# [Sus] Hebrew "horse" and Arabic "chick"?



## Yaella

Is there any relation between [sus] [סוס] (horse in hebrew) and [SûS] [صوص] (chick in arabic) ?


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## origumi

I don't think that there's any relation. The Arabic word, transliterated to Hebrew, would be צוץ rather than סוס. That is: _tzutz_ rather than _sus_.

Hebrew sus - shared by other Semitic languages: Akkadian sisu / sissu, Ugaritic ssw, Aramaic suseya / susiya, and the presumed Proto-Semitic *sVwsVw. No relation to chick.
Arabic sus - I guess that the Hebrew cognate is צוץ or ציץ = twitter, chirp.

http://www.premiumwanadoo.com/cuneiform.languages/dictionary/dosearch.php?searchkey=1702&language=id


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## Abu Rashid

origumi said:


> Hebrew sus - shared by other Semitic languages: Akkadian sisu / sissu, Ugaritic ssw, Aramaic suseya / susiya, and the presumed Proto-Semitic *sVwsVw. No relation to chick.



It seems the word for horse is split along north/south divide in the Semitic languages. All the languages you mentioned, whilst not necessarily falling into a northern sub-group of the Semitic languages, are distinct from the southern Semitic languages in not just this word but in many similarities not shared by the southern languages.

I wonder if s-w-s-w resembles any word in Sumerian?

The southern languages all seem to use the stem f-r-s1 for horse. Arabic, Ge'ez (and modern Ethiopic languages), Sabaic (and MSA languages). Hebrew & Aramaic also use this word, but only to refer to the horse rider I think. Arabic also has حصان


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## origumi

Abu Rashid said:


> The southern languages all seem to use the stem f-r-s1 for horse. Arabic, Ge'ez (and modern Ethiopic languages), Sabaic (and MSA languages). Hebrew & Aramaic also use this word, but only to refer to the horse rider I think. Arabic also has حصان


Arabic: _sīsiyy-_ 'Pony' [Wehr 408]. Marked as an Egyptian dialectism, not found in the available dictionaries of Classical Arabic. Cf. also _sws_ 'gouverner un peuple' [BK 1 1164], [LA VI 108] (with a meaning shift from 'to drive horses'?).
http://starling.rinet.ru/cgi-bin/re...y=&method_any=substring&sort=number&ic_any=on


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## Abu Rashid

origumi said:


> Arabic: _sīsiyy-_ 'Pony' [Wehr 408]



You're right it is in Hans Wehr (although page 448 in my copy), apparently with the meaning of pony or young rat.

سيسي (sisi) pl. سيسيات (sisiyat).

The more common word for pony though I think is فرس قزم (fars qazm) which literally means midget horse.


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## tFighterPilot

Abu Rashid said:


> It seems the word for horse is split along north/south divide in the Semitic languages. All the languages you mentioned, whilst not necessarily falling into a northern sub-group of the Semitic languages, are distinct from the southern Semitic languages in not just this word but in many similarities not shared by the southern languages.
> 
> I wonder if s-w-s-w resembles any word in Sumerian?
> 
> The southern languages all seem to use the stem f-r-s1 for horse. Arabic, Ge'ez (and modern Ethiopic languages), Sabaic (and MSA languages). Hebrew & Aramaic also use this word, but only to refer to the horse rider I think. Arabic also has حصان


Since when is Arabic a Southern Semitic language?


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## origumi

Abu Rashid said:


> I wonder if s-w-s-w resembles any word in Sumerian?


Sumerian horse is sisu, just like Akkadian. As I understand it, most scholars think that this is a Semitic word and Sumerian borrowed it from Akkadian.


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## Yaella

origumi said:


> I don't think that there's any relation. The Arabic word, transliterated to Hebrew, would be צוץ rather than סוס. That is: _tzutz_ rather than _sus_.


May I safely assume that [ص] and [ض] always are transliterated to hebrew as [צ]?
and while I am at it,  [ح] and [خ] as [ח]?


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## tFighterPilot

Yaella said:


> May I safely assume that [ص] and [ض] always are transliterated to hebrew as [צ]?
> and while I am at it,  [ح] and [خ] as [ח]?


[ص] is sometimes transliterated to [צ] and sometimes to [ס] (for example, Saddam Hussein's first name was usually written סדאם, mostly due to English influence). The letter [ض] is transliterated either to [ד] or to ['ד] (which is also how [ذ] is transliterated). [ح] is always transliterated as [ח], but [خ] is sometimes transliterated as ['ח]


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## berndf

Yaella said:


> May I safely assume that [ص] and [ض] always are transliterated to hebrew as [צ]?
> and while I am at it,  [ح] and [خ] as [ח]?


In #2, Origumi did not speak of a transliteration but of etymological correspondence, i.e. צ developed out of sounds of the common ancestor language which gave rise to ص and ض. That is completely different than transliteration. E.g. French "c" etymological corresponds to English "h", English "have" is relate to French "capture" yet when the French word was imported into English it was of course imported as "capture" and not as *"hapture". 

Similarly, ح and خ etymologically correspond to ח; the sounds merged in ancient Hebrew.


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## arsham

There are Sumerian loanwords in Akkadian but Sumerian itself is not a semitic language.


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## rayloom

The book "Theological dictionary of the Old Testament" (volume 10) has a nice entry on the etymology of the word in the Semitic languages, this is the link, page 179.
Interestingly, it does suggest a non-Semitic origin of the word, even though the author(s) lists the cognates in different Semitic languages, including South Arabian.
The etymology seems linked with the appearance and spread of the horse in the region.



origumi said:


> Arabic: _sīsiyy-_ 'Pony' [Wehr 408]. Marked as an Egyptian dialectism, not found in the available dictionaries of Classical Arabic. Cf. also _sws_ 'gouverner un peuple' [BK 1 1164], [LA VI 108] (with a meaning shift from 'to drive horses'?).



Regarding "(with a meaning shift from 'to drive horses'?)", indeed a groom is called a سايس saayis (also سائس saa2is) in Arabic, from the root sws (the same root for سياسة siyaasa "politics").



Abu Rashid said:


> The more common word for pony though I think is فرس قزم (fars qazm) which literally means midget horse.


Not common really. Actually never heard of faras qazam before. سيسي siisii is much more common, not just in Egypt.


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## Abu Rashid

tFighterPilot said:


> Since when is Arabic a Southern Semitic language?



Not sure if I made it clear enough, but I did mention: "whilst not necessarily falling into a northern sub-group of the Semitic languages".

There's no doubting the Semitic languages of the north share a lot of common vocabulary not present in the other languages, which is probably the result of borrowing, rather than being actual cognates. Same is true for the Semitic languages of the south. I was not talking about the generally accepted genetic groupings of Semitic languages.

But for the record, Arabic has been classified as both central Semitic and south Semitic.

_"In particular, several Semiticists still argue for the traditional (partially nonlinguistic) view of Arabic as part of South Semitic" _http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semitic_languages#Classification
Also The handbook of linguistics touches on this topic.

I however was not arguing for that, merely pointing out that the most common words for horse seem to be divided along north south divisions (again, nothing to do with the common accepted genetic groupings).


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## Abu Rashid

Yaella said:


> May I safely assume that [ص] and [ض] always are transliterated to hebrew as [צ]?
> and while I am at it,  [ح] and [خ] as [ח]?



You can safely assume that if a word of common Semitic origin exists in both Hebrew & Arabic, then both ص & ض and also ظ will map over to צ in Hebrew. Because in Hebrew these 3 phonemes have merged together to become צ. Hebrew long ago lost the distinction between these sounds and collapsed them into a single simplified sound, which ended up as tzade.

Likewise for ح + خ = ח

There's quite a few others as well.

To see a chart of all these mergers, between various Semitic languages, see this page.


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## sotos

May I enter in the discussion the Homeric συς or ύς (with aspiration) and the Latin sus (pork). 
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057%3Aentry%3Du(%3Ds1

Of course this is another animal, but the original meaning could be something like "domestic animal". Even today in Greece (and elsewhere I suppose) there are words meaning domestic animals in general, like the Gr. "ζώο" or "ζωντανό" (lit. "alive"). Also, notice that the Gr. sus means hyena, which is the female for ύς and that sus is related to "mother". Compare with the use of the Eng. word "bull" for various male animals.


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## berndf

sotos said:


> May I enter in the discussion the Homeric συς or ύς (with aspiration) and the Latin sus (pork).


But why would you? I don't quite understand. The etymological traces within the Semitic family go much too far back to make Greek influence of any kind plausible.


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## sotos

berndf said:


> But why would you? I don't quite understand. The etymological traces within the Semitic family go much too far back to make Greek influence of any kind plausible.



But I didn't imply that any influence has to be from Greek to Semitic and not the other way around. These two languages were in touch somewhere around Cyprus and Palestine since ages.


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## berndf

sotos said:


> But I didn't imply that any influence has to be from Greek to Semitic and not the other way around.


Then, what do you imply?


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## sotos

A possible common ancestor meaning "domesticated animal".


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## origumi

sotos said:


> May I enter in the discussion the Homeric συς or ύς (with aspiration) and the Latin sus (pork).


But the final "s" is not part of the stem in either Latin or Greek, right? So the similarity to Hebrew "sus" is not obvious.


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## berndf

sotos said:


> A possible common ancestor meaning "domesticated animal".


So you are saying these are inherited words from from a  hypothetical common pre-cursor of PIE and PS? let's see here this you take us:
A. We have Greek _sys>hys_, Latin _sus_, English _sow_, German _Sau, OCS_ _svinija_ which suggest a PIE root _*su-_ = _swine/boar _(see here).
B. Hebrew _sus _(spelled with Samech, not Sin): The Akkadian dictionary Origumi quoted shows sisu as the Akkadian cognate and also SSW as the Ugaritc cognate. Akkadian & Urgaric /s/ and the Hebrew /s/ if spelled Samech originate from Proto-Semitic "s3" which most scholars believe to have been /ts/. So, for the sake of the argument ignoring the possibility that it might be a Sumerian loan in Akkadian, we would reconstruct a PS root which must have contained two /ts/-es and one ore two /w/-s with unknown vowels, The Akkadian dictionary gives _*sVwsVw_, "V" stands for the unknown vowels and "s" stands for s3 (s1=š, s2=ś and s3=s is an older notation of PS s-sounds).
C. Arabic _ṣuṣ_: Both s-sounds are emphatic (_ṣ_). The PS _ṣ_ is assumed to have been a affricate too, i.e. [tsˤ]. In Semitic emphatic and non-emphatic are not "similar", i.e. words like _sus _and _ṣuṣ_ should not be considered related.

Conclusion: Like Origumi, I see very little similarity which could justify such a statement. Comparing the PS and PIE roots, The only remaining similarity is that they all start with a sibilant, though not with the same.


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## Abu Rashid

berndf said:


> C. Arabic _ṣuṣ_: Both s-sounds are emphatic (_ṣ_). The PS _ṣ_ is assumed to have been a affricate too, i.e. [tsˤ]. In Semitic emphatic and non-emphatic are not "similar", i.e. words like _sus _and _ṣuṣ_ should not be considered related.



The s3-s3-w = horse/pony words also exist in Arabic, as well as _ṣuṣ = chick_.


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## berndf

Abu Rashid said:


> The s3-s3-w = horse/pony words also exist in Arabic, as well as _ṣuṣ = chick_.


Arabic S-S-W=pony then belongs under by B. I am sure there are many more cognates than just the ones I gave. Hebrew, Akkadian and Ugaritic are convenient, because etymological s3 can be identified. In Arabic, _Sin_ could also be an etymological s1.


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## Abu Rashid

If the root exists in all those languages, and it exists in Arabic with sin, then we can trust it's the s3 component that's appearing in Arabic


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## berndf

Abu Rashid said:


> If the root exists in all those languages, and it exists in Arabic with sin, then we can trust it's the s3 component that's appearing in Arabic


Of course, I just wanted to explain why I didn't mention Arabic: because the mentioning the Arabic doesn't contribute to the information that is was historically s3.


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## Abu Rashid

But you're mentioning Arabic _ṣuṣ __when sotos didn't say anything about it._


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## berndf

Abu Rashid said:


> But you're mentioning Arabic _ṣuṣ __when sotos didn't say anything about it._


_ṣuṣ _is topic of this thread.


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## rajulbat

Regarding *HORSES*,
I figured I would drop this quote, which I found in this book - _The Semitic Languages: An International Handbook _(Stefan Weninger, ed.) (2011)
-, here, for future reference:


> There is no deeply rooted common term for 'horse.' Akk. sisu, Ugr. ssw, ssw, Hbr. sus and Syr. susya are related to each other, but the common source is usually thought to be foreign rather than Semitic (SED II No. 199). PWS *paras-, represented by Hbr. paras, Syr. parrasa, Arb. faras-, Sab. frs, Gez. faras, Mhr. ferhayn, looks more genuine (SED II No. 182). PS *muhr- for a 'foal' is preserved in Akk. muru, Syr. muhra, Arb. muhr-, Sab. mhrt, Tna. mehir (SED II No. 149).


(Some of the non-ASCII characters I did not take the time to faithfully transcribe.) [cross-posted]


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