AEL an ethimological question ---------- Original Message ---------- From: "mluban@netzero.net" >How, one might ask, did the Spanish latch onto the word "adobe", >which very likely comes from Egyptian?? Through Arabic, of course, "at-tub" meaning "the brick" and that's how it sometimes works--but one needs to give the etymological credit to the oldest culture involved in the cognate and/or diffusion of the term in the --in this case the brick-making one. >The term which we transliterate as "mAA" even from its very spelling >[see Hannig, p. 314, col. 2] probably was vocalized something >like "mar" or even "mir", evidenced by the Maru-Aten, short for Pa- >maru-en-pa-aten [The Viewing-Palace-of-the-Aten]. From the >transliterations, it would seem that it's been thought that the >sign, the *eye* ["ir"]in the spellings was a mere determinative, >even though its place in the word is not where determinatives most >often were. It doesn't much matter, as transliterations are a separate issue from pronunciation, anyway. "mAA", I am quite sure, is part of a Near Eastern linguistic pattern for "viewing". Hebrew has "mareh" for "view" [noun] and another noun, "a look or glance". But, in Hebrew, the verb "to look" is something different. Regardless, the Biblical Hebrew for "mirror" is "marah", as evidenced by Exodus 38:8 "And he made the laver of brass, and the foot of it of brass, of the lookingglasses of the women assembling, which assembled at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation." The plural "marot" is used there. Finally, I do not think the older Egyptian "mAA Hr" survived into Coptic. I cannot find it in Crum. My best guess as to how it was once vocalized is "marho". The Phoenicians have been credited with getting around quite a bit and, of course, they used west-Semitic and their word for "mirror" was probably identical to that of Hebrew. So, as I have said more than once, there is nothing to be proved about the word "mirror" but its Latin etymology is suspect for reasons I have already stated. As for "Mary" and "Miriam"--there was also another version of "Miriam" and that was "Mariamne"--this being the name of the wife of Herod. In all other cultures other than Jewish and English, the name of "Mary" is called "Maryam". For sure. Could the road there lead nack to "mryt-imn"? Hard to say. Marianne Luban Author of "The Exodus Chronicles: Beliefs, Legends & Rumors from Antiquity Regarding the Exodus of the Jews from Egypt", Second Edition, New and Revised (2008) ============================================================================== Date: Sat, 11 Apr 2009 22:45:15 -0400 (EDT) From: Grant Hicks To: Ancient Egyptian Language List Subject: Re: AEL an ethimological question Given the contingent nature of linguistic change, it doesn't seem to me that the disappearance of "speculum" in favor of "miroir" really requires us to abandon (or even to question) a Romance etymology for the latter. Such things happen. On the other hand, I do think that if you're going to seriously propose that mAA-Hr is the source of "miroir", you have to deal with a couple of issues: 1) the fact that the earliest (that I've found) attestation of this word in French is the 11th-century word "miradoir". If from mAA-Hr, whence the 'd'? 2) the existence in Spanish of "mirador" meaning "viewpoint" or "windowed balcony" or "spectator". This word testifies to the existence of a Romance word meaning "look" developed from Latin "mirari" and capable of spawning nouns. Also, if an Egyptian word meaning "mirror" is required to explain the existence of "miradoir", with the same meaning, in medieval French, why does essentially the same word in Spanish mean something so different? The meaning "spectator" for "mirador" also shows that it's possible to develop multiple words with the same meaning from native materials. The existence of Latin "spectator" (which gives modern "espectador") didn't prevent "mirador" from taking on the same meaning. This means that the argument for mAA-Hr can't be that "miroir" would never have developed from Romance roots in the presence of "speculum", but must instead be that, once developed, it wouldn't have replaced the original word. And I don't see how you can make a good case for that; new words replace old ones all the time. Surely it's most parsimonious to posit a parallel development of "miradoir"/"mirador", with the general sense of "looker; a thing for looking", from antecedents that French and Spanish had in common. The hypothesis of a connection with Egyptian may be interesting, but, as LaPlace is supposed to have said about God vis-A-vis celestial mechanics, there's no need for it. - Grant ============================================================================== From: "mluban@netzero.net" Date: Sun, 12 Apr 2009 17:21:17 GMT To: AEgyptian-L@rostau.org.uk Subject: Re: AEL an ethimological question ---------- Original Message ---------- From: Grant Hicks >Given the contingent nature of linguistic change, it doesn't seem to >me that the disappearance of "speculum" in favor of "miroir" really >requires us to abandon (or even to question) a Romance etymology for >the latter. Such things happen. On the other hand, I do think that >if you're going to seriously propose that mAA-Hr is the source >of "miroir", you have to deal with a couple of issues: >1) the fact that the earliest (that I've found) attestation of this >word in French is the 11th-century word "miradoir". If from mAA-Hr, whence the 'd'? Some etymologies explain it rather tentatively: "MIRROR (through O. Fr. mirour, mod. miroir, from a supposed Late Lat. miratorium, from mirari, to admire), an optical instrument which produces images." Although these do not mention "miradoir" [my Oxford English Etymology does not but includes Latin "miratorium", anyway] it seems that "miradoir" and "miratorium" were [tentatively, in most cases] connected. Although I don't pretend to know what a "miratorium" was, I do know that sometimes "r" and "d" are interchangeable in linguistics and perhaps "miratorium" has been unnecessarily involved. Better to stick with just plain L. "mirare" and assume that "miradoir" could be an eccentric spelling of "miraroir". >2) the existence in Spanish of "mirador" meaning "viewpoint" >or "windowed balcony" or "spectator". This word testifies to the >existence of a Romance word meaning "look" developed from >Latin "mirari" and capable of spawning nouns. Also, if an Egyptian >word meaning "mirror" is required to explain the existence >of "miradoir", with the same meaning, in medieval French, why does >essentially the same word in Spanish mean something so different? Because Spanish "mirador" probably is actually derived from Latin "miratorium" [which is very likely a place in a building], whereas French "miradoir" is not and is connected to that particular Latin term by false etymology. [snip] >Surely it's most parsimonious to posit a parallel development >of "miradoir"/"mirador", with the general sense of "looker; a thing >for looking", from antecedents that French and Spanish had in >common. The hypothesis of a connection with Egyptian may be >interesting, but, as LaPlace is supposed to have said about God >vis-A-vis celestial mechanics, there's no need for it. You may be right [and the dictionaries are on your side] but consider for a moment another French term and its convoluted etymology--"moire" or "watered silk": "mohair, "fine hair of the Angora goat," also "a fabric made from this," from M.Fr. mocayart, It. mocaiarro, both from Arabic mukhayyar "cloth of goat hair," lit. "selected, choice," from khayyana "he chose." Spelling infl. in Eng. by association with hair. Moire "watered silk" (1660) probably represents Eng. mohair borrowed into Fr. and back into English." Ay! So one may apply parsimony when it comes to these etymologies but dead "certainty" is another matter. Marianne Luban Author of "The Pharaoh's Barber" A mystery set in the court of Thutmose III http://tinyurl.com/5qqvzt ==============================================================================