# Etymology: Earth



## Abu Bishr

Hi All

Does anybody know the origin of the word "earth"? In Afrikaans it's called "aarde", in Arabic أرض (“land”, or “earth” with definite article) pronounced as "arD", in Hebrew “ertz” if I’m not mistaken. Now, it appears to me that there is a connection between these words, and that they must come from a common stem. Does anyone know what that stem might be, or is it just coincidence? 

I also think that in some of the European languages, "earth" is called "terra" or something like. I don't think this has a connection to "earth" except if we rearrange the letters. So what do you think?


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## linguist786

I always had the idea in my head that "earth" came from Arabic.

I checked on this, but it's still a bit unclear I think.


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## Outsider

Well, if your source is right the word goes back all the way to Proto-Indo-European. English didn't borrow it from Arabic.



Abu Bishr said:


> I also think that in some of the European languages, "earth" is called "terra" or something like. I don't think this has a connection to "earth" except if we rearrange the letters. So what do you think?


_Terra_ is what it's called in Latin, and all languages derived from it. 
As far as I know... perhaps Romanian uses a different word -- yep, but they also say _terra_.

Remember also _Gaia_, in Greek (_Ge_ in modern Greek, apparently).

P.S. It's _Daear_ in Welsh (related to _Terra_?) Can you think of a prettier name for a planet?


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## Alijsh

Webster:

Etymology: Middle English _erthe,_ from Old English _eorthe;_ akin to Old High German _erda_ earth, Greek _era_

It has nothing to do with Arabic.


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## badgrammar

I always assumed it was from German, Erde?


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## OldAvatar

Outsider said:


> Well, if your source is right the word goes back all the way to Proto-Indo-European. English didn't borrow it from Arabic.
> 
> _Terra_ is what it's called in Latin, and all languages derived from it.
> As far as I know... perhaps Romanian uses a different word -- yep, but they also say _terra_.
> 
> Remember also _Gaia_, in Greek (_Ge_ in modern Greek, apparently).
> 
> P.S. It's _Daear_ in Welsh (related to _Terra_?) Can you think of a prettier name for a planet?



Romanians do use *Terra *for planet Earth, but that's a neologism.
But Romanian language has another word, *ţară*, meaning country, land, countryside which is a direct herritage of Latin *Terra. *The old Romanian name for kingdom used to be, also, *Ţara *(tsara).


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## OldAvatar

Abu Bishr said:


> Hi All
> 
> Does anybody know the origin of the word "earth"? In Afrikaans it's called "aarde", in Arabic أرض (“land”, or “earth” with definite article) pronounced as "arD", in Hebrew “ertz” if I’m not mistaken. Now, it appears to me that there is a connection between these words, and that they must come from a common stem. Does anyone know what that stem might be, or is it just coincidence?
> 
> I also think that in some of the European languages, "earth" is called "terra" or something like. I don't think this has a connection to "earth" except if we rearrange the letters. So what do you think?



http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=earth


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## jazyk

And pământ, believe it or not, comes from Latin pavimentum.

Jazyk


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## Whodunit

In German, it is "Erde." As you may see, it is very closely related to the English "earth." So, let me check what my etymological dictionary of the German language (Duden Herkunftswörterbuch) says (translated and explained by myself):



> The Proto Germanic noun MHG _erde_, OHG _erda_, Goth. _aírþa_, Eng _earth_, Swe _jord_ is based on IE *_er[t-, --]_ "earth" with related in other IE languages, comp. e.g. Gre _érā_ "earth" (_éraze_ "(turn) to dust"), OIce _jorfi_ "sand[bank]" and W _erw_ "field." OHG _ero_ "earth" uses the same root. – The word used to be a designation for soil (comp. Black Earth, wet soil [referred to as "wet earth" in some languages]) first, then for the ground (e.g. ground floor [referred to as "earth floor" in some languages]). Moreover, "Earth" is the mainland, on which the people live, as opposed to "Heaven" and is eventually used for our planet.


 
MHG = Middle High German
OHG = Old High German
Goth. = Gothic
Eng = English
Swe = Swedish
IE = Indo-European
Gre = Greek
OIce = Old Icelandic
W = Welsh

Hope it helps.


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## elpoderoso

Outsider said:


> Well, if your source is right the word goes back all the way to Proto-Indo-European. English didn't borrow it from Arabic.
> 
> _Terra_ is what it's called in Latin, and all languages derived from it.
> As far as I know... perhaps Romanian uses a different word -- yep, but they also say _terra_.
> 
> Remember also _Gaia_, in Greek (_Ge_ in modern Greek, apparently).
> 
> P.S. It's _Daear_ in Welsh (related to _Terra_?) Can you think of a prettier name for a planet?


In Irish I believe it is Tir (or that may just mean land) and apparently Tir is related to Terra, so I would guess (with no knowledge of linguistics ) that the Welsh is related itself to Terra.


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## sarcie

In Irish, "Tír" means land or country, "domhan" is Earth or the world.


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## Outsider

Well, _terra_ can mean "earth" _or_ "land".


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## elpoderoso

Outsider said:


> Well, _terra_ can mean "earth" _or_ "land".


I knew that, I just wasn't sure if ''Tir'' had the two meanings.


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## Abu Bishr

Hi All

Thank you very much for your contributions. I found this wikipedia article which also asks if there is a possible link between the Indo-European and Semitic roots for "earth" and concludes that it is uncertain as to whether the two are linked and that it might just be a coincidence.

Coincidence or not, I still find this very interesting, because in my layman's view it might very well be that both language families inherited their stems (for "earth") from a distant but common ancester.

I wonder what other language families have for the word "earth", to see if my hypothesis holds. I do admit that "terra" throws my hypothesis out somewhat, but then again with a little bit of "face lifting" and "re-arranging of the furniture" you could easily end up with "earth"  . Anyhow, I'd be interested to see what non-Indo European & non-Semitic languages have as an equivalent for "earth".


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## .Lola.

Hi
here is the word "earth" in some Slavic languages:

Czech: země
Slovak: zem
Russian: zemlja
Polish: ziemia

In other Slavic languages it's going to be very similar.


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## Tolovaj_Mataj

Yes, indeed:
Slovene: zemlja


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## Whodunit

Okay, after all your posts and by help of some dictionaires and Wikipedia, I'm going to present you an overview about the different derivatives, cognates, and roots of the word "earth" in several language families:


For the Indian languages, the root is p-v-th, I think:

Gujarati: પૃથ્વી (privTii)
Hindi: पृथ्वी (privTii)
Marathi: पृथ्वी (privTii)
Nepali: पृथ्वी (privTii)
Bengali: পৃথিবী (privTii?)

_T = aspriated t_
_ii = long i vowel_
_the r is vocalic, as far as I know_

I can't read the other Indian languages, but the above look all very similar. As I don't know the words for the other languages, I don't want to conclude that the word is "privTii" throughout all Indian languages, particularly since the Urdu word is زمنن (zamiin?).
____

For the Semitic languages, the root is /-r-d(s), as far as I can tell (/ stands for an initial vowel):

Arabic: أرض (arD)
Hebrew: ארץ (arez)
(Kurdish: erd) not really a Semitic language, not sure if it's correct here
____

For the Slavic languages, the root is z(i)em-, concluding from the examples (but I'm not sure where the "l" on Russian and Bosnian comes from).
____

For the Turk languages, they use the root y/sh-r, I think (Chazzwozzer may elaborate upon this topic):

Turkish: yer
Kazakh: Жер (sher)
Azeri: yer
Uzbek: yer
____

For the Germanic languages, the root is Indo-European *_er[t]-_:

German: Erde (OHG: erda; MHG: erde)
Swedish: jord
Gothic: aírþa
Icelandic: jörðin (Old Icelandic: jorfi)
English: earth (OE: eorþe)
Dutch: aarde
Yiddish: ערד (erd)
____

For the Romance languages, the Proto-Indo-European root *_ters-_ (to dry) is used:

Latin: terra
French: terre
Italian: terra
Esperanto: tero
____

In the Finno-Ugric languages (except Hungarian), the root maa is employed:

Finnish: maa
Estonian: maa
____

In Japanese, they use the characters 地球 (note the similar pronunciation!):

Japanese: 地球/ちきゅう (chikyuu)
Chinese: 地球 (di2 qiu4)
Korean: 地球/지구 (jigu)


There are still some other language families to treat (Amerindian languages; Aboriginal languages, Celtic languages), but I think that's enough for now. If you find mistakes, please correct them immedaitely.


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## elpoderoso

Hello Whodunit, Kurdish is not a Semetic language, but erd seems to fit in with the IE examples you have given.


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## Whodunit

elpoderoso said:


> Hello Whodunit, Kurdish is not a Semetic language, but erd seems to fit in with the IE examples you have given.


 
You're right, but it shares some similiarities with the Semitic languagues, as far as I know. Do you agree if I leave it in the column, but with a note that it's not a Semitic, but an Iranian language? 

I don't want to have it among the Germanic examples, because that would be totally out of place, I think. Let's wait for others what they have to say.


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## Outsider

Japanese, Chinese, and Korean don't belong to a common language family, but I understand that you grouped them because they have a common _Sprachbund_ (or _Kulturbund_?)

And I can't help mentioning Spanish *tierra*, too. 

Thanks for the root of _terr-_.


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## Whodunit

Outsider said:


> Japanese, Chinese, and Korean don't belong to a common language family, but I understand that you grouped them because they have a common _Sprachbund_ (or _Kulturbund_?)


 
Yes, I grouped them together because they share the same ... (I'd like to say _root_ here, but that would not be correct), let's say characters. Sprachbund is correct, Kulturbund is something historical that wouldn't fit here, but I understand why you're asking. 



> And I can't help mentioning Spanish *tierra*, too.


 
There are many Romance languages I didn't mention, because that would clutter up this thread. 

By the way, if you know why the "i" was added in Spanish (maybe in private, in a new thread or quickly here), it would be very interesting. Could it be that the "t" was softened by the following "i"?



> Thanks for the root of _terr-_.


 
I cost me some investigation, but after I knew how I can find it without having an etymological dictionary of Romance languages (if you can provide any, that would be great), I finally found it. _Terrain_ is used in English and German, too, but they are not the words to refer to our planet.


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## Outsider

Whodunit said:


> By the way, if you know why the "i" was added in Spanish (maybe in private, in a new thread or quickly here), it would be very interesting. Could it be that the "t" was softened by the following "i"?


It's a very characteristic feature of Spanish (along with a few less known minority languages of Iberia): when a Latin short _E_ was in a stressed syllable, it became the diphthong _IE_ in Spanish. This compensated for the loss of vowel length distinctions in Vulgar Latin.

Did you manage to find the original meaning of the Germanic and the Semitic roots? That would be interesting.


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## Chazzwozzer

Whodunit said:


> For the Turk languages, they use the root y/sh-r, I think (Chazzwozzer may elaborate upon this topic)
> Turkish: yer
> Kazakh: Жер (sher)
> Azeri: yer
> Uzbek: yer
> ____


An ancient Turkic word is the root: *"yér"*
Turks usually call the earth *"dünya"* which is an Arabic loan rather than *"yer," "yerküre," "yer yuvarı"* or *"yer yuvarlağı;"* whereas some sources still insist on using the Turkic equivalent. Two words for the earth that come to my mind right now, which are not used anymore, are *"acun"*_(ajun: the name for Buddhist incarnation in old Turkic)_ and *"arz"*_(from Arabic arḌ)_


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## Arrius

To get back to the original proposition, of a connexion between the Germanic _*aard(e)/Erde/earth*_ and the Arabic *arD*. I used to think that too, but it now seems unlikely to me: just one of those many strange coincidences, I fear.
Whereas the Germanic root is said to have had the meaning of both soil and abode of Man (before anybody knew the world was round) throughout its history from Proto-Indoeuropean, it is most likely that the Arabic arD comes from the verb raDiy meaning to satisfy or to content in which there is implied a filling up, a completion, a whole. 
I once thought *aard *might be connected with* 3araDa* which yields *3ariiD* wide and *ma3raD* exhibition because the world is _spread out before us,_ but I came to believe that to be fanciful too. There are many connexions 
between Arabic and European languages, but not here I think.
On the other hand I think it quite likely that *تَرْب* *tarab* (the kind of earth that makes your hands dirty) _is _connected with French *tourbe*(peat/combustible earth). They can't all be coincidences.
nog 'n keer, mooi loop!
A.


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## Whodunit

Outsider said:


> It's a very characteristic feature of Spanish (along with a few less known minority languages of Iberia): when a Latin short _E_ was in a stressed syllable, it became the diphthong _IE_ in Spanish. This compensated for the loss of vowel length distinctions in Vulgar Latin.


 
Ah, that's interesing. That should be the reason why there is "pienso", "tienes" etc. for the first and second person, although the infinitive is "pensar" and "tener". French is rather incosistent about this matter (je pense; je t*i*ens).

Thanks for the information!



> Did you manage to find the original meaning of the Germanic and the Semitic roots? That would be interesting.


 
Hm, I've tried to find a better explanation, but all I can find is that the Germanic root is IE *_er[t]_ meaning "earth/soil/ground." However, I just found something _very_ interesting that confirms what someone else in thsi thread has already mentioned. The Grimm dictionary of the German language explains the origin of "Erde" as follows (translated by myself):



> _ERDE_, _f._ _terra, Goth._ airþa, _Old Saxon_ ertha, _OE_ eorðe, _OHG_ ërda, _MHG_ ërde, _Middle Dutch_ erde, aerde, _New Dutch_ aarde, _English_ earth, _Frisian_ irth, _Old Norse_ iörð, _Swedish, Danish_ jord.
> 
> _1) The origin of such a sweeping, old word gets lost in the dark. Since Latin and the Celtic languages are normally close to our language, one might consider a sound shift: _terra, _Celtic _tir(_cf. _atír_ in ZEUSZ 254_)_ is to _airþa, ërda _as Lithianian _darbas_ is to Gothic _arbaiþs_ or as _forma_ is to _μορφη, _and we must not forget that the sound shift of the Latin _t_ to the Gothic _þ, _OHG_ d_ is completely regular. Aside from Welsh _tir, daear, _Armenian_ (?) douar _also count, in which again some changed lingualis _(?)_ could appear. The double_ rr_ in _terra_ may, like in _curro, susurrus and the like,_ be accrued from _ri. Tellus, _the goddess _Tellus,_ does not belong to_ terra_ at all._


 
The text is in older German before the first spelling reform in 1901, so I'm not sure what they mean by "fortgeschobne lingualis". I hope you'll get the message anyway. There's, by the way, much more to read about the origin of _earth_, but it's all in German and I don't feel like translating all the stuff. 



Chazzwozzer said:


> An ancient Turkic word is the root: *"yér"*
> Turks usually call the earth *"dünya"* which is an Arabic loan rather than *"yer," "yerküre," "yer yuvarı"* or *"yer yuvarlağı;"* whereas some sources still insist on using the Turkic equivalent. Two words for the earth that come to my mind right now, which are not used anymore, are *"acun"*_(ajun: the name for Buddhist incarnation in old Turkic)_ and *"arz"*_(from Arabic arḌ)_


 
Yes, I know _dünya_, too, because there was a song (_dünya dönüyor_) in Germany with both German and Turkish lyrics. However, I wanted to use _yer_ in this thread to group it to the other Turk languages.


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## Whodunit

Arrius said:


> To get back to the original proposition, of a connexion between the Germanic _*aard(e)/Erde/earth*_ and the Arabic *arD*. I used to think that too, but it now seems unlikely to me: just one of those many strange coincidences, I fear.


 
When I began studying Arabic, I was surprised, too, that the Arabic word was so close to the German one. However, I didn't think much about it anymore then, because I thought it was either a coincidence or a borrowing from English (or another language) like the Arabic *تنك* (bank). It turned out to be the former.



> Whereas the Germanic root is said to have had the meaning of both soil and abode of Man (before anybody knew the world was round) throughout its history from Proto-Indoeuropean, it is most likely that the Arabic arD comes from the verb raDiy meaning to satisfy or to content in which there is implied a filling up, a completion, a whole.


 
That might be possible, but here is some more food for thought:

*رض* (raDDa) = crush - very unlikely
*راض* (raada) = teach _an animal_ tricks - rather unlikely
*روض* (rawwada) = tame - quite unlikely, too
روض (raud) = garden - possible
*راض* (raadin) = satisfied - similar to yours, possible
*أضاء* (aDaa2a) = light up/illuminate - possible by meaning; unlikely by morphology



> I once thought *aard *might be connected with* 3araDa* which yields *3ariiD* wide and *ma3raD* exhibition because the world is _spread out before us,_ but I came to believe that to be fanciful too. There are many connexions between Arabic and European languages, but not here I think.


 
I don't think that is very likely, because the shift from ع to a vowel (like ا or أ) is not a typical sound shift in Arabic, as far as I know (I might be wrong though).



> On the other hand I think it quite likely that *تَرْب* *tarab* (the kind of earth that makes your hands dirty) _is _connected with French *tourbe*(peat/combustible earth). They can't all be coincidences.


 
I wouldn't question that, but I don't see how it is relate to this thread. There are many Arabic borrowings in the French language, and, to be honest, I wouldn't consider _tourbe_ a French word by its looks.



> nog 'n keer, mooi loop!


 
As I said, it isn't a coincidence, but simply a borrowing.


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## Outsider

Meanwhile, here's what I found about the origin of *Gaia* (not much, alas):



> "Earth as a goddess," from Gk. _Gaia_, personification of _gaia_ "earth," a collateral form of _ge_ (Dorian _ga_) "earth," of *unknown origin*. The Roman equivalent goddess of the earth was Tellus (see _tellurian_), sometimes used in Eng. poetically or rhetorically for "Earth personified" or "the Earth as a planet."


also:



> tellurian
> 
> "pertaining to the earth," 1846, from L. _tellus_ (gen. _telluris_) "earth," from PIE base _*tel-_ "ground, floor" (cf. Lith. _telinat_ "spread out, flat," Skt. _talam_ "plain, sole of the foot," O.C.S. _tilo_ "floor," Gk. _telia_ "dice board," O.Ir. _talam_ "earth," O.N. _þilja_ "plank").


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## Whodunit

Indeed, it would be interesting to know which root and basic meaning γῆ (gê) is derived from. I can't find anything except that it was _cel_ in Etruscan, if that helps.


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## Eva Maria

Abu Bishr said:


> Coincidence or not, I still find this very interesting, because in my layman's view it might very well be that both language families inherited their stems (for "earth") from a distant but common ancester.


 

A common ancestor to the Indo-European and Semitic languages? Our common ancestry is that we are all human beings.

Our phonetic system (mouth, tongue, palate, lips, teeth) is similar in all human races, our voices are similar, just like the shrieks of all ape races sound alike, or the cheeps of birds. 

The homo – finally - sapiens’ first impression of the earth (the ground, the soil, the terrain), firstly physical, then emotional and lastly reflexive cognitive, must have been quite similar to all human groups or tribes spread throughout the globe. Think about the deep feeling which arouses inside our beings when one says “mama” (one of the words more similar in most languages); and all the basic emotions: joy, fear,... which are genuinely human. We have similar bodies, similar senses, similar experiences of reality.

But when they gave a name to all things, why some of them said “ard”, others “privtii”, “yar”, “zem”,..? The same reason why the squeals of each ape race don’t sound exactly like another’s: different sounds, different words.

EM


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## Arrius

*"the deep feeling which arouses inside our beings when one says “mama"* *" (Eva Maria)*
Such varied languages as Sanskrit, Russian, Arabic and Zambian Chibemba (_amai_) have an M in the word for "mother" simply because it is the easiest sound for a baby to make, /b/ and /p/ usually contained in words for father (_papa_,Kiswaheli _baba_) are slightly more difficult to make and are used for the other parent, initially of much less interest to the child, when there is more control over the speech organs. Thus it is a matter of universal oral mechanics rather than some innate urge common to all mankind that selects these sounds. The emotions felt on hearing the word for mother at a later stage are evoked by the tender associations established by the earlier mechnical process. Perhaps what I have said is in no way contrary to your argument. But I find it difficult to believe that an_ Urmensch_ was responsible for the initial name of his planet and its surface, with its later lexical derivatives, unless we accept the Garden of Eden literally, possibly in conjunction with the theories of Louis Leakey in the Great African Rift Valley.


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## apatheos

I pulled this little tidbit directly from the wikipedia article dedicated to Gaia.


> *Ge *is a pre-Greek substrate word that some relate to the Sumerian *Ki*, also meaning Earth.


I think that's about as early of a root as you can get.

If this has already been mentioned, please excuse me. I'm new.


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## sinclair001

Sometime ago I learned some little japanese and remember the term for earth is tsuchi.
Graphical representation in 
http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:KXRVJYxtaOMJ:www.everything2.com/index.pl%3Fnode%3DSoil+tsuchi+etymology&hl=es&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=co


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## gogoneddus

Outsider said:


> P.S. It's _Daear_ in Welsh (related to _Terra_?) Can you think of a prettier name for a planet?



Just out of interest for you, in Welsh, it is more common to precede the noun with the definite article, so it will become 'Y Ddaear'


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## Lugubert

Nice list, Whodunit, but I'll make a few corrections.


Whodunit said:


> Okay, after all your posts and by help of some dictionaires and Wikipedia, I'm going to present you an overview about the different derivatives, cognates, and roots of the word "earth" in several language families:
> 
> 
> For the Indian languages, the root is p-v-th, I think:
> 
> Gujarati: પૃથ્વી (privTii)
> Hindi: पृथ्वी (privTii)
> Marathi: पृथ्वी (privTii)
> Nepali: पृथ्वी (privTii)
> Bengali: পৃথিবী (privTii?)
> 
> _T = aspriated t_
> _ii = long i vowel_
> _the r is vocalic, as far as I know_


You can't exclude vowels in IE roots. Using R for vowel r, a possible origin for those words is Skt. pRthuu 'to extend, expand, enlarge, spread out'. The translitterations are pRthvii for the first four languages above, all probably pronounced prithivii, and for Bengali, it's pRthivii (equals the Sanskrit Earth).


> I don't want to conclude that the word is "privTii" throughout all Indian languages, particularly since the Urdu word is زمنن (zamiin?).


Hindi ज़मीन = Urdu زمين = Persian زمين zamiin.



> For the Semitic languages, the root is /-r-d(s), as far as I can tell (/ stands for an initial vowel):
> 
> Arabic: أرض (arD)
> Hebrew: ארץ (arez)


You should indicate the initial glottal stop: Arabic and Bible Hebrew words can't begin with a vowel (1 exception in BH). Arabic 'arD. For BH, without the definite article I would transliterate it as 'æræS (or, if I have to, 'æræts). With the article, it's ha-'aræS. Ugaritic 'arS, Assyrian erSitu. Some sources posit a Proto-Semitic voiced emphatic interdental d. Writing Dh for this sound, the Semitic root might be '-r-Dh.


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## Kurdistanish

Hi All

Kurdish *erd* (also *herd*) “earth” is very likely of Indo-European origin. Because it never happened in Kurdish to change Arabic _dh_ into _d_. Arabic _dh_ in Arabic loanwords is always pronounced _z_ in Kurdish e.g. *razî* (agree, Ar. *râdhi*), *Reza* (male forename, Ar. *Rîdhâ*), *zabîte* (discipline, Ar. *dhâbita*). Very interesting that both Kurdish *erd* and Arabic *erz *(< *ardh*) exist in some Kurdish dialects at the same time.  

Kurdish doesn’t share any similarity with the Semitic languages (exactly Arabic) unless Arabic loanwords brought by Arabic invaders and their new religion. By the way Kurdish could be called purest Iranian language by preserving the most original words and loaning less words from Arabic compared with Arabic loanwords in Persian and other Iranian and none-Iranian languages (such as Turkish, Azerbaijani, etc)

Beside erd we have* zemî* ( > *zevî *) “earth” in Kurdish which is derived from Avestan *zime*-,* zeme*- “earth” sharing same root with Slavic languages, Croatian zemlja, Czech *země*, Slovak *zem*, Polish *ziemi*a, Russian *zemlja*, Serbian *zemlja* (also tlo). Most interesting in this case,  Kurdish* zimistan* (< *zivistan*), Talyshi, Lurish *zəməson*, Persian *zemestan*, Croatian, Serbian *zima* all mean “winter”.


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## cynicmystic

Kurdistanish said:


> Hi All
> 
> Kurdish *erd* (also *herd*) “earth” is very likely of Indo-European origin. Because it never happened in Kurdish to change Arabic _dh_ into _d_. Arabic _dh_ in Arabic loanwords is always pronounced _z_ in Kurdish e.g. *razî* (agree, Ar. *râdhi*), *Reza* (male forename, Ar. *Rîdhâ*), *zabîte* (discipline, Ar. *dhâbita*). Very interesting that both Kurdish *erd* and Arabic *erz *(< *ardh*) exist in some Kurdish dialects at the same time.
> 
> Kurdish doesn’t share any similarity with the Semitic languages (exactly Arabic) unless Arabic loanwords brought by Arabic invaders and their new religion. By the way Kurdish could be called purest Iranian language by preserving the most original words and loaning less words from Arabic compared with Arabic loanwords in Persian and other Iranian and none-Iranian languages (such as Turkish, Azerbaijani, etc)
> 
> Beside erd we have* zemî* ( > *zevî *) “earth” in Kurdish which is derived from Avestan *zime*-,* zeme*- “earth” sharing same root with Slavic languages, Croatian zemlja, Czech *země*, Slovak *zem*, Polish *ziemi*a, Russian *zemlja*, Serbian *zemlja* (also tlo). Most interesting in this case, Kurdish* zimistan* (< *zivistan*), Talyshi, Lurish *zəməson*, Persian *zemestan*, Croatian, Serbian *zima* all mean “winter”.


 
Very interesting...

Could you provide some citation regarding your theory about Kurdish being the 'purest' Iranian language in terms of retaining a purely Iranian vocabulary. To me, it sounded a bit far-fetched.


----------



## konungursvia

Interestingly, Cantonese is similar to the Mandarin you list as "Chinese" in general, but its first syllable is pronounced "/te/" as in the Latin languages. Therefore, the word may pre-date Proto-Indo-European and belong to the East African language family Homo sapiens left that continent with about 40,000 years ago. I'd like to see some African languages added to the list. Obviously, they had some agricultural knowledge, or at least gathered things growing in the earth.


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## Zsanna

In Hungarian (which is in the Ugrian branch of Finno-Ugrian group and mostly quite different from the languages in the other branch) it is: *föld*. 

I could imagine that the Finnish/Estonian _maa_ could be connected to our _mező_ (= field), but that is just a guess.

The fact that in Arabic there is a similitude gave me the idea that the root may be somewhere in Sanskrit. As it is often the case with Indo-European languages. (That could also explain why in Celtic languages there is similarity and why in Latin languages there is a difference...)


----------



## Montaigne

Il existe un mot sanskrit "tira" qui signifie "rive" i.e la terre par opposition à la mer, là où finit l'Océan de Lait.

Wrings any bell among sanskritists?


----------



## Arrius

Montaigne said:


> Il existe un mot sanskrit "tira" qui signifie "rive" i.e la terre par opposition à la mer, là où finit l'Océan de Lait.
> 
> Ring any bells among sanskritists?


Je te prie de nous expliquer ce que c'est que l'Océan de Lait (the Ocean of Milk), s.t.p.


----------



## Lugubert

tīra तीर is derived from the verb तॄ (i.e. t + long vowel r), meaning 'to pass across or over, float, fulfil, escape' etc.

Ocean of Milk: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ksheersagar


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## scoobysnax

It is likely that the word Earth comes to the English language from the Norse goddess known as Hertha or Nerthus. Roman consul and historian, Tacitus, wrote an account in the year 98, of a north German deity variously named Ertha, Hertha, Nerthus, or Mother Earth. The name also appears in the Viking sagas, written down as early as the year 1190. The German name Bertha may owe its origin to this goddess of myth and fertility. This account by the Roman historian Tacitus predates any other references I've been able to find as to the usage or etymology of the word earth. Historically, we named planets after Roman or Greek gods. Why not name our planet after the goddess who ruled the very stuff the planet is made of? She also was goddess of the home the legend goes, and as smoke rose up from the fireplace it was said to be her spirit, thus the word hearth.  In old Teutonic languages, the worth hearth means "the ground beneath your feet."  If you're curious, look up Hertha or Nerthus as to its Norse origins. Search google.com for "norse" and "Hertha" or for Tacitus and Hertha.  Very interesting and fun stuff.

Sincerely,

Eric Kasum


----------



## Aydintashar

The similarity between _earth_ and the Arabic word أرض cannot be accidental. However, it should be born in mind that, most modern dictionaries trace the etymologies back to IE, and willingly avoid discussion around roots of Mesopotamian origin. Mesopotamia has been the cradle of civilisation, and all languages bear some traces. I think the word _earth_ must be traced back to the Sumerian _ur_, which signifies _town, place, area, territory, etc._


----------



## Frank06

Hi,


Aydintashar said:


> The similarity between _earth_ and the Arabic word أرض cannot be accidental.


Why not?



> However, it should be born in mind that, most modern dictionaries trace the etymologies back to *IE*,


*P*IE, maybe? *Proto*-Indo-European?



> and willingly avoid discussion around roots of Mesopotamian origin.


Four questions:
1. Why would they avoid that?
2. Which "modern dictionaries" "willingly avoid" those kind of discussions? 
3. What are your arguments that there is a (genetic) relation between PIE and (proto-)Semitic?
4. What do you mean by "Mesopotamian"? It's very weird to see a word  in this context referring to a region rather than to a language.



> Mesopotamia has been the cradle of civilisation,


I beg your pardon?



> and all languages bear some traces.


Traces of what? Of "Mesopotamian" languages? I'd love to see examples  of "traces in all languages" (preferably in a separate thread).



> I think the word _earth_ must be traced back to the Sumerian _ur_, which signifies _town, place, area, territory, etc._


Great to learn about what you think. It's a pitty, though, that you don't give any sound and solid arguments.

Yes, I am quite skeptic about your claims. And yes, you can always convince me with solid arguments based upon the basic principles of historical comparative linguistics.

Hope to hear from you soon.

Groetjes,

Frank


----------



## Lemminkäinen

Whodunit said:


> For the Slavic languages, the root is z(i)em-, concluding from the examples (but I'm not sure where the "l" on Russian and Bosnian comes from).



I can't give you much in-depth info, but it's an epenthetic consonant that appeared during the elimination of the consonant cluster *Cj: *mj > ml'

So the proto-Slavic *_zem-j-a_ turned into the Old Church Slavonic form _zemlja_ (similar to the modern Russian). 

However, the adjective doesn't have this l: _zemnoj šar_ ("the earth globe"), which is derived from *_zem-inos_ (cf. OCS _zemьnъ_).


----------



## james.

Remember that the Semitic languages, e.g. Arabic and Hebrew, are included in the vast Afro-Asiatic language family. In mainstream linguistics, this is not considered to be at all related to the Indo-European family. There are theories that suggest common origins for some or all language groups, but these are highly controversial. Thus it would be impossible for these distinct groups to share word origins.


----------



## Mahaodeh

james. said:


> Thus it would be impossible for these distinct groups to share word origins.


 
I would first like to point out that I am in no way arguing that Earth has Semitic or Afro-Asiatic roots or not; I would just like to point to the above argument. First, not having any _evidence_ of any relation does not mean that there was _never_ any relation, right? Second, there may have been some contact in pre-historical times, when people spoke but did not write, right? it could be borrowed from one to the other or they could have both borrowed it from some third group? Third, regardless of any "proto-world-language" or any similar theories, since science tells us that both the Indo-Europeans and the Semites both originated in Africa, then at some point in time, probably too far back for us to trace it, there may have been some connection.

I'm not saying that there _must_ have been shared word origins but I'm also saying it's not _impossible_. We just don't know and it’s highly unlikely for us to know for sure (at least in the foreseeable furture) so we don’t claim it to be true but the word _impossible_ is a little too definite for something we don't know much about.

I would not dismiss the coincidence theory either, after all, there are so many words to invent and so little sounds we can combine to create ones; and I’m sure every single one of us has come across stranger coincidences.


----------



## james.

Yeah I suppose that word does sound a little strong, especially when taken out of the context of my original post. I was just saying, keep in mind that these languages have no generally accepted genetic link, and that, given that fact, it would then be impossible for them to share roots in a purely genetic sense. But intermixing and borrowings have occurred since the dawn of speech, so I'm not denying the possibility of a more superficial relationship. Also, I find the theories linking PIE with other parent groups very fascinating, it's just, as I understand it, there has not been enough evidence presented for the linguistic community to fully accept them. There are apparent, very general and superficial similarities between very distant, totally unrelated languages, similarities that are unaccounted for by historical linguistics. But this may stem from common cognitive characteristics inherent to mankind.


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## Outsider

Mahaodeh said:


> Third, regardless of any "proto-world-language" or any similar theories, since science tells us that both the Indo-Europeans and the Semites both originated in Africa [...]


If by that you mean the speakers of Indo-European and of Semitic languages, then we do not know whether they both originated in Africa. Proto-Indo-European, for all we know, only developed long after the ancestrors of its speakers had left Africa. The most common theory is that PIE originates from somewhere around the Black Sea.


----------



## Christo Tamarin

.Lola. said:


> Hi
> here is the word "earth" in some Slavic languages:
> 
> Czech: země
> Slovak: zem
> Russian: zemlja (земл̀я)
> Polish: ziemia
> 
> In other Slavic languages it's going to be very similar.


Bulgarian: зем̀я (zemia)



Lemminkäinen said:


> So the proto-Slavic *_zem-j-a_ turned into the Old Church Slavonic form _zemlja_ (similar to the modern Russian).


Yes. In Old Slavic, the consonant cluster *Cj, where *C* is among {*b,p,v,m*}, in the cases where *j* is also a consonant, tends to change to *CLj. L is an epenthetic consonant indeed. It has been dropped later in many Slavic dialects.

The Slavic zemja/зем̀я (earth) is related to the Latin words *humus* and *homo*. 

Please consider that the Latin words *homo* (man, human) and *humus* (soil, ground, earth) are really related. Perhaps, there could be some very old influence from Mesopotamia concerning the following idea:

{Genesis 2:7} And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.


----------



## Mac_Linguist1

Just a quick note.

In Macedonian and I believe in other Slavic languages too, the plant is capitalized (_Земја_) as are all celestial bodies while the land surface is not (_земја_).


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## Lugubert

Christo Tamarin said:


> Please consider that the Latin words *homo* (man, human) and *humus* (soil, ground, earth) are really related. Perhaps, there could be some very old influence from Mesopotamia concerning the following idea:
> 
> {Genesis 2:7} And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.


The Latin etc. *h* words do indeed seem to be related from a PIE *dhghem-.

The Semitic root 'dm will provide material for dozens of dissertations. Chosing when to translate 'adam as the proper noun Adam or as 'humanity' or the like in the Old Testament is a science in itself.

Also, was ancient Semitic dirt/dust/earth red? Ugaritic 'dm, Akkadian adamu etc. etc. also have meanings like red, dark red, blood.


----------



## Spharadi

Hello
I once read, but I cannot remember where, that aristo-cracy (the rule of the best ones) is related to earth in this way: 
"aristos" is Greek for "the best ones" but it allegedly comes from "ar" which means "earth". This would suggest that the "best ones" were the owners of the land. But again I'm not sure if this etymology is correct. _Si non è vero è ben trovato..._


----------



## javier8907

"-istos" sounds to me, with no knowledge of Greek language, as a typical superlative suffix, on the pattern of English "-est".

Anyway, I just wanted to add that the Basque word for both Earth and earth is "lur" (or "lurra/Lurra" with definite article), which doesn't resemble at all any of the other ones.


----------



## Schrodinger's_Cat

I found that the term 'Earth' is the only planet whose name in English is not derived from Greco-Roman mythology.

Why is that?

In Latin = Terra Mater or Tellus.
Both Terra Mater and Tellus Mater mean "Mother Earth"

Why Terra was chosen instead of Tellus?

And, in Italian, French and Spanish it's Terra, Terre and Tierra respectively

I wonder why is it different for the English language?


----------



## ajo fresco

It's because English is not a Latin language; it evolved from the Germanic family of languages, and the Germanic peoples already had their own word for "earth" long before they became part of the Roman Empire.

You can see a quick etymology by clicking here.

I hope this helps.


----------



## berndf

Other celestial bodies with Germanic names in English are_ Sun_ and _Moon_. If planents ever had Germanic names I don't know. But if so, they havn't survived. As far as I know all modern Germanic languages use the Latin names for planets. You have _morning star_ and _evening star_ as alternative names for _venus_. But these are not original Germanic names but just translations of Greek names.


----------



## ahshav

The Old High German word for earth (from the link to the dictionary) is erda - is so, then what is the origin of that? Is it related to a semitic word for earth (Hebrew - eretz ארץ, Arabic - ardd أرض or Aramaic ara3a)?


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## Outsider

You'll like this previous thread. 

*Thanks, merged!
sokol*


----------



## ahshav

thanks a lot!


----------



## Turiya

sarcie said:


> In Irish, "Tír" means land or country, "domhan" is Earth or the world.


 

This sounds so close to 'zamin' (earth in Persian). As far az I know there's a relation between 'th', 'z', and 'd' in IE languages.


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## Frank06

Hi,


Turiya said:


> This sounds so close to 'zamin' (earth in Persian).


As for Irish domhan, according to this source it's related to PIE *_dheub- _(see e.g. English _deep_).


> As far as I know there's a relation between 'th', 'z', and 'd' in IE languages.


I fail to understand what you mean here. 
I have very strong doubts about zamin and domhan being cognates, but could you please describe and illustrate the alleged sound changes leading from PIE *dh- to Pahlavi (and Modern Persian) z- with relation to zamin زمین?

Groetjes,

Frank


----------



## Lugubert

Frank06 said:


> Hi,
> 
> As for Irish domhan, according to this source it's related to PIE *_dheub- _(see e.g. English _deep_).
> 
> I fail to understand what you mean here.
> I have very strong doubts about zamin and domhan being cognates, but could you please describe and illustrate the alleged sound changes leading from PIE *dh- to Pahlavi (and Modern Persian) z- with relation to zamin زمین?
> 
> Groetjes,
> 
> Frank


According to Platts' Urdu etc. Dictionary, zamii, referenced from zamiin, was damii in Pahlavi, and is compared to Sanskrit jam. From this word, Monier Williams directs to Skt. ksham, and refers to Greek khthoon χθων, 'the ground, earth'. Those suggestions seem to be difficult to link to any PIE *dh.


----------



## arsham

Lugubert said:


> According to Platts' Urdu etc. Dictionary, zamii, referenced from zamiin, was damii in Pahlavi, and is compared to Sanskrit jam. From this word, Monier Williams directs to Skt. ksham, and refers to Greek khthoon χθων, 'the ground, earth'. Those suggestions seem to be difficult to link to any PIE *dh.



this etymology, at least as far as the Pahlavi form is concerned,  is  highly dubious (if not inaccurate).  In Middle Persian, zameen was  pronounced  zamiig  (hence  early  New Persian  zamii  and  dialectal  zemii/zamii).  This word  is also attested  in Old  Persian in the  form of  zam- (see Kent's  Old Persian ,  Lexicon at the end of the  book)


----------



## tom_in_bahia

Well, the difference between erde/earth and terra could be one of metathesis over time since the "original" PIE continuum dialects, whereby the /t/ (or its voiced counterpart in German /d/ and interdental counterpart in English /theta/) moved from one side of the word to the other (which side it was originally on is open to debate, but according to etymonline, the PIE term *er/t would seem to show that the /t/ moved to the front from the back for terra. Two bad tape-recorders were only invented last century.



Turiya said:


> This sounds so close to 'zamin' (earth in Persian). As far az I know there's a relation between 'th', 'z', and 'd' in IE languages.


 

Well, technically, in any language those sounds could be considered "related". They are all coronal consonants and depending on whether the "'th'" you refer to is voiced, as in 'there', or unvoiced, as in 'think', they are all voiced. Another thing to note is that both /d/ and /z/ are alveolars; and, /d/ can have a dental production point, which would get it even closer to /edh/ (THere, THis, THough, etc.).

In English you have wasn't /w^z*nt/ and the dialectal varient [w^dnt] (where arguably the /d/ is a /flap/ - which I have no way to write here - but either way, a flap/tap is formed in the same part of the mouth). Also, in some dialects of English this or that may be pronounced [dIs] or [daet] (where ae represents the vowel in American cat or bath).


----------



## 89ten

If earth doesn’t have common root with Semitic erd then it must have easily traceable i.e. etymology, which doesn’t seem to bet the case. It's difficult to find a common root here and terra is not convincing enough.
  The other word cluster dhoman/zemo/hom fits the bill on the other hand. Perhaps going from terra via torp, torf- a piece of dry land in some Nordic languages and related words like dorf and then chop of the initial consonant can make the claim valid. I am not sure if both dorf and earth have the same etymological root. A derivative of earth is I believe as well in Hindu but its missing in most of satem region. It’s a close call I would say.


----------



## jonbho

javier8907 said:


> "-istos" sounds to me, with no knowledge of Greek language, as a typical superlative suffix, on the pattern of English "-est".
> 
> Anyway, I just wanted to add that the Basque word for both Earth and earth is "lur" (or "lurra/Lurra" with definite article), which doesn't resemble at all any of the other ones.



That's true, but just today I found a curious coincidence (or not?): "bury" in basque is "ehortzi" (or "ehorz"). I realized this when reading some article about Old English that mentions that earth was "eorth" in OE.

I haven't been able to find any etimology for "ehortz", but it would be awesome if it were either a common, really old ancestor, or a loanword from a germanic language.

  -- Jon


----------



## dinji

Christo Tamarin said:


> Bulgarian: зем̀я (zemia)
> 
> 
> Yes. In Old Slavic, the consonant cluster *Cj, where *C* is among {*b,p,v,m*}, in the cases where *j* is also a consonant, tends to change to *CLj. L is an epenthetic consonant indeed. It has been dropped later in many Slavic dialects.
> 
> The Slavic zemja/зем̀я (earth) is related to the Latin words *humus* and *homo*.
> 
> Please consider that the Latin words *homo* (man, human) and *humus* (soil, ground, earth) are really related. Perhaps, there could be some very old influence from Mesopotamia concerning the following idea:
> 
> {Genesis 2:7} And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.


You can learn some more regarding this root looking at the origin of the words Suomi 'Finnish/Finland" and Häme/Saame at this site: http://koti.welho.com/jschalin/lexiconie.htm


----------



## dinji

Zsanna said:


> In Hungarian (which is in the Ugrian branch of Finno-Ugrian group and mostly quite different from the languages in the other branch) it is: *föld*.
> 
> I could imagine that the Finnish/Estonian _maa_ could be connected to our _mező_ (= field), but that is just a guess.
> 
> The fact that in Arabic there is a similitude gave me the idea that the root may be somewhere in Sanskrit. As it is often the case with Indo-European languages. (That could also explain why in Celtic languages there is similarity and why in Latin languages there is a difference...)


The Finnish/Estonian _maa_ does not seem to have cognates in Hungarian although it has in Mari, Permic, Hanti and Mansi as well as in Samoyed. The oldest reconstruction is *_mïxï_, where *ï* stands for a back unrounded vowel and _x_ stands for a "laryngeal" of unknown quality.


----------



## ravivararo

The following are the corresponding words for Earth in Tamil, a Dravidian language.

இரை irai , _n_.. Earth; பூமி.

இளை iḷai, _n_. The earth; பூமி. ఇల [ ila ] _ila_. [Telugu] n. The earth. నేల.
கு; ku, _n_. Earth; பூமி. (திவா.)

கூ² kū , _n_.  Earth

கோ kō :. *Earth;* பூமி.

சகத்து _cakattu_, Universe, world, earth; உலகம்.

சகம்_¹ cakam_, _n_. _ Earth, world, universe; __உலகம்__. (__பிங்__.)_

தரை tarai, _n_. 1. The earth; பூமி. தரையொடு திரிதல நலிதரு . . . சலதரன் (தேவா. 568, 2). 2. Soil, land, ground; நிலம். தரையில் விழுந்து பணிந்தனர் (கோயிற்பு. பதஞ்ச. 43).

 தலம் talam, _n_.  1. Place, site; இடம். (பிங்.) 2. Sacred place, shrine; க்ஷேத் திரம். பின்னரே தலத்தின் வீறும் (பிரமோத். பஞ்சா. 42). 3. *Earth;* land; பூமி. (பிங்.) 4. Worlds; உலகம். ஏழ்தல முருவ விடைந்து (திருவாச. 4, 7). 5. Region of the body, used in compounds like _kai-t-talam, cevi-t-talam_, etc.; உடலுறுப்பு. 6. Land  

 தாலம் tālam,*Earth;* பூமி. தால முறைமையிற் பரிந்து காத்தான் (திருவாலவா. 36, 1). 2. World; உலகம். தாலம் பதினாலும் (அரிச். பு. நாட். 9).

பாலம்_¹ pālam,_, _n_. Earth; பூமி. (பிங்.) பவப்பால மன்னவரை (உபதேசகா. சிவபுண் ணிய. 222).

புடவி¹ puḍavi, _n_._[Telugu. puḍami, Kannada. poḍavi.] 1. Earth; __பூமி__. (__திவா__.) 2. World; __உலகம்__. (__திவா__.) __அதிர்வன புடவிக ளடை யவே __(__தக்கயாகப்__. 723)._

மா mā,  _Land, tract of land; __நிலம்__. __மருதமாவின் றலை யன __(__இரகு__. __நாட்டுப்__. 56). _


----------



## berndf

Whodunit said:


> For the Semitic languages, the root is /-r-d(s), as far as I can tell (/ stands for an initial vowel:
> 
> Arabic: أرض (arD)
> Hebrew: ארץ (arez)


Hebrew א (Aleph) and Arabic أ (Alif with Hamza) are consonants (not vowels) standing for the glottal stop [ʔ]. The Arabic letter ض (Ḍād) is believed to be derived from an emphatic sibilant *[(t)ɬ'] which in Hebrew merged with the emphatic "s" [s'] into צ (Tsadeh), written ץ in word-final position.

Hence both words are obviously derived through regular sound shifts from the Proto-Semitic root consonants */ʔ-r-ɬ'/. Vowels are more difficult to reconstruct with any degree of confidence but the most likely phonemic reconstruction is */ʔaraɬ'/.


----------



## Frank06

Hi,


ravivararo said:


> The following are the corresponding words for Earth in Tamil, a Dravidian language.


Can you please explain us in which way your list adds to the discussion? It's really not enough to post large chunks from dictionaries.

Frank


----------



## vatrahos

Spharadi said:


> Hello
> I once read, but I cannot remember where, that aristo-cracy (the rule of the best ones) is related to earth in this way:
> "aristos" is Greek for "the best ones" but it allegedly comes from "ar" which means "earth". This would suggest that the "best ones" were the owners of the land. But again I'm not sure if this etymology is correct. _Si non è vero è ben trovato..._


 
I've never heard this supposition before, nor do I know of any thema _ar = earth_. This is not to say that such a connection doesn't exist, but I've never met it, and my own inclinations are to remain highly suspicious.

More commonly, we say that *ἄριστος* (aristos) develops from *Ἄρης* (Ares), the god of war, and metaphorically "war" itself. Thus, those on the battlefield who were "most warlike" were also the most "virtuous" or "good."

The thema "Ar" in the name *Ἄρης* gave birth to *ἀρετή* (arete) -- which means "goodness" / "virtue." And, in turn, *ἄριστος*. I'm not actually sure which words preceded which, nor which directly spawned the next.

All of these words, actually, come from the Indo-European thema "AR" which means "to fit; to match." Think of the verbs *ἁρμόζω* ("to fit; to be proper"), *ἀρετῶ* ("to be proper; to excell") or *ἀραρίσκω* ("to join together; to fasten"), whence the noun *άρθρον* ("joint; knuckle"). 

So *ἀριστος* is the most fitting, the most proper, the most "virtuous." Nothing to do with the landed class, at least from an etymological standpoint.

You can also find this thema in Latin. Think of *artus* (limb) or *ars* (craft; art).

Sorry for this interjection; I realize that, ostensibly, it has little to do with the subject of the thread.


*Moderator note:*
*No need to apologize. Whatever it takes to explain why you think that an explanation is wrong is on-topic.*


----------



## qdb

Hello. In *T*atar (a *T*urkic) language it is “jir” (written “җир”). It is quite similar to “terra” and “ge”.


----------



## Orion7

Abu Bishr said:


> Hi All
> Does anybody know the origin of the word "earth"?


All Germanic forms for _Earth_ are cognate to Latvian _art_ 'to furrow' and _ārdīt_ 'to toss/разорить' (cf. Afrikāns _Ārde_, German _Erde_, English _Earth_). So the first meaning of Earth was 'arable land' (Latv. _aramzeme_, Latin _arvum_, Alb _arë_, Mdl.Ir. _ar_).
The other stem _*zam-, *zem-_ from _dhagham-_ '(for) burning' (Latvian _dedzams, dedzināms_; _degt_ 'to burn', _dakts_ 'wick, burner') and formerly meant 'burned out field, tillage', as in older times a tillage from trees was cleared by fire.


----------



## Schrodinger's_Cat

Here are 2 questions:

(1) How did Earth get its name?
(2) What was it called before? What term did our ancestors use to describe it?

Question #1: If you ask an astronomer, he or she will tell you that "All of the planets, except for Earth, were named after Greek and Roman gods and godesses. The name Earth is an English/German name which simply means the ground. It comes from the Old English words 'eor(th)e' and 'ertha'. In German it is 'erde'. The name Earth is at least 1000 years old."

Source: http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/cosmic_kids/AskKids/earthname.shtml

How about question #2?

Notice that in the bible it is stated,  "God made the heavens and the earth..." 
He couldn't have said that.


----------



## 0m1

I'm apologise for the fact that my first post indulges in a little bit of thread-necromancy, but I couldn't help myself! I also apologise if this has been discussed elsewhere, but it seems most relevant to this thread in particular).

Say we trace both Arabic "Ard" and the various IE iterations such of "Earth" (OE "earde", Afrikaans "aarde" &c.) to their respective roots, something like PIE *er- and Proto-Semitic *a-r-ŝ. Now there's of course more than a reasonable chance that this is coincidence, but perhaps it is also indication of some borrowing at that stage? 

I suppose this alone is no reason to suggest such a link, but alongside other resemblances (not least *taur- / *  θwr) some level of exchange would seem less counter-logical. 

I suppose this also hinges on whether these Proto-Semitic roots also trace back to Afro-Asiatic or not, which would indicate, if they don't, that PIE borrowing is the most logical alternative, and if they do that PIE then would have been the borrower (if any borrowing was done at all, of course)

Oh and hi ;D


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## tmax43

Earth: E.RI.DU in Akkadian (house in the faraway built), Erde in German, Erda in Old High German, Airtha in Gothic, Erthe in Middle English, and going back geographically in time, "Earth" was Aratha or Ereds in Aramaic, Erd, or Ertz in Kurdish, and Eretz in Hebrew.
     E.RI.DU ancient city built at the point where the Tigris and Euphrates dump into the Persian Gulf.


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## 0m1

Yes, those are all variations, I believe, on either the Germanic or Semitic roots I outlined above! And I'm not entirely sure Akkadian E.RI.DU is particularly relevant if it only means house-on-the-etc or refers to the city, but I may be wrong..., it doesn't seem too implausible that it might be related to *a-r


----------



## Abu Rashid

Shrodingers_Cat said:
			
		

> (1) How did Earth get its name?



I think in most languages it merely meant ground, then as the concept of planets became more widely known, it was expanded to mean the entire planet that the ground makes up.


----------



## origumi

Frank06 said:


> As for Irish domhan, according to this source it's related to PIE *_dheub- _(see e.g. English _deep_).


If so, and if one must propose a Semitic cognate to Irish _domhan_ or even Persian zaman, this could be Hebrew _Tehom_ (= abyss) / Ugaritic _t.h.m_ / Akkadian _tamto_ (the 3 are cognates of each other)_._ I do not claim that the Semitic words are really cognates of the IE ones, but at least they are rather close by sound (in certain language phase) and meaning (3nd millenium BC?).


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## mataripis

Tagalog: 1.) Earth= daigdig,  may have the root word "DIG" meaning Firmness. expressed in Tindig(stand or stature) / sanglibutan , meaning one round or revolution/   kalupaan or lupa(Tirahan probably from word "Terra" of Latino)


----------



## Abu Rashid

tmax43 said:
			
		

> Earth: E.RI.DU in Akkadian (house in the faraway built) ... "Earth" was Aratha or Ereds in  Aramaic



The Akkadian word doesn't seem related at all. As for the Aramaic, it is ara'. Arabic is the only Semitic language which retained a 'd' type sound for the last sound in the word for earth.


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## berndf

Abu Rashid said:


> The Akkadian word doesn't seem related at all. As for the Aramaic, it is ara'.


Exactly. I wonder where the claim _"Earth" was Aratha or Ereds in  Aramaic_ comes from. You find it on myriads of internet sites but they seem all to be copies of one another with no references anywhere.



Abu Rashid said:


> TArabic is the only Semitic language which retained a 'd' type sound for the last sound in the word for earth.


I'd be cautions with the word "retained". This sounds as if it were a forgone conclusion that there is some kind of a common source ending in _-d_. So far, there is not much evidence for for this.


----------



## ancalimon

mataripis said:


> Tagalog: 1.) Earth= daigdig,  may have the root word "DIG" meaning Firmness. expressed in Tindig(stand or stature) / sanglibutan , meaning one round or revolution/   kalupaan or lupa(Tirahan probably from word "Terra" of Latino)



DİK means "firm,erect,to set, to raise, to plant" in Turkish too. Dimdik means "in a standing position, rigid, bolt upright".

Usage in sentence:  Üzerinde yapılan bütün savaşlara rağmen, dünya dimdik ayakta : Even after all those wars that are wage upon it, the world is still firm, standing, rigid.

Does sangli mean round?


In modern Turkish the most used words are Dünya (from Arabic) and Yer Yüzü (face of ground)


----------



## إسكندراني

The word in Arabic is quite similar:
أرض arD


----------



## Canbek

إسكندراني said:


> The word in Arabic is quite similar:
> أرض arD



        Hi,

 In Kurdish, "ard/erd"  means  soil,cultivable land..."ar/er" means " fit ; match "..." are/ere" means " yes"...And also " ard/ord" means " flour"...First I thought,
like some few words in Kurdish, " ard/erd" must have been borrowed from Assyrian...But now I've come to a conclusion that the word "earth" might come from
Kurdish...Unreal, incredible...From such a neglected and supressed language...


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## tFighterPilot

Canbek said:


> Hi,
> 
> In Kurdish, "ard/erd"  means  soil,cultivable land..."ar/er" means " fit ; match "..." are/ere" means " yes"...And also " ard/ord" means " flour"...First I thought,
> like some few words in Kurdish, " ard/erd" must have been borrowed from Assyrian...But now I've come to a conclusion that the word "earth" might come from
> Kurdish...Unreal, incredible...From such a neglected and supressed language...


They both came from proto Indo Aryan...


----------



## fdb

Canbek said:


> Hi,
> 
> In Kurdish, "ard/erd"  means  soil,cultivable land...



borrowed from Arabic ارض




Canbek said:


> "ar/er" means " fit ; match "..



Kurdish (I think)




Canbek said:


> " are/ere" means " yes"...



 Persian ارى




Canbek said:


> And also " ard/ord" means " flour"...



Persian آرد



Canbek said:


> Unreal, incredible...



indeed


----------



## Abu Rashid

Canbek said:


> First I thought,
> like some few words in Kurdish, " ard/erd" must have been borrowed from Assyrian...



If it came from Akkadian (I assume this is what you mean by Assyrian), then it would be more like ereṣetu, as Akkadian merged ḍ into ṣ.

The fact it has a 'd' in Kurdish, indicates it's highly likely it came from Arabic, as Arabic is one of the few languages which uses a 'd' like sound for this word, most other Semitic languages have merged this phoneme with either ṣ or in the case of Aramaic ʕ.

If you meant Aramaic when you said Assyrian then it would of course be arʕ instead of ard.


----------



## Canbek

Abu Rashid said:


> If it came from Akkadian (I assume this is what you mean by Assyrian), then it would be more like ereṣetu, as Akkadian merged ḍ into ṣ.
> 
> The fact it has a 'd' in Kurdish, indicates it's highly likely it came from Arabic, as Arabic is one of the few languages which uses a 'd' like sound for this word, most other Semitic languages have merged this phoneme with either ṣ or in the case of Aramaic ʕ.
> 
> If you meant Aramaic when you said Assyrian then it would of course be arʕ instead of ard.



Hi,

I'mnot an etymologist; even I know I'mnot capable of discussing these very important and pleasent subjects in English; however,
I just want to learn...

I don't think " erd" would be borrowed from Arabic to Kurdish...Geographically, had Kurdish borrowed this word from a language, Arabic would be unlikely...Akkadian/Assyrian or
Aramaic would be the right answers...Or as been very closely related to Persian(Farsi) and Beloci, words used in these two languages would be the answer...But in both languages, there's no " ard/erd",but  " zamin" used instead...This word also exists in Kurdish, in a close but different meaning...By the way, had Kurdish borrowed " ard/erd" from Arabic, it would have been " arz" rather than " Ard"..Because these " d" letters, somehow changes to " z" in Kurdish, if borrowed from Arabic...Such as  " Ramadan" as " Ramazan"...And borrowed by Turkish from Kurdish this way too..." Ard" becomes "arz"  and used in Turkish more likely borrowed from Armenian as earth...

There is another word " or/ar" which is "fire" in Kurdish...Erd/ard  and or/ar suggests me  the Ezdi Kurdish people as the source of this word...Earth and fire , quiet interesting...


----------



## Abu Rashid

Canbek said:


> I don't think " erd" would be borrowed from Arabic to Kurdish...Geographically, had Kurdish borrowed this word from a language, Arabic would be unlikely...Akkadian/Assyrian or Aramaic would be the right answers...



As has been mentioned, in these languages the word is ereṣetu and arʕ respectively, so I very much doubt either contributed to Kurdish the word ard. And I can't for the life of me understand why you perceive either of these two languages to be more likely candidates for a source language, Arabic has had far more influence over the region Kurdish has been spoken in than either of these two for the entire time Kurdish has been attested as a language.



Canbek said:


> By the way, had Kurdish borrowed " ard/erd" from Arabic, it would have been " arz" rather than " Ard"..Because these " d" letters, somehow changes to " z" in Kurdish, if borrowed from Arabic...Such as  " Ramadan" as " Ramazan"...And borrowed by Turkish from Kurdish this way too..." Ard" becomes "arz"  and used in Turkish more likely borrowed from Armenian as earth...



From what I understand, the way in which letters such as ض are pronounced in Kurdish depends heavily upon the individual community. I am unsure on this though, but judging by the way other languages borrowed Arabic words with ض in them, it seems to be fairly inconsistently.

Even in Turkish, which you've used there as your proof, ض is sometimes spelled as 'd'. eg. Ottoman Turkish: عضله = adele


----------



## Canbek

Abu Rashid said:


> As has been mentioned, in these languages the word is ereṣetu and arʕ respectively, so I very much doubt either contributed to Kurdish the word ard. And I can't for the life of me understand why you perceive either of these two languages to be more likely candidates for a source language, Arabic has had far more influence over the region Kurdish has been spoken in than either of these two for the entire time Kurdish has been attested as a language.
> 
> 
> 
> From what I understand, the way in which letters such as ض are pronounced in Kurdish depends heavily upon the individual community. I am unsure on this though, but judging by the way other languages borrowed Arabic words with ض in them, it seems to be fairly inconsistently.
> 
> Even in Turkish, which you've used there as your proof, ض is sometimes spelled as 'd'. eg. Ottoman Turkish: عضله = adele



Historically, what you claim about the influence of Arabic on Kurdish, is just a speculation I'm afraid...Arabics' influence is not beyond the Islamic terms, as it's been in Indonesia, that's it for Kurdish...Arabic, considering the language, culture etc has got more influence on Persians, Turks( who calls themselves as Turk) more than on Kurdish in Turkey...Besides, until 1915 a large chunk of Kurdish population in now Turkey, were not Muslims...This is a different story...Kurdish has similar roots with Persian/Luri/Beloci/Pasto/Taciki( this is sort of persian though)...However, Mesopotamia , which is a Kurdish settlement, as well as Armenian and a part of Assyrian/Akkadians, is a different story to the rest of the Ariani- Indo European peoples...Islam has been introduced to Mesopotamia, 1300-1400 years ago; and obviously Kurds were using the words " ar/are/ard/erd/or... etc" in their daily life, before the Emevi Arabic/Islamic invasion...Why wouldn't you consider that Arabics borrowed this word from Kurds ? Probably you should let us know, what does " fire" mean in Arabic ?
In Kurdish it's " or"...Are/ere is " yes, true"..."Ar/er is " fit, match up "...Ard is " flour, food"...And finally " erd " is " earth"..They are all related to each other...


----------



## fdb

Canbek said:


> "...Are/ere is " yes, true"..."Ar/er is " fit, match up "...Ard is " flour, food"...And finally " erd " is " earth"..They are all related to each other...



There is not much point in repeating the same thing even after it has been refuted.....


----------



## tFighterPilot

Abu Rashid said:


> If you meant Aramaic when you said Assyrian then it would of course be arʕ instead of ard.


That depends on the era in which it was borrowed (if it was). Early Aramaic had another phoneme with an unknown phonetic value. Since it burrowed the Phoenician alphabet which only had 22 letters, at first ק was used for this phoneme and in later ע. The two different spellings were even used in a single sentence in Jeremiah 10:11 
כִּדְנָה, תֵּאמְרוּן לְהוֹם, אֱלָהַיָּא, דִּי-שְׁמַיָּא *וְאַרְקָא *לָא עֲבַדוּ; יֵאבַדוּ *מֵאַרְעָא *וּמִן-תְּחוֹת שְׁמַיָּא, אֵלֶּה.
Whatever the phoneme's phonetic value was, it's pretty clear it wasn't /ʕ/


----------



## Abu Rashid

Canbek said:


> Historically, what you claim about the influence of Arabic on Kurdish, is just a speculation I'm afraid...



What I'm afraid of, is that your argument is based on nothing more than some ultra-nationalistic mumbo-jumbo reactionary disdain for Arabic as a "colonising influence" on Kurdish.

I wish you the best in sorting out your "issues". Good day.


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## Abu Rashid

tFighterPilot said:


> That depends on the era in which it was borrowed (if it was). Early Aramaic had another phoneme with an unknown phonetic value. Since it burrowed the Phoenician alphabet which only had 22 letters, at first ק was used for this phoneme and in later ע. The two different spellings were even used in a single sentence in Jeremiah 10:11
> כִּדְנָה, תֵּאמְרוּן לְהוֹם, אֱלָהַיָּא, דִּי-שְׁמַיָּא *וְאַרְקָא *לָא עֲבַדוּ; יֵאבַדוּ *מֵאַרְעָא *וּמִן-תְּחוֹת שְׁמַיָּא, אֵלֶּה.
> Whatever the phoneme's phonetic value was, it's pretty clear it wasn't /ʕ/



Well aware, but still not anything approaching 'd'.


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## Canbek

Abu Rashid said:


> What I'm afraid of, is that your argument is based on nothing more than some ultra-nationalistic mumbo-jumbo reactionary disdain for Arabic as a "colonising influence" on Kurdish.
> 
> I wish you the best in sorting out your "issues". Good day.





 Woow,

 What a responde ; " colonising influence...!" Don't worry, there's no such an influence and no one argues about it... You figure out where " ard" comes from,
I'm done and very happy of the outcome.


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## Abu Rashid

Canbek said:


> You figure out where " ard" comes from,
> I'm done and very happy of the outcome.



I think anyone who is approaching this even semi-rationally will assume it is Arabic. I guess there's always the possibility of it deriving from the Indo-European root that earth derives from.

But Akkadian & Aramaic are certainly not even remotely on the table.


----------



## Ihsiin

Canbek said:


> Islam has been introduced to Mesopotamia, 1300-1400 years ago; and obviously Kurds were using the words " ar/are/ard/erd/or... etc" in their daily life, before the Emevi Arabic/Islamic invasion...Why wouldn't you consider that Arabics borrowed this word from Kurds ?



Arabic was a dominant language in Mesopotamia (or, let's call it Iraq), centuries before Islam.
The word can't have been borrowed from Kurdish into Arabic because there are clear cognates in Hebrew, Aramaic, etc., demonstrating that the word "ardh" is clearly Semitic origin.


----------



## Canbek

Ihsiin said:


> Arabic was a dominant language in Mesopotamia (or, let's call it Iraq), centuries before Islam.
> The word can't have been borrowed from Kurdish into Arabic because there are clear cognates in Hebrew, Aramaic, etc., demonstrating that the word "ardh" is clearly Semitic origin.



   Hi,

 Mesopotamia is a Greek word and means " place betwen two rivers"...Tigris and Eouphrates rivers...These two words also is Greek...But I'm sure Tigris( which means tiger in Greek)  comes from Armenian word Tigra...And eouphrades comes from Armenian Ophrat or Kurdish Ferat...There's been no
Arabic in these places at all ...Mountains are " Nemrud, Judi,Artos, Agri..and so on" No Arabic at all...Some cities are " Hakkari, Mardin, Midyat, Derik, Van,Zaxo,Colemerik,Urfa, Bidlis..so on" No Arabic at all...By the way, Mesopotamia doesnot include any historic Arabic  land...For example Basra is not in Mesopotamia...Damascus (historically has got nothing to do with Arabs) is not in Mesopotamia..Even Baghdat is not connected to those places historically...Earth has a clear connection with " erde " in German and so with " erd" Kurdish...I showed quiet strong clues related to this word in Kurdish...Or( fire- food)  Ar/er( fit; match up),Ard( flour) and Erd= Earth...I suggest you guys to show us related words from Arabic to your so called proof " Arddh" ; probably we'll learn all together...Mean time, before Arabs merged to historical grounds, Assyrians were in Mesopotamia and now in Syria, Iraq, Palestine...Even Jesus spoke Assyrian...The word Allah is Assyrian....So what you claim is totally wrong..There was no Arabic in Mesopotamia ( between two rivers) at all, before Islam...


----------



## Ihsiin

Oh, where to begin.
I'll try to keep my reply linguistically focused.

Yes, the word Mesopotamia is Greek for "between two rivers", but what of it? We use the word Mesopotamia in English for ancient Iraq, but in Arabic we would say "bilad al-raafidain" (country of two rivers). The names we use depend on the language we're speaking. According to Wikipedia, both the names Tigris and Euphrates can be traced back to Elamite and Akkadian names, and Tigris back to Sumerian (Euphrates probably also has a Sumerian root which we don't know).
I'm not quite sure what you mean by "Mesopotamia does not include any historic Arabic  land", Baghdad and Basra are certainly in the area that we refer to as Mesopotamia. Perhaps you mean that they aren't Ancient, 2,000 year-old cities, but what has that to do with it? Jesus spoke Aramaic, not Akkadian, the language of Assyria (even when Aramaic was the dominant language in the Middle-East, I believe it was never more than on equal terms with Akkadian in the Assyrian/Babylonian empires; linguistic historians corrects me if I'm wrong). The word Allah is Arabic.

What, I claim, however, is correct. Arabic was a dominant language in Iraq before Islam. The Persians, when they conquered it as part of their empire, called it Arabistan- land of the Arabs. The Arabic city of Hira (next to modern Najaf) was founded in the 2nd Century AD (I believe).

Back to "erd" and "ardh".
The Arabic word "ارض" was a relation in Hebrew: "ארצ" and in Aramaic: "ארע". The words differ in the way we'd expect them to if they descended from a common ancestor, so we can safely say that they are native words and not imported.
It's possible that the Kurdish word "erd" is related to the English word "earth". I really have far to few expertise to make a judgement, though I get the feeling that it's imported from Arabic.
What I CAN say for sure is that Arabic "ardh" does NOT come from Kurdish "erd", and that Arabic was NOT brought to Iraq with Islam.


----------



## Canbek

Ihsiin said:


> Oh, where to begin.
> I'll try to keep my reply linguistically focused.
> 
> Yes, the word Mesopotamia is Greek for "between two rivers", but what of it? We use the word Mesopotamia in English for ancient Iraq, but in Arabic we would say "bilad al-raafidain" (country of two rivers). The names we use depend on the language we're speaking. According to Wikipedia, both the names Tigris and Euphrates can be traced back to Elamite and Akkadian names, and Tigris back to Sumerian (Euphrates probably also has a Sumerian root which we don't know).
> I'm not quite sure what you mean by "Mesopotamia does not include any historic Arabic  land", Baghdad and Basra are certainly in the area that we refer to as Mesopotamia. Perhaps you mean that they aren't Ancient, 2,000 year-old cities, but what has that to do with it? Jesus spoke Aramaic, not Akkadian, the language of Assyria (even when Aramaic was the dominant language in the Middle-East, I believe it was never more than on equal terms with Akkadian in the Assyrian/Babylonian empires; linguistic historians corrects me if I'm wrong). The word Allah is Arabic.
> 
> What, I claim, however, is correct. Arabic was a dominant language in Iraq before Islam. The Persians, when they conquered it as part of their empire, called it Arabistan- land of the Arabs. The Arabic city of Hira (next to modern Najaf) was founded in the 2nd Century AD (I believe).
> 
> Back to "erd" and "ardh".
> The Arabic word "ارض" was a relation in Hebrew: "ארצ" and in Aramaic: "ארע". The words differ in the way we'd expect them to if they descended from a common ancestor, so we can safely say that they are native words and not imported.
> It's possible that the Kurdish word "erd" is related to the English word "earth". I really have far to few expertise to make a judgement, though I get the feeling that it's imported from Arabic.
> What I CAN say for sure is that Arabic "ardh" does NOT come from Kurdish "erd", and that Arabic was NOT brought to Iraq with Islam.



Well, you stick to your beliefs...Word Allah is Assyrian...Arabic has got nothing to do with Northern Mesopotamia before Islam...There's no towns founded by Arabics,after or before islam, there is no river, mountain, hill  named Arabic...There's no food named in Arabic or invented, brought by Arabic...There is no " ancient Iraq" as a whole. Parts of this state, historically-culturelly-ethnically not connected to each other...Geographically either...Necef has got nothing to do with the mountainous area stretching from Mt.Agri( Urartu, Ararat- this word is a version of Urartu and named by Assyrians) down south to Zaxo, now in Iraq republic...What I CAN say for sure is that " erd" has got nothing to do with Arabic...By the way, Kurdish Jews had no reason and relation to borrow " Erd" from Arabic...They would instead borrow the Hebrew or Assyrian version, had they borrowed from a semitic language...Jesus spoke Assyrian which is regarded as the continuation of Aramaic..

Germanic " erde"  matchs up with Kurdish "Erd"...Many words related to Erd do exist in Kurdish, I provided to you guys allready...


----------



## berndf

Canbek said:


> Word Allah is Assyrian...


This is nonsense and you know it. _Allah < Al Ilah _simply meas "the diety". Finding cognates in other Semitic languages is hardly surprising and it doesn't make_ Allah_ any less Arabic. Besides, the question is off-topic here.


Canbek said:


> Germanic " erde"  matchs up with Kurdish "Erd"...Many words related to Erd do exist in Kurdish, I provided to you guys allready...


They are possibly cognates. But that they "match" does not prove anything.


----------



## berndf

fdb said:


> Canbek said:
> 
> 
> 
> Hi,
> 
> In Kurdish, "ard/erd" means soil,cultivable land...
> 
> 
> 
> borrowed from Arabic ارض
Click to expand...

Why do you think so? Because of the ending -d rather than -t, as we find it in Middle Iranian (source)?


----------



## Abu Rashid

Canbek said:


> Mesopotamia is a Greek word and means " place betwen two rivers"...Tigris and Eouphrates rivers...These two words also is Greek...But I'm sure Tigris( which means tiger in Greek)  comes from Armenian word Tigra...And eouphrades comes from Armenian Ophrat or Kurdish Ferat...



The river was known in Akkadian as Purrat (and is still known as Furrat in Arabic till this day) long before the Greeks were even heard of.

The Kurdish Ferat is probably a borrowing from this Arabic rendering.

Ditto for Dijlah (the Arabic name for the Tigris).

So both these rivers' names clearly show an Arabic -> Kurdish borrowing.

Honestly, I'm stumbling to understand why you are so ashamed of having Arabic influence on your language... I get that you think it harms your nationalist struggle or something, but really come on, we're all adults here, discussing language, objectively. Please try to leave such petty nationalist disputes aside.


----------



## fdb

berndf said:


> Why do you think so? Because of the ending -d rather than -t, as we find it in Middle Iranian (source)?



The entry for “earth” in this “Online Etymological Dictioanary” reads:

“O.E. eorþe "ground, soil, dry land," also used (along with middangeard)  for "the (material) world" (as opposed to the heavens or the  underworld), from P.Gmc. *ertho (cf. O.Fris. erthe "earth," O.S. ertha,  O.N. jörð, M.Du. eerde, Du. aarde, O.H.G. erda, Ger. Erde, Goth. airþa),  from PIE root *er- (2) "earth, ground" (cf. M.Ir. -ert "earth"). The  earth considered as a planet was so called from c.1400.”

M.Ir. = Middle Irish. Not Middle Iranian.
This root does not have any cognates in Indo-Aryan or Iranian.

By the way: I fail to see the etymological relevance of the last  sentence (the Earth considered as a planet....). The Earth was of course  considered a planet only after Copernicus (died 1543).


----------



## berndf

fdb said:


> M.Ir. = Middle Irish. Not Middle Iranian.


Ooops, that explains it. 


fdb said:


> I fail to see the etymological relevance of the last sentence (the Earth considered as a planet....).


The dictionary lists the etymologies by meaning. And the meaning "earth" as a planet first occurred in the early 15th century. The term "planet" should be understood to mean "celestial body". Of course earth was not considered a planet by 1400, actually also not when Copernicus died. The view of "earth" as a planet gained ground only in the second half of the 17th century.


----------



## Melaike

Canbek said:


> Hi,
> 
> This word also exists in Kurdish, in a close but different meaning...By the way, had Kurdish borrowed " ard/erd" from Arabic, it would have been " arz" rather than " Ard"..Because these " d" letters, somehow changes to " z" in Kurdish, if borrowed from Arabic...Such as  " Ramadan" as " Ramazan"...*And borrowed by Turkish from Kurdish this way too..." Ard" becomes "arz"  and used in Turkish more likely borrowed from Armenian as earth...*



Turkish words that are used in islamic  literature are either from Persian or Arabic.Also we Turks tend to pronounce the Arabic ''dh'' sound as ''z''.


----------



## Abu Rashid

Melaike said:


> Also we Turks tend to pronounce the Arabic ''dh'' sound as ''z''.



As is demonstrated above, not in all cases. Yes it is the most frequent transliteration, but 'd' is also used sometimes.


----------



## berndf

Abu Rashid said:


> Melaike said:
> 
> 
> 
> Also we Turks tend to pronounce the Arabic ''dh'' sound as ''z''.
> 
> 
> 
> As is demonstrated above, not in all cases. Yes it is the most frequent transliteration, but 'd' is also used sometimes.
Click to expand...

I think, "dh" always becomes "z". But here our issue is "ḍ" and not "dh" and concerning "ḍ" you are right.


----------



## berndf

Ihsiin said:


> Back to "erd" and "ardh".
> The Arabic word "ارض" was a relation in Hebrew: "ארצ" and in Aramaic: "ארע". The words differ in the way we'd expect them to if they descended from a common ancestor...


Why? Proto-Semitic *ṣ́ > ض in Arabic, *ṣ́ > צ in Hebrew and *ṣ́ > ק or ע in Aramaic is _precisely_ what you expect.


Ihsiin said:


> ..., so we can safely say that they are native words and not imported.


... or loaned at a very early stage when *ṣ́ still existed as separate and identically pronounced phonemes in all three languages or their predecessors.


----------



## Ihsiin

berndf said:


> Why? Proto-Semitic *ṣ́ > ض in Arabic, *ṣ́ > צ in Hebrew and *ṣ́ > ק or ע in Aramaic is _precisely_ what you expect.



Exactly, that's what I was saying (that "was" should have been a "has"- excuse my dyslexia).



> ... or loaned at a very early stage when *ṣ́ still existed as separate and identically pronounced phonemes in all three languages or their predecessors.



True. It would still preclude a Kurdish import.
(In fact, come to think of it, a simple consideration of the occurrence of the letter dhad in the Arabic would rule out a Kurdish origin.)


----------



## berndf

Ihsiin said:


> Exactly, that's what I was saying (that "was" should have been a "has"- excuse my dyslexia).


Sorry, I misunderstood you.


Ihsiin said:


> True. It would still preclude a Kurdish import.
> (In fact, come to think of it, a simple consideration of the occurrence of the letter dhad in the Arabic would rule out a Kurdish origin.)


Sure by giving these conditions I wanted to demonstrate how unlikely this should be.


----------



## Abu Rashid

berndf said:


> I think, "dh" always becomes "z". But here our issue is "ḍ" and not "dh" and concerning "ḍ" you are right.



We are talking about ض, which almost always does become 'z' in Turkish, but not in all cases. I think when people have been writing "dh" they've been referring to ض


----------



## berndf

Abu Rashid said:


> I think when people have been writing "dh" they've been referring to ض


There must have been some kind of a confusion. "dh" is a transliteration for ذ and not for ض. And ذ always becomes "z" in Modern Turkish.


----------



## Abu Rashid

berndf said:


> There must have been some kind of a confusion. "dh" is a transliteration for ذ and not for ض. And ذ always becomes "z" in Modern Turkish.



Yes it is usually a transliteration for ذ but in this case, I'm pretty sure they meant ض for which it's sometimes used, eg. ramadhan.


----------



## Canbek

berndf said:


> This is nonsense and you know it. _Allah < Al Ilah _simply meas "the diety". Finding cognates in other Semitic languages is hardly surprising and it doesn't make_ Allah_ any less Arabic. Besides, the question is off-topic here.
> They are possibly cognates. But that they "match" does not prove anything.



   Hi,

There's been quiet interesting developments in the forum; I'm an old man, gone go to bed soon, however, you deserve a quick responde, for the others, some other day hopefully...

The non sense you are talking about was an absolute non sense for me too, until 12 years ago..Thanks to Internet era, we are learning ( if we want to)...Assyrian and Aramaic is regarded as pretty much similar and Assyrian is the continuation of it.Plus, Assyrians claim that( and taken serious by a lot) they are the oldest people in Middle east...I'm not sure whether their claim extend to Northern Mesopotamia or not, but a part of this unlucky people has been there abouts for couple of- if not more- millenniums...

<..Off-topic remarks removed..>

  By the way, I'm a bit confused about Indo-Aryan...What's Indo-Aryan ?

The word " Ar" as a root of many words exist in Kurdish among the IE languages( may be in armenian too)...

<..Off-topic remarks removed..>

You or some one  gotta show me , for example from Arabic Ardd, related words...I don't understand, why wouldn't no one do it( Arabic fellows)...Or Hebrew speaking, if there is any in this platform...I wish there was an Assyrian...

<..Off-topic remarks removed..>

Sorry for " off" topic, but probably we might need a flexible methodology while searching the roots of words, and it's hidden in history( you name it)

Have fun and sorry for head ache.


----------



## berndf

Canbek said:


> Assyrian and Aramaic is regarded as pretty much similar and Assyrian is the continuation of it.


There is no language called "Assyrian". The term is sometimes used for:
- The Assyrian dialect of Akkadian (an extinct language)
- A variety of Modern Aramaic called "Assyrian Neo-Aramaic" (a living language).
I guess you refer to the latter.


Canbek said:


> Plus, Assyrians claim that( and taken serious by a lot) they are the oldest people in Middle east


Many people claim a lot of rubbish. All Semitic languages derive from a common ancestor and are therefore of equal age. Asking if Aramaic is older or younger than Arabic is indeed nonsense.

You can ask which is the old attested Semitic language, i.e. of which we have written documents; there the answer is: _Akkadian_. The oldest known written texts in Akkadian are about 4600 years old. The oldest _Aramaic _inscriptions are less than 3000 years old.

There still is an older attested language in the Mesopotamian area but that is not Semitic: _Sumerian_. It actually doesn't belong to any know group.



Canbek said:


> By the way, I'm a bit confused about Indo-Aryan...What's Indo-Aryan ?


A group of _Indo-European_ languages spoken on the Indian sub-continent. They are a sub-group of the_ Indo-Iranian_ languages, the group to which also Kurdish belongs.



Canbek said:


> I wish there was an Assyrian...


This has been told to you before:





Ihsiin said:


> Back to "erd" and "ardh".The Arabic word "ارض" was a relation in Hebrew: "ארצ" and in *Aramaic: "ארע"*. The words differ in the way we'd expect them to if they descended from a common ancestor, so we can safely say that they are native words and not imported.


The Aramaic, Hebrew and Arabic words are exactly what you expect, if it is a native Semitic word inherited from Proto-Semitic. This pretty much excludes the possibility of the word being a loan from outside the Semitic group.


----------



## berndf

Abu Rashid said:


> I'm pretty sure they meant ض


Who knows. "dh" for ض is a misleading transcription and that needed to be clarified.


----------



## Canbek

berndf said:


> There is no language called "Assyrian". The term is sometimes used for:
> - The Assyrian dialect of Akkadian (an extinct language)
> - A variety of Modern Aramaic called "Assyrian Neo-Aramaic" (a living language).
> I guess you refer to the latter.
> Many people claim a lot of rubbish. All Semitic languages derive from a common ancestor and are therefore of equal age. Asking if Aramaic is older or younger than Arabic is indeed nonsense.
> 
> You can ask which is the old attested Semitic language, i.e. of which we have written documents; there the answer is: _Akkadian_. The oldest known written texts in Akkadian are about 4600 years old. The oldest _Aramaic _inscriptions are less than 3000 years old.
> 
> There still is an older attested language in the Mesopotamian area but that is not Semitic: _Sumerian_. It actually doesn't belong to any know group.
> 
> A group of _Indo-European_ languages spoken on the Indian sub-continent. They are a sub-group of the_ Indo-Iranian_ languages, the group to which also Kurdish belongs.
> 
> This has been told to you before:
> The Aramaic, Hebrew and Arabic words are exactly what you expect, if it is a native Semitic word inherited from Proto-Semitic. This pretty much excludes the possibility of the word being a loan from outside the Semitic group.



  Ok, I've come to a conclusion that  "Erd" absolutly comes from Arabic...To argue otherwise, is a nationalistic hysteria, I admit( for the ones belong to Kurdish race especially)...There's no language called Assyrian...Understood...Tigris comes from Arabic...Ofcourse why  the Euphrades wouldn't be under these circumstances !   

<..>


----------



## Abu Rashid

Canbek said:


> Ok, I've come to a conclusion that  "Erd" absolutly comes from Arabic...To argue otherwise, is a nationalistic hysteria, I admit( for the ones belong to Kurdish race especially)...There's no language called Assyrian...Understood...Tigris comes from Arabic...Ofcourse why  the Euphrades wouldn't be under these circumstances !
> 
> <..>



Nobody here said absolutely comes from Arabic (that I recall). And nobody ever said Tigris comes from Arabic either. In fact as I mentioned, Arabic uses the word dijlah (most likely Sumerian origin), not Tigris. I did however point out that Kurdish  دیجلە (dîjle) is obviously borrowed from Arabic. In all other languages of the region, this word uses 'g', not 'j', only Arabic has shifted g -> j, exposing the path through which Kurdish acquired this word.


----------



## Canbek

Abu Rashid said:


> Nobody here said absolutely comes from Arabic (that I recall). And nobody ever said Tigris comes from Arabic either. In fact as I mentioned, Arabic uses the word dijlah (most likely Sumerian origin), not Tigris. I did however point out that Kurdish  دیجلە (dîjle) is obviously borrowed from Arabic. In all other languages of the region, this word uses 'g', not 'j', only Arabic has shifted g -> j, exposing the path through which Kurdish acquired this word.



  Tigris is Median-Avestan...Kurdish it's " Tijr"...How come Kurdish should borrow " dijla"from Arabic ?  The letter " j" exists in Kurdish in a form of most important word of this language as " jan" too( like many)Which means " life" and related to Avestan.You are making absurd comments about a language that you have no idea at all
, for the sake of your nationalistic approach...You should  clear your mind from ingrained nationalistic approach, full of humiliation towards a language( or people)...


----------



## Abu Rashid

Canbek said:


> Tigris is Median-Avestan...Kurdish it's " Tijr"...How come Kurdish should borrow " dijla"from Arabic ?  The letter " j" exists in Kurdish


 
But that's the point. The word is not originally pronounced with a 'j' but with a 'g'. But as Arabic shifted g -> j, this word ended up as dijlah in Arabic. If Kurdish had borrowed this word from a language prior to Arabic's arrival, then it would be spelled with a 'g' not a 'j'. In Sumerian and Akkadian and Aramaic it is with a 'g'. This fact highlights the Arabic origin of the Kurdish borrowing. Don't be ashamed of it though, all languages borrow. You have many words in Kurdish from Arabic, although I suspect most of them you'd never admit.



Canbek said:


> for the sake of your nationalistic approach...You should  clear your mind from ingrained nationalistic approach, full of humiliation towards a language( or people)...



Given that my nation is Australia, and Australia has little to do with the Middle East in any way, I think you're clutching at straws claiming I have a nationalistic approach to this. Although my name on this forum might be an Arabic name, I am not an Arab.


----------



## Ihsiin

The 'g' could have been palatalised in Kurdish independently; it's not an uncommon process. The "Tigr-" names come from Sumerian via Elamite, whereas the "Digla" names come via Akkadian ("Deqlat" in Akkadian, apparently).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tigris#Etymology (Poorly referenced, but there you go).
If the Kurdish name is "Tijr" (I've personally never heard it, but then pretty much all the Kurds I know are Kraad Feylia from the Baghdad area who all speak Arabic anyway) then that suggests a Persian origin, rather than an Arabic one.



berndf said:


> Who knows. "dh" for ض is a misleading transcription and that needed to be clarified.



I transliterate ض as "dh" since that's how I pronounce it (emphatically, of course).


----------



## Canbek

berndf said:


> Why? Proto-Semitic *ṣ́ > ض in Arabic, *ṣ́ > צ in Hebrew and *ṣ́ > ק or ע in Aramaic is _precisely_ what you expect.
> ... or loaned at a very early stage when *ṣ́ still existed as separate and identically pronounced phonemes in all three languages or their predecessors.



  Thousands of Arabic words, starting with "d", ends with "d", includes "d" in it, couple of it, do exist in Redhouse Turkish to English dictionary, in front of me now...no Arabic or Persian word, ends with "dh"  "tends" to be "z" in Turkish, incorrect !

The islamic religious words, for example Ramadan to RamaZan, comes from Persian( let's exlude Kurdish, exactly the same in this word), which is a borrow absolutely  from Arabic...Also Namaz ( salah in Arabic ?) comes from Persian and It is a  Persian word.
( mentioned in Avesta in this form- Kurdish is Nemah, mentioned in Avesta in this form)

Let's see some examples , words with " dh"  in Turkish, and stay as it is...

    Persian loans:
- badherze -incontation employed by house brokers....etc
-bedhah- malevolent
-bedhal- miserable
-bedhuy- bad tempered
-dudhane- hearth,house,fireplace...

Arabic loans:

-adha:  animal sacrified at the feast of sacrifice
-edhan-( plural of duhn)
-edhem: black(horse)
-hedhede: camels' bellowing. Birds cooing or singing
-hudhud:hoopoe
-idhak: causing laughter
-idhalat: importation
-kadh: slander,reproach
-medhur: driven away, banished
medhus: bewildered
-mudhel: inserted
-mudhik: causes, laughter
-mudhike: drollery
-mudhis: extra ordinary


----------



## berndf

Canbek said:


> Let's see some examples , words with " dh"  in Turkish, and stay as it is...


No-one ever talked about words with the sequence "dh" in Turkish. We were talking about Arabic ض becoming "z" in Turkish like "Ramazan" or "beyaz" (from Arabic بيض). "dh" was ment as a (not quite accurate) transcription of the letter ض.


----------



## Abu Rashid

Canbek said:


> Arabic loans:
> 
> -adha:  animal sacrified at the feast of sacrifice
> ...
> -idhak: causing laughter
> ...
> -mudhik: causes, laughter



These are other examples of ض becoming 'd' in Turkish, thanks. So we now agree not all Arabic loans into Turkish with ض in them became 'z'?



Canbek said:


> -hudhud:hoopoe



This is not 'dh' as a single sound, it is hud hud.


----------



## Canbek

Abu Rashid said:


> These are other examples of ض becoming 'd' in Turkish, thanks. So we now agree not all Arabic loans into Turkish with ض in them became 'z'?
> 
> 
> 
> This is not 'dh' as a single sound, it is hud hud.



1- I've no idea about Arabic alphabet, so it's useless to responde my message through these scripts.
2-I don't say that Arabic dh-s becomes "z" in Turkish ...I suggest you to concentrate... Obviously your English is far better than mine.
This responde had to be forwarded to Melaike, read her comment..I merely showed these words to conradict her- which does-. My point is d-or dh, what ever it is, doesnot become "z" in Turkish...They were already " z" because  loaned from Persian in that form, not from Arabic straight.This has got historical roots( I'm not saying some of them Kurdish loan, considering national allergy in Turkey towards anything+everything related to Kurdish). In another words, the words I've provided  bendf, contradicts the comments of Melaike...Don't worry, these words are all Arabic( including the ones loaned from Persian) and I've got no objections to the truth.
<...>
5-For " hudhud" I suggest you to discuss your concerns with the Turks and the other linguists, who prepared this dictionary.


----------



## berndf

Canbek said:


> 1- I've no idea about Arabic alphabet, so it's useless to responde my message through these scripts.


Than you should familiarize yourself with it. This is exactly what Maraike meant: Arabic ض becomes "z" in Turkish.


Canbek said:


> My point is d-or dh, *what ever it is*, doesnot become "z" in Turkish


It is kind of important what it is. If you don't know what it is than ask and don't contradict.


----------



## Canbek

The problem, I refer to latin, you refer to orignal Arabic alphabet...What I see in the word Melaike, there is no " z" in it...But in Ramazan, there is one...And it's my argument's starting point...Is it contradiction ?


----------



## berndf

Canbek said:


> The problem, I refer to latin, you refer to orignal Arabic alphabet.


This is your problem not ours. When other people here wrote "dh" they definitely meant ض. This is an Arabic sound that does not exist in Turkish nor in any European language. "dh" was just an attempt to represent this sound with Latin letters. This has absolutely nothing to do with "d" followed by "h" as in "hudhud".

In fact, this sound is so special to Arabic that the Arabic is sometimes called "the languages of Dad (ض)".


----------



## Canbek

berndf said:


> This is your problem not ours. When other people here wrote "dh" they definitely meant ض. This is an Arabic sound that does not exist in Turkish nor in any European language. "dh" was just an attempt to represent this sound with Latin letters. This has absolutely nothing to do with "d" followed by "h" as in "hudhud".
> 
> In fact, this sound is so special to Arabic that the Arabic is sometimes called "the languages of Dad (ض)".



oK, let me leave you with your language of dad ...Enjoy..


----------



## Abu Rashid

Canbek said:


> 1- I've no idea about Arabic alphabet, so it's useless to responde my message through these scripts.



The Arabic letter ض represents a 'd'-like sound that some people often pronounce more like 'z'. It's like saying a saturated 'd' with your tongue hanging out.



Canbek said:


> 2-I don't say that Arabic dh-s becomes "z" in Turkish ...I suggest you to concentrate... Obviously your English is far better than mine.



I understood from the following quote that this is what you meant.



Canbek said:


> By the way, had Kurdish borrowed " ard/erd" from Arabic, it would have been " arz" rather than " Ard"..Because these " d" letters, somehow changes to " z" in Kurdish, if borrowed from Arabic...Such as " Ramadan" as " Ramazan"...And borrowed by Turkish from Kurdish this way too..." Ard" becomes "arz" and used in Turkish more likely borrowed from Armenian as earth...





Canbek said:


> My point is d-or dh, what ever it is, doesnot become "z" in Turkish...They were already " z" because  loaned from Persian in that form, not from Arabic straight.This has got historical roots( I'm not saying some of them Kurdish loan, considering national allergy in Turkey towards anything+everything related to Kurdish). In another words, the words I've provided  bendf, contradicts the comments of Melaike...Don't worry, these words are all Arabic( including the ones loaned from Persian) and I've got no objections to the truth.



They were also possibly already pronounced 'z'-like by the Arabs they were borrowed from too, as this pronunciation is not uncommon amongst Arabic speakers either. The point is that the assertion that ض always becomes 'z' in loans to Persian and Turkish and by extension Kurdish does not hold.

<...>


----------



## Phosphorus

In Kurdish one of the counterparts for "earth" is "erd" or "herd". At the first sight it might resemble Arabic "erdh". Since there is "qerd" (however with a pretty much less usage compared to "h/erd") in sub-dialectal Kurdish which is derived from "qerz"-itself an Arabic loan. But the case with "h/erd" is the existence of initial "h-", while in "erz" or "3erz" (other varieties of "erdh" in Kurdish) there appears to be no initial "h-". Also "herd" is used in definitions wider than earth (e.g. "herdeban" ~ "heights") and in some cases there surprisingly stand "herd" and "erz" simultaneously in one dialect. Therefore it stands to reason that "h/erd" could be of another origin. One possibility is Proto-Iranian "harda-*" which appears in form of "heri"/"xeri" in Kurdish in sense of "mud". However this presumable suggestion does not preclude Kurdish "herd" from the probability of sharing the very same root with the etymologically ambiguous "earth" in English!


----------



## Melaike

Canbek said:


> Thousands of Arabic words, starting with "d", ends with "d", includes "d" in it, couple of it, do exist in Redhouse Turkish to English dictionary, in front of me now...no Arabic or Persian word, ends with "dh" "tends" to be "z" in Turkish, incorrect !
> 
> The islamic religious words, for example Ramadan to RamaZan, comes from Persian( let's exlude Kurdish, exactly the same in this word), which is a borrow absolutely from Arabic...Also Namaz ( salah in Arabic ?) comes from Persian and It is a Persian word.
> ( mentioned in Avesta in this form- Kurdish is Nemah, mentioned in Avesta in this form)
> 
> Let's see some examples , words with " dh" in Turkish, and stay as it is...
> 
> Persian loans:
> *- badherze -incontation employed by house brokers....etc
> -bedhah- malevolent
> -bedhal- miserable
> -bedhuy- bad tempered
> -dudhane- hearth,house,fireplace...*



All of these Persian words are actually compound nouns.Bed-hah,Bed-hal,Bed-huy,Dud-Hane (I couldn't recognise ''Badherze'').




Canbek said:


> Arabic loans:
> 
> -adha: animal sacrified at the feast of sacrifice
> -edhan-( plural of duhn)
> -edhem: black(horse)
> -hedhede: camels' bellowing. Birds cooing or singing
> -hudhud:hoopoe
> -idhak: causing laughter
> -idhalat: importation
> -kadh: slander,reproach
> -medhur: driven away, banished
> medhus: bewildered
> -mudhel: inserted
> -mudhik: causes, laughter
> -mudhike: drollery
> -mudhis: extra ordinary



Adha Ottoman Turkish ''Adha''
Edhan Ottoman Turkish ''Edhan''
İdhalat Turkish ''İthalat''
Mudhis Turkish ''Müthiş ''(Not sure about this one)
Hudhud Turkish ''Hüthüt''
Mudhik Ottoman Turkish ''Mudhik'' 
Edhem Ottoman Turkish ''Edhem''
Medhur Ottoman Turkish ''Medhur''

I couldn't recognise some of these words nor could I find them in Ottoman-Turkish dictionaries.But ''d'' sound before ''h'' as in ''mudhel'' or ''mudhik'' usually turns to ''t'' in Turkish (especially in colloquial language ).


----------



## Canbek

Redhouse Yeni Turkce-Ingilizce Sozluk

Editors: V.Bahadir Alkim, Nazime Antel,Robert Avery, Janos Eckmann,Sofi Huri,Fahir Iz, Mecdud Mansuroglu,Andreas Tietze

16th edition, Ekim 1996, 3000 adet.

 The " d" sound turns to "t" in colloquial language, however loaned and used in that form.


----------



## Canbek

Phosphorus said:


> In Kurdish one of the counterparts for "earth" is "erd" or "herd". At the first sight it might resemble Arabic "erdh". Since there is "qerd" (however with a pretty much less usage compared to "h/erd") in sub-dialectal Kurdish which is derived from "qerz"-itself an Arabic loan. But the case with "h/erd" is the existence of initial "h-", while in "erz" or "3erz" (other varieties of "erdh" in Kurdish) there appears to be no initial "h-". Also "herd" is used in definitions wider than earth (e.g. "herdeban" ~ "heights") and in some cases there surprisingly stand "herd" and "erz" simultaneously in one dialect. Therefore it stands to reason that "h/erd" could be of another origin. One possibility is Proto-Iranian "harda-*" which appears in form of "heri"/"xeri" in Kurdish in sense of "mud". However this presumable suggestion does not preclude Kurdish "herd" from the probability of sharing the very same root with the etymologically ambiguous "earth" in English!



 Hi,

IE languages are in two camps in this case:

Persian, Beloci,Pasto-----------Avesta, the word used is " Zamin"...And the Slavic languages borrowed from IE-Avesta

Germanic-Kurdish-Litva is in a form of Erd(e).

My argument is, did Germanic+Litva borrowed this from Yazadi Kurds ? Or bypassed Kurdish and borrowed from Semitics...It doesnot sound allright to me; because in this case Germanic+Litva would be in the position to established some unknown trade+culturel route with Semitics and borrowed from them.. why wouldn't they borrow the name of the soil they stood on, cultivate from eastern Slavics who were living next to these tribes ?

  Kurdish words " or-ar-er-ere-erd-ard  ..." suggest that there's a strong link between these and Earth.


----------



## aruniyan

Is there a relation between the words, *Earth *and Terra(Latin), Terrain etc...?


----------



## berndf

I don't think so. Germanic cognates of Latin _terra _are German_ dürr_ and Old English _thyrre_ (not related to but meaning _dry_).


----------



## Phosphorus

Canbek said:


> Hi,
> 
> IE languages are in two camps in this case:
> 
> Persian, Beloci,Pasto-----------Avesta, the word used is " Zamin"...And the Slavic languages borrowed from IE-Avesta



Hi Canbek. Bro we are better to say that Slavic and Iranian languages, as well as many other I.E. speeches, share the same root in this case. Kurdish "zev"/"zem" (also found in combinations such as "zimeg" ~ "winter stay", "cold part of the mountain" or "zemher" ~ literally "winter's flour") is a cognate of Avestan "zama-" and they both share the same etymology with Slavic "zhymi" (if I am right) and even Latin "humus*"-from which the very word "human" is derived, literally meaning "earthly".



Canbek said:


> Germanic-Kurdish-Litva is in a form of Erd(e).
> 
> My argument is, did Germanic+Litva borrowed this from Yazadi Kurds ? Or bypassed Kurdish and borrowed from Semitics...It doesnot sound allright to me; because in this case Germanic+Litva would be in the position to established some unknown trade+culturel route with Semitics and borrowed from them.. why wouldn't they borrow the name of the soil they stood on, cultivate from eastern Slavics who were living next to these tribes ?



The difficulty in this case is that the exact etymological root of the aforementioned words, namely erd/earth, still eludes us. So we are not aware of the precise relationship between these words. But I believe Germanic "earth" and other similar cases in Northern European speeches, are most likely no borrowings from any Semitic or Iranian languages, and neither the vice versa is probable. I conceive of "earth", "herd", and "ardh" as common to a vast range of human languages. Probably something similar to the case of "cat" or as a much more at hand example "papa"/"mama" words which are almost to be found in the bulk of human speeches on this earth. Once there was presumably a Proto-Human language in which relies the very roots of globally widespread words such as "earth"/"herd"/"ardh"/"aretz" or "papa"/"baba"/"ubaba"/bawa".



Canbek said:


> Kurdish words " or-ar-er-ere-erd-ard  ..." suggest that there's a strong link between these and Earth.



Since there is no specific etymologies for either "earth" or "(h)erd", then I too speculate a common root for them-along with their Semitic equivalents.


----------



## Canbek

berndf said:


> I don't think so. Germanic cognates of Latin _terra _are German_ dürr_ and Old English _thyrre_ (not related to but meaning _dry_).




                   Hi,
1-  In Ethiopinan, Coptic( egyptian-kipti) and if available in Barberi ( Alger,Tunisia...)  words for Earth ?

2-Another issue arises( in my opinion); had Germanic borrowed " erde"  from , say  Hebrew and/or Akkadian version, phonetically would it be different to existing "erde" (if you assume  it's an Arabic loan)?

2-In Arabic, Hebrew and Akkadian, are there some words related to earth ( in their languages) ?

thanks


----------



## rayloom

Canbek said:


> Hi,
> 1-  In Ethiopinan, Coptic( egyptian-kipti) and if available in Barberi ( Alger,Tunisia...)  words for Earth ?
> 
> 2-Another issue arises( in my opinion); had Germanic borrowed " erde"  from , say  Hebrew and/or Akkadian version, phonetically would it be different to existing "erde" (if you assume  it's an Arabic loan)?
> 
> 2-In Arabic, Hebrew and Akkadian, are there some words related to earth ( in their languages) ?
> 
> thanks



1- You can find here the AfroAsiatic etymology. (Coptic and Tamazight seem to use words for earth of different etymologies, since they're not listed here).

2- We aren't assuming here a Germanic borrowing from Semitic.

3- Check the previous link (click on Semitic).


----------



## berndf

*Moderator note: Please pay attention to rule #15 here.*


----------



## aeneas dardanus

Albanian: 
*erth* (palatal.), *erdh*; {*arth*\*ardh*} 
Eng., {came : (to) come} originally {to step on the sure ground; shore; ground; [opposite of embarking] };

Its inversed form with contraction:
*Ter:*, tha[e]r, [*thar*]
---> (to) dry; dry, [dried]; 

N., *terig *: dry wind; continental (earth) wind. 

<...moderator deleted text...>

Gea, and alternates should not be considered on profane terminology like: soil, land,terrain and similar because it is a religious category that keeps itself apart from the common speech / language.


----------



## apmoy70

aeneas dardanus said:


> ...Gea, and alternates should not be considered on profane terminology like: soil, land,terrain and similar because it is a religious category that keeps itself apart from the common speech / language.


Could you please expand more on that?
I'm not sure I get what you are trying to say.
Thanks


----------



## aeneas dardanus

I believe I already managed to say, what I was 'trying'.
And
what I said in short, means: you don't name things of profanity with sacred names.

Gea was not considered a thing, but a person that happens to be a Goddess of a greatest
importance and sanctity, you don't allow divine names to be used in a profane
or vulgar manner. And that's why seeking etymologies in connection with sacred
names is in vain, because they are not used for naming things on profane
everyday speech for centuries, or for as long as they are respected and
regarded as sacred.

For instance the root Di[w: ] in Slavic -derives the word "divljak" - meaning "savage". Yet in English, it still derives a respectful word of Divinity, even though the root *di[w]* was only a syllogism of divine entities, a generic form meaning  [divine] *couple*.


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## Perseas

aeneas dardanus said:


> Gea, and alternates should not be considered on profane terminology like: soil, land,terrain and similar because it is a religious category that keeps itself apart from the common speech / language.



Apart from the fact that this only an assumption: 





> Gea was not considered a thing, but a person that happens to be a Goddess of a greatest importance and sanctity


 in that the "thing" could have given its name to the "person";
what's the point in connecting the etymology of "Γαῖα" to the etymology of "Earth"?


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## aeneas dardanus

Perseas said:


> Apart from the fact that this only an assumption:  in that the "thing" could have given its name to the "person";
> what's the point in connecting the etymology of "Γαῖα" to the etymology of "Earth"?


None, exactly.


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## apmoy70

aeneas dardanus said:


> I believe I already managed to say, what I was 'trying'.
> And
> what I said in short, means: you don't name things of profanity with sacred names.
> 
> Gea was not considered a thing, but a person that happens to be a Goddess of a greatest
> importance and sanctity, you don't allow divine names to be used in a profane
> or vulgar manner. And that's why seeking etymologies in connection with sacred
> names is in vain, because they are not used for naming things on profane
> everyday speech for centuries, or for as long as they are respected and
> regarded as sacred.
> 
> For instance the root Di[w: ] in Slavic -derives the word "divljak" -   meaning "savage". Yet in English, it still derives a respectful word of   Divinity, even though the root *di[w]* was only a syllogism of divine entities, a generic form meaning  [divine] *couple*.


I don't know what your scientific background is, but your claim is  simply absurd, «γαῖα» has been the Greek name of the earth, soil, dirt,  terrain, land, since Homeric times; the name is nothing more than the fusion  of «γῆ»/«γᾶ» with the Homeric «αἶα», the latter from PIE base   *h₂ewh₂yos, _ancestor, granparent_ (cf. Lat. avus/avia); «γαῖα»  means nothing more than mother-earth, and the three «αἶα»/«γῆ»/«γαῖα»  are used interchangeably in both the Greek literature and the vernacular language  since Homer:
Homer--> «Φυσίζωος *αἶα*»
Homer--> «Πάντες ὕδωρ καὶ *γαῖα* γένοισθε»
Homer--> «*γῆ* νηχομένοισι φανήῃ»
There's nothing mysterious or divine about the name «γαῖα»


Perseas said:


> Apart from the fact that this only an  assumption:  in that the "thing" could have given its name to the  "person";
> what's the point in connecting the etymology of "Γαῖα" to the etymology of "Earth"?


Exactly I'm not sure what he tries to establish


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## aeneas dardanus

apmoy70 said:


> Exactly I'm not sure what he tries to establish


Ain't that obvious? 
(let's sum it up again)
There's no etymological connection between words "Gaia" and "Earth"!


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## berndf

aeneas dardanus said:


> Ain't that obvious?
> (let's sum it up again)
> There's no etymological connection between words "Gaia" and "Earth"!


Irrespective of whether your argument that profane and religious roots are never mixed is right or wrong (it is actually wrong, as apmoy70 demonstrated), who claimed the two roots were etymologically related in the first place?

What you actually said was





aeneas dardanus said:


> Gea, and alternates should not be considered on profane terminology like: soil, land,terrain and similar because it is a religious category that keeps itself apart from the common speech / language.


and that is wrong, plain and simple.


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## Dhira Simha

Let us put the discussion on somewhat more scientific basis.  This is what the etymological dictionary says:
earth (n.) 

O.E. eorþe "ground, soil, dry land," also used (along with middangeard) for "the (material) world" (as opposed to the heavens or the underworld), from P.Gmc. *ertho (cf. O.Fris. erthe "earth," O.S. ertha, O.N. jörð, M.Du. eerde, Du. aarde, O.H.G. erda, Ger. Erde, Goth. airþa), from PIE root *er- (2) "earth, ground" (cf. M.Ir. -ert "earth"). The earth considered as a planet was so called from c.1400.

The furthest it takes us is the Gothic _airþa_. According to the Grimm's Law,  the Gothic _þ _would  lead us to "proto-IE"  _dh_  and   to a reconstructed *_e(a)rdh_. We can not check it on the "proto-language" but  we may turn the good old Sanskrit. We readily find there  not one, but two  suitable  words: 1) *ardha* "side, part; place, region, country"  and 2) *ardha* "half. halved, forming a half; one part of the two". Both are semantically compatible: the first one - if we interpret the ancient meaning of "earth" not as soil but in a more generalised meaning "place, world" (importantly in the etymological dictionary we find that  the word "earth" stood  for "the (material) world" i.e. not just "soil".  The other one is also possible if we recall the Vedic (also IE) cosmogony in which  Sky and Earth formed a perpetual union. There are many words for it: *rodas* n. du. "heaven and earth"; *dyāvā*  "heaven and Earth etc."  Therefore, *ardha  *"one part of two" may well be taken as an allegoric name for one half of the union - the earth.

The Skr. *ardha* explains quite well the  O.E. _eorþe_   and the modern_ earth_. The  final /d/ in the  O.H.G. _erda_ and  Ger. _Erde_  does not contradict this if we consider the High-Germanic consonant shift: _þ  _to_ d_ (Let  *berndf* correct me if I am wrong).  There is also Ger. ort "place"  which is sometimes linked to _ardha_ but it most probably  continues the Lat. _ordo_.

I am not an expert in Arabic but the  Arabic _arD_, quoted in the beginning,  may well be related here.  There is a tendency to  label every  IE word  which has a similar form in Semitic  as a Semitic loan, however  it is well known that IE peoples were thriving in Anatolia and the Middle East as far back as 2000 BC  so, to be objective, we should also consider an equal possibility of  IE loans into Semitic.


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## Abu Rashid

Dhira Simha said:


> I am not an expert in Arabic but the  Arabic _arD_, quoted in the beginning,  may well be related here.


 
Possibly, although the loan would've had to have been very very early, much earlier than your 2000 B.C.E timeframe mentioned below. The word exists in Akkadian, a language attested at least as far back as 2600 B.C.E. and it's already in an evolved form in Akkadian, as erṣetu, indicating it has been a Semitic word probably since before the East/West branching of the  Semitic languages.



Dhira Simha said:


> There is a tendency to  label every  IE word  which has a similar form in Semitic  as a Semitic loan,


 
Surely you jest? There is certainly a tendency, but it's in the opposite direction.



Dhira Simha said:


> however  it is well known that IE peoples were thriving in Anatolia and the Middle East as far back as 2000 BC  so, to be objective, we should also consider an equal possibility of  IE loans into Semitic.



It's certainly a possibility, either direction of loaning for this root is a possibility, but it would have to have been at a very early stage in the development of both families, since it exists in most members of each family, and shows the regular sound changes in both as well that we'd expect from a seasoned native word.

There's also the possibility it's just a coincidence.


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## Dhira Simha

Abu Rashid said:


> There's also the possibility it's just a coincidence.



Abu Rashid, I would not argue with you. As I said, I am no an expert in Semitic. Etymology is not an exact science. All we can do is to provide more or less intelligible theories.


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## aruniyan

Dhira Simha said:


> Let us put the discussion on somewhat more scientific basis.  This is what the etymological dictionary says:
> earth (n.)
> 
> O.E. eorþe "ground, soil, dry land," also used (along with middangeard) for "the (material) world" (as opposed to the heavens or the underworld), from P.Gmc. *ertho (cf. O.Fris. erthe "earth," O.S. ertha, O.N. jörð, M.Du. eerde, Du. aarde, O.H.G. erda, Ger. Erde, Goth. airþa), from PIE root *er- (2) "earth, ground" (cf. M.Ir. -ert "earth"). The earth considered as a planet was so called from c.1400.
> 
> The furthest it takes us is the Gothic _airþa_. According to the Grimm's Law,  the Gothic _þ _would  lead us to "proto-IE"  _dh_  and   to a reconstructed *_e(a)rdh_. We can not check it on the "proto-language" but  we may turn the good old Sanskrit. We readily find there  not one, but two  suitable  words: 1) *ardha* "side, part; place, region, country"  and 2) *ardha* "half. halved, forming a half; one part of the two". Both are semantically compatible: the first one - if we interpret the ancient meaning of "earth" not as soil but in a more generalised meaning "place, world" (importantly in the etymological dictionary we find that  the word "earth" stood  for "the (material) world" i.e. not just "soil".  The other one is also possible if we recall the Vedic (also IE) cosmogony in which  Sky and Earth formed a perpetual union. There are many words for it: *rodas* n. du. "heaven and earth"; *dyāvā*  "heaven and Earth etc."  Therefore, *ardha  *"one part of two" may well be taken as an allegoric name for one half of the union - the earth.



Sanskrit *ardha*(half) ->*Earth* doesnt make much sense,
fyi. all so called Dravidian languages has that word "*arai*" (half).


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## Dhira Simha

This is my version on the Etymology of the Slavonic words for "earth":


605земляzemlyāhemāहेमाzemljaearthearthTraditionally linked to SA kṣam क्षम्  'the ground, earth' (VAS) although the new etymology offered by Guseva  is more plausible both semantically and phonetically. Compare the AV  zam-,  LA humus and GR χαμαί  'on the ground'. The medial /l/ is not  present in some RU dialects and  SL languages and could be a linking  co-articulatory sound (l-epentheticum). Sounds /z/ and /h/ are  interchangeable (cp зима zima  and hima हिम 'winter'). The agreement in  gender (feminine) as well as the long -ā in the Sanskrit word and the  corresponding stress on the last vowel in many Slavonic languages.  The  alternative cognate   śyāma श्याम 'black, dark-coloured'  proposed by  Adelung (ADEL, 14) is also worth considering but it is less plausible  phonetically. UA земля́; BY земля́; BG земя́; SRB зѐмља; SLO zémlja;  CZ země; SK zem; PL ziemia; LT žẽmė; LV zеmе; AV zam-; GUS 4


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## Dhira Simha

aruniyan said:


> Sanskrit *ardha*(half) ->*Earth* doesnt make much sense,
> fyi. all so called Dravidian languages has that word "*arai*" (half).



Good point, however ardha is attested in the oldest layer of Vedic:

ardhá: (page  29)ʼ.  uttarārdhá--, *grāmārdha--, paścārdhá--, pūrvārdha--.       ardhá 644 ardhá2 ʻ half ʼ, m.n. ʻ a half ʼ RV. [Same as *árdha*-- 1?]  Pa. _aḍḍha_--, _°aka_--, _addha_--  m.n., Aś. _aḍha_--, NiDoc. _ardha_, _aḍha_, _adha_, Pk. _aḍḍha_--, _addha_--; Tir. _aḍḍa_ ʻ halffull ʼ, Paš. 
​We may as well suggest a loan into Dravidian.


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## eamp

Germanic /þ/ can only go back to pre-Germanic /t/ not /dh/ so it can't have anything to do with ardha or the like.
German "Ort" has the original meaning "point, tip (of a weapon)" and is from Germanic *uzdaz, having nothing whatsoever to do with "earth".


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## Dhira Simha

Sorry, for a moment I wanted to recall my post. I thought that I misunderstood the Gimm's law. I have just re-checked and  it does say 
dʰ → d → t → θ/   As for  German ort  the cardinal meaning is "place". Check the dictionary


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## Dhira Simha

Phosphorus said:


> Hi Canbek. Bro we are better to say that Slavic and Iranian languages, as well as many other I.E. speeches, share the same root in this case. Kurdish "zev"/"zem" (also found in combinations such as "zimeg" ~ "winter stay", "cold part of the mountain" or "zemher" ~ literally "winter's flour") is a cognate of Avestan "zama-" and they both share the same etymology with Slavic "zhymi" (if I am right) and even Latin "humus*"-from which the very word "human" is derived, literally meaning "earthly".



Phosphorus, I fully support you here (see my recent post). However,  zem(l)ja - hema  "the earth" and zima - hima  "winter'  derive from different roots.


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## eamp

Dhira Simha said:


> Sorry, for a moment I wanted to recall my post. I thought that I misunderstood the Gimm's law. I have just re-checked and  it does say
> dʰ → d → t → θ/   As for  German ort  the cardinal meaning is "place". Check the dictionary


Which means: dʰ becomes d, d becomes t, and t becomes θ. For example PIE *dʰuro- > Gmc. *dura- > Goth. daur ("door"), PIE *dekm(t) > Gmc. *tehun > Goth. taihun ("ten"), PIE *toi > Gmc. *θai > Goth. þai ("they").
Telling a native speaker to check the dictionary is quite rich. Today the primary meaning is "place", yes, but that's recent, in Old High German and all the other old Germanic dialects where this word occurs it indeed means "point" or "tip". "ort widar orte" from the Hildebrandslied is quite famous and it means "(spear)tip against (spear)tip".


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## Dhira Simha

Sorry, did  not check your native language. I only mentioned _ort_ because I came across  some etymologies linking it to Skr. _ardh_. I agree with you that while  Skr. _ardh_ would be acceptable  for the German _Erde_  the English _earth_  and Goth. _airþa_   present a  problem. So I have to recall my  theory.

  I have noticed that in Watkins' dictionary _earth_  is derived from *_er_-  but the final /t/  is not explained. Could it be a  P.P.P  ending  *_er-ta_ ? If so then everything seems to be getting in place.  The verb  _a(o)r_  in the sense "to plough" is well arrested: LAT _аrō_, -_ārе_ , Greek ἀρόω; Goth _аrjаn_  and it is also prominent in Slavonic: _orati_, Baltic Lith. _árti_ and is directly related to  Skr: _(__ā)__ṛ_  (intes. ār)  meaning 'to insert, to cast through, pierce' which is a  literal description of the process of ploughing (Cp. also _ āra_ आर  'sting, point, corner, angle; bore' which is also compatible with the plough).  The  P.P.P.  of _ār_  in Skr. would be _ārta_  which is quite compatible with the P. Germ. *_ertho_. The _-d_ forms in some Germanic languages can still be explained through the  High Germanic shift (_θ-d_). If we look at 'earth' from this angle we may interpret  it as a descriptive 'the ploughed (one)' which does make sense.


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## berndf

Dhira Simha said:


> I only mentioned _ort_ because I came across  some etymologies linking it to Skr. _ardh_. I agree with you that while  Skr. _ardh_ would be acceptable  for the German _Erde_  the English _earth_  and Goth. _airþa_   present a  problem.


/þ/ > /d/ is a regular development in German (cf. English _this_/German _dies_, English _brother_/German_ Bruder_). This shift happened during the Old High German period already where you find spellings with "þ" and with "d" for some words. Even if the form _*er__þ__a_ is not attested (which is the case, to my knowledge) it must still be assumed that the attested form _erda_ is derived from _*erþa_.


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## Dhira Simha

This is exactly what I meant.


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## berndf

Dhira Simha said:


> This is exactly what I meant.


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## aruniyan

berndf said:


>



Not bringing any novelty theories... 

Tamil words that are interesting,

_Er_ - plough (long ā sound)
_eru_ - manure.
_erudhu_ - bullock
erumai - buffalo (may be because of it color or place of survival)


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## Dhira Simha

aruniyan said:


> _Er_ - plough (long ā sound)



Thank you! This is extremely interesting. I would also add _EraTi-ttal_ 'to plough'.   It is important, however, that in Sanskrit  we  apparently see the  primordial meaning "to pierce, break, disturb" from which  'to plough' developed later.


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## Ben Jamin

I would just only repeat a probably well known piece of information that in the Nostratic theory the word 'earth' is one of the cornerstones.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostratic_languages


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## Dhira Simha

Ben Jamin said:


> I would just only repeat a probably well known piece of information that in the Nostratic theory the word 'earth' is one of the cornerstones.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostratic_languages



I am not a big fan of the 'Nostratic Theory' but it would be interesting to see how they tackle 'earth'. Could you write more on this?


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## Ben Jamin

Dhira Simha said:


> I am not a big fan of the 'Nostratic Theory' but it would be interesting to see how they tackle 'earth'. Could you write more on this?



Follow the link in my post. I don't have any deep knowledge myself about this particular word.


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## Dhira Simha

Frankly, I have not found anything extrodinary   about "earth" in the 'Nostratic' database. Perhaps you meant this:

Eurasiatic: *ʔVrHV

Meaning: open space
Borean: Borean






Indo-European: *ārH- (also Hitt. hari- 'valley')





Altaic: *ā́rV





Uralic: *arV (cf. also Ug. *arV 'side, direction')
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




Kartvelian: ? Georg. χriaṭ- 'steiniger Abhang'
Dravidian: *ar_-ai ( + ? SD *aṛ- 'rivermouth')





References: ND  66 *ʔarV 'earth, land, place' (also adding PIE *er- 'earth' and PSH  *ʔarVĉ̣- id.?); suggests that it is = 73 *(ʔV)rV 'towards' ( > SH,  IE, Ur, Alt locative markers); 720 *Gari 'valley, hollow in the ground,  cave' (adding Kartv. ɣar- 'gutter, furrow' which is probably erroneous  and Sem. *ɣār- 'valley, cave'); 2607 *χaŕ[ü] 'valley, depression, pit'  (?Georg. + Dr. *aṛ- + same FP, same IE + Arab. + ??Eg.).

Personally, I am not convinced at all.


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## Phosphorus

Dhira Simha said:


> Phosphorus, I fully support you here (see my recent post). However,  zem(l)ja - hema  "the earth" and zima - hima  "winter'  derive from different roots.



I am grateful for your correction. I was really given to conceive of them all as cognates, indeed due to the mere outward resemblance.


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## Qureshpor

I too felt that the English word Earth and the Arabic أرض  was just a coincidence. But what about kahf = cave and qat3 (cutting)? Could there have been a link somewhere in the distant past between Indo-European and Semitic family of languages?


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## Abu Rashid

QURESHPOR said:


> I too felt that the English word Earth and the Arabic أرض  was just a coincidence. But what about kahf = cave and qat3 (cutting)? Could there have been a link somewhere in the distant past between Indo-European and Semitic family of languages?



If such false friends (words that appear at a cursory glance like cognates, but aren't) didn't exist, then it would actually be something extraordinary. The fact they exist is simply a matter of statistics.


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## rayloom

QURESHPOR said:


> I too felt that the English word Earth and the Arabic أرض  was just a coincidence. But what about kahf = cave and qat3 (cutting)? Could there have been a link somewhere in the distant past between Indo-European and Semitic family of languages?


Well there are several controversial, highly criticized, hypotheses (I'm not endorsing any). 
Here are some:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Semitic_languages
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostratic_languages


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## rushalaim

All argue here because of the last letter of the word what differs in different languages.
_Aramaic_ *ארעא *and _Hebrew_ *ארץ* have the common root *אר*


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## berndf

rushalaim said:


> All argue here because of the last letter of the word what differs in different languages.
> _Aramaic_ *ארעא *and _Hebrew_ *ארץ* have the common root *אר*


The PS reconstruction is _*ʾarṣ́. _In Aramaic, ע/ק is the regular outcome of PS _ṣ́_ as is ץ in Hebrew and ض in Arabic.


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## apmoy70

Let me add the archaic Greek feminine *«ἔρα» érā* (nom. sing.), *«ἔρας» érās* (gen. sing.) (Beekes suggests a possible PIE root *h₁er- _earth_ with cognate the Proto-Germanic *erþō > Ger. Erde, Eng. earth, Dt. aarde, D./Nor./Swe. jord) a word quite possibly related to the Classical fem. *«ἄρδα» ắrdā* --> _dirt, soil_ (cf the ancient Upper Macedonian country of *«Ἐορδαία» Ĕŏrdaí̯ā* home of Alexander's general Ptolemy, v. *«ἄρδω» ā́rdō* --> _to irrigate_)


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## JamshidR

I am not sure whether the similarity between English earth and Arabic ارض is a coincidence or whether the two words are in some way related but so far nobody discussed the Arabic word ارض linguistically more closely. As everybody can see there are three things in Arabic ارض which make me assume it is an arabized form of the Indo-European
1. Arabic reverts to initial Hamza-Alif to avoid consonant clusters or vowels
2. Arabic tends to make foreign sounds emphatic. So ض in  ارض is an indication as in other words such as ايطاليا
3. Arabic is often undetermined when it comes to plurals of foreign words as we see in the old plural  ارضون next to اراض


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## berndf

JamshidR said:


> 1. Arabic reverts to initial Hamza-Alif to avoid consonant clusters or vowels
> 2. Arabic tends to make foreign sounds emphatic. So ض in ارض is an indication as in other words such as ايطاليا
> 3. Arabic is often undetermined when it comes to plurals of foreign words as we see in the old plural ارضون next to اراض


All these would be arguments, if the Arabic word were isolated within Semitic. But in combination with Hebrew ארץ and Aramaic ארעא the PS reconstruction *'-r-ṣ́ is almost impossible to reject. The tendency to imports IE plosives as emphatics is because most loans entered Arabic via Aramaic and Aramaic used emphatics to transliterate foreign plosives to avoid the ambiguities of gimel-ghimmel, daleth-dhaleth, etc. This plays no role, if the word is inherited from PS and the hypothetical common ancestor of the IE and Semitic words predates PIE and PS.


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## JamshidR

I agree that´s why I said I am not sure and that it is my personal view, however the original Arab homeland was marginal and slighly different from North Semitic when we see it from a geographical point of view. The Arabs have words which comply with their original nomadic culture which might have seen their desert soil as ground قاع . We know for example that their diet was not vegeterian so the word لحم which means bread in Aramaic changed to meat and then they borrowed the word خبز from Amharic. This means that if ارض is not a borrowing from Indo-European then it might still be a borrowing from Aramaic but not a common semitic word. I am still not convinced.


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## berndf

JamshidR said:


> This means that if ارض is not a borrowing from Indo-European then it might still be a borrowing from Aramaic but not a common semitic word. I am still not convinced.


The third radical (ض) is consistent with an inheritance from PS (< ṣ́) but not with a loan from Aramaic.

EDIT: We find ṣ in Canaanite (Hebrew, Phonetician, Moabite), Ugaritic and Akkadian, ض in Arabic and ע/ק in Aramaic. PS *ṣ́ is really the only thing all of this is consistent with.


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## rushalaim

berndf said:


> The PS reconstruction is _*ʾarṣ́. _In Aramaic, ע/ק is the regular outcome of PS _ṣ́_ as is ץ in Hebrew and ض in Arabic.


All those ץ ע ק ש ת as the last third letter of the word _"land"_ are not the part of root but just addition. The root is *ער*
Russian also has many words from that root of _"land"_: _"аршин"_ (_"soil-measurer"_ about 21/3 foot or 0.711 m), _"ора*т*ь"_ (_"to plough"_ [soil]), _"орало"_ (_"the plough"_).


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## berndf

rushalaim said:


> All those ץ ע ק ש ת as the last third letter of the word _"land"_ are not the part of root but just addition. The root is *ער*
> Russian also has many words from that root of _"land"_: _"аршин"_ (_"soil-measurer"_ about 21/3 foot or 0.711 m), _"ора*т*ь"_ (_"to plough"_ [soil]), _"орало"_ (_"the plough"_).


In Semitic, it is part of the root. Russian is not a Semitic language. That is irrelevant here.


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## JamshidR

Not easy matter but Arabic has relatively few two-radical words (PS). As I said geographical view can also be very helpful in this case. Arabic was relatively a marginal language before Islam and it has borrowed extensively from sister languages and Non-Semitic. For example the typical Arab house was  منزل  and ( بيت is a borrowing from Aramaic) the word اهل which meant a tent خيمة then developed to mean family. So the central Arabic word is نزل  (get off - absteigen) from the camel maybe that´s why Quran repeatedly uses it. Therefore land in the primitive Arab culture cannot simply be equated with  ارض I am at my wits´end (mit meinem Latein am Ende) sorry


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## berndf

JamshidR said:


> بيت is a borrowing from Aramaic


How do you arrive at this conclusion?


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## JamshidR

nearly all words that have to do with a house are all borrowings because as I said the Arab house used to be a tent without doors and windows. For example the Arabs think that  كتب carries the core meaning to write but when they com to the word كتيبة  a troop of soldiers they have no clue as the word is Aramaic and the original meaning is put together, to bind and and now it becomes clear. By the way  شباك is from Persian. For the discussion of words related to a house you can download a pdf file from archive.org. You can also consult Arne Ambros a concise dictionary of Quranic vocabulary
1. Siegmund Fränkel Aramaisch im Arabischen
2. Jeffery Leech the foreign vocabulary in Quran


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## berndf

JamshidR said:


> nearly all words that have to do with a house are all borrowings because as I said the Arab house used to be a tent without doors and windows.


بيت has obvious cognates in all Semitic language groups. That certain roots take a somewhat different twist in different language is not a counter argument that the word is native. The most literal translation of منزل into German, e.g., would be _Wohnung_, a word that really exists in that language. But you wouldn't draw from that the conclusion that _Haus _and _Wohnung _can both be native words although they somewhat overlap in meaning.


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## JamshidR

I would like to add to what is previously said about the Arabic word ارض that the Arabic word روضة (kinder)garten which is possibly related to ارض is most probably from Persianرز raz fom persian verb rostan from mp rod from aw raod / old persian raza grape (vine) see also Kurdish raz with the same meaning. See also the etymology of English rose below from Wickipedia:
The name _rose_ comes from French, itself from Latin _rosa_, which was perhaps borrowed from Oscan, from Greek ρόδον _rhódon_ (Aeolic βρόδον _wródon_), itself borrowed from Old Persian _wrd-_ (_wurdi_), related to Avestan _varəδa_, Sogdian _ward_, Parthian _wâr_

This might imply that the cencept of ارض was probably originally based on a garden of grapes and roses. Even the word garden itself bears a lot of similarity both semantically and phonetically to Arabic ارض


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## Loewenpfote

Hi there! German-Arabic Erd-ard,

I think, that German Erde (neatherlands: eerd) an arabic *ard/ärd are identic words, like in two dialects of a greater or previous language.
Therefore they don't drevive from one anathoer but thy belong to a greater language family.

Let have a look:
arabic *ard means (ground, earth you are taking from field / Boden/Erde) - and in German we use Erde (in old songs just: Erd') for ground, earth of the field too.

I don't think this is by random or a word just borrowed,
for i have found some more possibly related words in German an Arabic.
Here are some of them:


*May i use a text I wrote in German? If I give a short English summmary? (Else one could cancel the German passages)

burg / burj (arabic) (tower) seems to be the same as Burg (German) (tower with houses an wall) *or french/english cities: Edinburgh, Strassburg

_ich würde die Behauptunng aufstellen, dass das Wort Burg nicht aus dem Arabischen "kommt" - sondern dass unsere Sprachen - Arabisch, Deutsch, Altgriechisch, Hebräisch, weitere - miteinander verwandt sind. Wir sprechen sozusagen verschiedene "Dialekte" einer Vorgängersprache. Beim Burj al Arab fiel mir auf, dass es wie Burg - französisch ausgesporchen - aussieht. Vgl. Burgeoisie. Später entdeckte ich, dass die Ägipter (ich schreibe ausprachegemäß, ich hoffe, das its in der Diskussion okee) tatsächlich burg sagen. Die Altgriechen haben pyrgos (pürgos), was wie im Arabischen Turm heißt. Da b, p, pf quasi das gleiche sind (der eine sprichts so aus, der andere so), ist pürg(os) das gleiche wir Bürg(os) oder Bürg. Das liegt nahe an der Burg oder dem Bürg-er. Bei uns, im Deutschen, ist die Burg auch ein Turm, nur mit Häusern und Mauern oder sogar mit einer ganzen Stadt drumrum: Straßburg, Magdeburg, Edinbourgh._​
*As i said: if you hve only one or a few word, they mey be loandwords:*
_Burg allein könnte ein Wanderwort sein, so wie Internetz, Kompjuter usw., das einfach eine Sprache von der anderen übernommen hat.


Zwischen Arabisch und Deutsch habe ich aber eine Reihe von Wörtern entdeckt, die zumindest die Vermutung nahelegen, dass das mehr als Zufall und mehr als bloße Wortübernahme sein könnte. Mit anderen Worten: Ich tippe auf eine Sprachverwandtschaft zwischen Arabisch und Deutsch.


Beispiele:_​
*But here are some more:*

Habe eine ganze (kleine) Reihe von Wörtern gefunden, die dt.-arab ähnlich sind (Lautfolge) und eine ähnliche Bedeutung haben​*

zB - *ard, ärd - heißt Boden, Erde -- vgl.dt. Erd', ndl. eerd  - engl. earth, or as you said: hebrew eretz (sounds lik German Erz, a kind of stony (earth) with metal inside


Hey, guess: If German an Arabic borrow the "internet" or "pullover" oder "computjer" of English, than that's because we importet the word togeather with the invention, instead of coining a new word.
But earh is a very common word. There's no need to borrow it.
We- in German- have Erde - we don't say "earth". Why should we? Arabic hat "ard", why should thes say earth?

Therefor "internet" is likly to be loaned from English - as there was no internet in all the nations before. But "earth" oder "Erd(e)" or "ard" seems very unlikly to be loaned from anothere language. Therefore they're likly to be related.*

_ 
Das Wort *ärd/*ard ist ein ziemlich grundlegendes Wort. Also wenn die Burg eine technische Neuerung gewesen sein mag, könnte man sagen: Wow! Die Griechen oder die Araber haben "Vorsprung durch Technik", das übernehmen wir. Wie heißt das Ding denn? Ach, Burg nennt sich das! Ja okee. Und dies komische Blechgehirn, wie nennt man das richtig? Kompjuter!? Ohhh, staun, okee, dann nennen wir das Blechhirn absofort auch Komjuter ...


Aber warum sollte man ein so grundlegendes Wort wie Erd(e), dass es immer überall gibt, aus dem Englischen, Deutschen, Japanischen oder Arabischen entleihen? Als Fremdwort für besondere Dinge: ja: global. Aber Erde an sich ...


Der Duden achtet da gar nicht auf die Ähnlichkeiten mit dem Arabischen! Deutsch: Erde, in alten Liedern: Erd', holländisch: eerd, indogermanisch rekonstruiert: er(t). und Arabisch: auch *ärd. Und alles heitß Boden, Erde (nicht immer: Weltkugel)


Ich finde, diese Ähnlichkeit ist doch gar nicht zu übersehen. Wenn man drauf kommt.

_​*

>- hulla/hölla (arabic) - Clothing / Kleidung - vgl. German Hülle (Clothinng is a "Hülle" (kind of surroundig) 

>- saba = 7 - SieBen (s+b) >
arabic saba is even nerer to German sieben than the english seven  !!!!! 7


- Hausch ca. Hof. vgl. Haus (und Hof) >- looks like swabian pronounciation of "house": s > sch, not only the building itself, but everything around

arabic bachr = sea. In German we have the "Bach", not Johann Sebastian Bach but the Bach meaning brook.
Could bachr meaning sea (Meer) ans Bach meaning brook be the same? Yes it could!
In the language of the nautics (?), in the Seemanssprache, shippermen fall alway into the "Bach", even in the ocean!

german Bach derives from a word meaning stream- and both, the sea and the brook include stream (Strömungen)*


----
*
I must make a break in writing

there are kalb (dog), German: Das ist ja ein Kalb (dog, normally: young cow)
hilf - Bündnis / alliance - vgl. German hilf(e)/help

the arabic form again is even nearer to German than German to english

arabic: aswat - low German: schwat/ swatt /spoken: shwut/swut - German: schwarz
all the same, meaning: black
*
Would you borrow the number 7 from another language?
I thing thoses words are related.


Look at Hebrew: alf, coorelated to alpha, and German elf

alpha ist the first (letter), elf ist 10 + one left, the first left, alf (hebr.) ist the first of 1000 = one thounsand (i think)

-----------

There are some more word-souples I found in arabic-german.
May be i write about them later.

-----------


*So lets look if we'll find more and more possible related words betwenn German/English and Arabic/Hebrew*


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## Loewenpfote

rushalaim:

Well, between Erd(e), earth and Eretz there needn'n be a difference.
As s changes to t an vice versa, sometimes.


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## Ben Jamin

Loewenpfote said:


> Hi there! German-Arabic Erd-ard,
> 
> I think, that German Erde (neatherlands: eerd) an arabic *ard/ärd are identic words, like in two dialects of a greater or previous language.
> Therefore they don't drevive from one anathoer but thy belong to a greater language family.
> 
> Let have a look:
> arabic *ard means (ground, earth you are taking from field / Boden/Erde) - and in German we use Erde (in old songs just: Erd') for ground, earth of the field too.
> 
> I don't think this is by random or a word just borrowed,
> for i have found some more possibly related words in German an Arabic.
> Here are some of them:
> 
> 
> *May i use a text I wrote in German? If I give a short English summmary? (Else one could cancel the German passages)
> 
> burg / burj (arabic) (tower) seems to be the same as Burg (German) (tower with houses an wall) *or french/english cities: Edinburgh, Strassburg
> 
> _ich würde die Behauptunng aufstellen, dass das Wort Burg nicht aus dem Arabischen "kommt" - sondern dass unsere Sprachen - Arabisch, Deutsch, Altgriechisch, Hebräisch, weitere - miteinander verwandt sind. Wir sprechen sozusagen verschiedene "Dialekte" einer Vorgängersprache. Beim Burj al Arab fiel mir auf, dass es wie Burg - französisch ausgesporchen - aussieht. Vgl. Burgeoisie. Später entdeckte ich, dass die Ägipter (ich schreibe ausprachegemäß, ich hoffe, das its in der Diskussion okee) tatsächlich burg sagen. Die Altgriechen haben pyrgos (pürgos), was wie im Arabischen Turm heißt. Da b, p, pf quasi das gleiche sind (der eine sprichts so aus, der andere so), ist pürg(os) das gleiche wir Bürg(os) oder Bürg. Das liegt nahe an der Burg oder dem Bürg-er. Bei uns, im Deutschen, ist die Burg auch ein Turm, nur mit Häusern und Mauern oder sogar mit einer ganzen Stadt drumrum: Straßburg, Magdeburg, Edinbourgh._​
> *As i said: if you hve only one or a few word, they mey be loandwords:*
> _Burg allein könnte ein Wanderwort sein, so wie Internetz, Kompjuter usw., das einfach eine Sprache von der anderen übernommen hat.
> 
> 
> Zwischen Arabisch und Deutsch habe ich aber eine Reihe von Wörtern entdeckt, die zumindest die Vermutung nahelegen, dass das mehr als Zufall und mehr als bloße Wortübernahme sein könnte. Mit anderen Worten: Ich tippe auf eine Sprachverwandtschaft zwischen Arabisch und Deutsch.
> 
> 
> Beispiele:_​
> *But here are some more:*
> 
> Habe eine ganze (kleine) Reihe von Wörtern gefunden, die dt.-arab ähnlich sind (Lautfolge) und eine ähnliche Bedeutung haben​*
> 
> zB - *ard, ärd - heißt Boden, Erde -- vgl.dt. Erd', ndl. eerd  - engl. earth, or as you said: hebrew eretz (sounds lik German Erz, a kind of stony (earth) with metal inside
> 
> 
> Hey, guess: If German an Arabic borrow the "internet" or "pullover" oder "computjer" of English, than that's because we importet the word togeather with the invention, instead of coining a new word.
> But earh is a very common word. There's no need to borrow it.
> We- in German- have Erde - we don't say "earth". Why should we? Arabic hat "ard", why should thes say earth?
> 
> Therefor "internet" is likly to be loaned from English - as there was no internet in all the nations before. But "earth" oder "Erd(e)" or "ard" seems very unlikly to be loaned from anothere language. Therefore they're likly to be related.*
> 
> _
> Das Wort *ärd/*ard ist ein ziemlich grundlegendes Wort. Also wenn die Burg eine technische Neuerung gewesen sein mag, könnte man sagen: Wow! Die Griechen oder die Araber haben "Vorsprung durch Technik", das übernehmen wir. Wie heißt das Ding denn? Ach, Burg nennt sich das! Ja okee. Und dies komische Blechgehirn, wie nennt man das richtig? Kompjuter!? Ohhh, staun, okee, dann nennen wir das Blechhirn absofort auch Komjuter ...
> 
> 
> Aber warum sollte man ein so grundlegendes Wort wie Erd(e), dass es immer überall gibt, aus dem Englischen, Deutschen, Japanischen oder Arabischen entleihen? Als Fremdwort für besondere Dinge: ja: global. Aber Erde an sich ...
> 
> 
> Der Duden achtet da gar nicht auf die Ähnlichkeiten mit dem Arabischen! Deutsch: Erde, in alten Liedern: Erd', holländisch: eerd, indogermanisch rekonstruiert: er(t). und Arabisch: auch *ärd. Und alles heitß Boden, Erde (nicht immer: Weltkugel)
> 
> 
> Ich finde, diese Ähnlichkeit ist doch gar nicht zu übersehen. Wenn man drauf kommt.
> 
> _​*
> 
> >- hulla/hölla (arabic) - Clothing / Kleidung - vgl. German Hülle (Clothinng is a "Hülle" (kind of surroundig)
> 
> >- saba = 7 - SieBen (s+b) >
> arabic saba is even nerer to German sieben than the english seven  !!!!! 7
> 
> 
> - Hausch ca. Hof. vgl. Haus (und Hof) >- looks like swabian pronounciation of "house": s > sch, not only the building itself, but everything around
> 
> arabic bachr = sea. In German we have the "Bach", not Johann Sebastian Bach but the Bach meaning brook.
> Could bachr meaning sea (Meer) ans Bach meaning brook be the same? Yes it could!
> In the language of the nautics (?), in the Seemanssprache, shippermen fall alway into the "Bach", even in the ocean!
> 
> german Bach derives from a word meaning stream- and both, the sea and the brook include stream (Strömungen)*
> 
> 
> ----
> *
> I must make a break in writing
> 
> there are kalb (dog), German: Das ist ja ein Kalb (dog, normally: young cow)
> hilf - Bündnis / alliance - vgl. German hilf(e)/help
> 
> the arabic form again is even nearer to German than German to english
> 
> arabic: aswat - low German: schwat/ swatt /spoken: shwut/swut - German: schwarz
> all the same, meaning: black
> *
> Would you borrow the number 7 from another language?
> I thing thoses words are related.
> 
> 
> Look at Hebrew: alf, coorelated to alpha, and German elf
> 
> alpha ist the first (letter), elf ist 10 + one left, the first left, alf (hebr.) ist the first of 1000 = one thounsand (i think)
> 
> -----------
> 
> There are some more word-souples I found in arabic-german.
> May be i write about them later.
> 
> -----------
> 
> 
> *So lets look if we'll find more and more possible related words betwenn German/English and Arabic/Hebrew*


To prove that two words are related you can't just point to that they sound similar and have the same meaning. Actually, words with the same origin seldom have exactly the same meaning, and very often have a completely different or opposite meaning, so emphasizing the likeness of meaning doesn't prove anything.
The idea of a "great common original language" has been very popular by many people, and many theories have been created, for example of  language called "Nostratic". So far it appears that this theory neither can be proved or disproved because of scarcity of evidence.


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## garipx

Having read this thread, I can say that almost all posters here are trying (directly or indirectly) to say that "earth" comes from their own native languages.
I'm not a linguist, but, as for one who has some academic discipline in other science field, I can also say that sometimes the less knowledge the more error-free view. Having also said this, now, back to topic.

As someones wrote above, in Turkic languages (including rural Anatolian Turkish),

earth = yir... (in different alphabets, it can also be written as jir/tir/etc.)

In "town" Turkish, it is "yer".
In "city" Turkish (I call it Ottomanish), it is "dünya" (which is a later added word to differentiate it with "yir/yer" because "yir/yer" was used for "ground" rather than the planet. I guess it is same for "zemin" which we also use, but, for "bottom ground".)

So, lets take oldest known version of "earth" in Turkics, "yir/jir/tir/yer/etc." as these probably are linked to other "earth" versions.
Note that usually first letters in Turkic languages are not pronounced or pronounced softly if it is not a vowel letter or a vowel is added to the beginning (eg. lemon/limon -> ilimon.)

So, what is common in all these versions? It is "ir/er"... (maybe, there is also "ar", for ex,  we use "yar" which means "lover", and also "cliff/hill."

This "ir/er/ar" is also common in other languages; ear-th, er-de, er-d, er-etz, t-err-a, ... etc...

(Iranians and Slavs who use versions of "zemin" should check their ancient dictionaries, there must exist a similar word in their languages for earth with "ir/er/ar". "Zemin" or similar words were probably being used for something else or were just added word later like Ottomans did by adding "dünya" for "planet".)

So, which languages borrowed "ir/er/ar/etc" in "earth" from which languages? I guess it was long time ago when there was no IE, PIE, Uralic, Altaic, Semitic, etc at all. Note that neither of these versions "earth/erd/erde/eretz/er/yer/yir/tir/etc" meant "planet earth" long time ago, but, it meant "ground".


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## Testing1234567

Looks like I'm late to this thread, which is a pointless discussion of pseudoscience anyway, consisting of people proposing relations between two words from two unrelated languages because of superficial similarity. Seriously? German and Arabic? Arabic borrowed from German? German borrowed from Arabic?

----

Germanic

English *Earth* /ɜːθ/ < /erθ/ < Middle English *erthe* /ˈerθǝ/ < /ˈørθǝ/ < Old English *eorþe* /ˈeorθe/ < Proto-Germanic **erþō* /ˈer.θɔː/

Regular sound changes from the Proto-Germanic form also gives rise to German *Erde*, confirming that it is _not_ a borrowing.

----

Semitic

Arabic *أَرْض* /ʔardˤ/ < Proto-Semitic **ʾarṣ́-* /ʔarɬʼ/ < Proto-Afro-Asiatic **ʔariĉ̣-* /ʔariɬʼ/

The sound change from Proto-Semitic to Arabic is _regular_ and has produced cognates in other Semitic languages through _regular_ sound changes, further attesting that the Arabic word is also _not_ a borrowing.

----

Italic

Latin *terra* < Proto-Italic **terzā* (rhotacism) < Proto-Indo-European **ters-o-
*
The Proto-Italic word also produced Oscan *teras*.

The word originally means dry.

----

I will not entertain the Turkic words (yir etc.) by commenting on them.

----

Anyone can find similarities in a set of words. However, not everyone can derive a productive rule from the correspondences in order to prove that those words are really related.

----

Would anyone who has been following this thread be so kind as to summarize the questions asked in this thread which are still open?


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## garipx

Testing1234567 said:


> I will not entertain the Turkic words (yir etc.) by commenting on them.



Please, entertain... if you can. 

(is this an entertainment forum?)

Answer to your question in your sentence: Read title of topic, "Ethmology: Earth"


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## Testing1234567

entertain
/ɛntəˈteɪn/
_verb_
2.
give attention or consideration to (an idea or feeling).
"Washington entertained little hope of an early improvement in relations"


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## garipx

I too know somethings else, for ex, E=M.C^2 ...

(stay on topic.)

Entertain with "Yir"... in Turkics, equivalent to "Earth"


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## berndf

garipx said:


> Entertain with "Yir"... in Turkics, equivalent to "Earth"


He obviously does not think that there is sufficient reason to suspect an etymological relation of _Yir_ with either _earth_ or with Semitic _*ʾarṣ́_.

And I would agree. The consonant /r/ in all three is not sufficient a commonality.


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## garipx

You "obviously" know what he does think? What I got from his this word "I will not entertain the Turkic words (yir etc.) by commenting on them." is that he probably has no idea, has no knowledge about "Yir" and he just tried to hide his illiterate about this by "entertain" instead of saying simply "I do not know" that is a must to be said by a person with an academic approach that he showed some sign of it when commenting on other forms of "earth". 

As for there is a relation of "Yir" with either "Earth" or "Arş" , etc: 
I didn't (try to) establish any relation, but, their sounds (pronounciations/phonetics) of "Yir/Yer/Jir/etc" and "Earth/Erd/Erde/Eretz/etc" are not far from each others even if they are not very close to each others. (consonants here "y/j/etc" in "yir/yer/jir/etc" are not emphasized when they are pronounced. So, you may hear them as if "ir/er/etc"

"Ars" in Arabic maybe close to "Yar" in Turkic languages, which means "cliff/slope of hill" which is not a flat part of "Earth", but, still a part of earth. 

So, "ir/er/ar" are common in various forms of earth which are "yir/yer/yar/erd/erde/earth/ard/ars/etc" (exceptions like "zemin", I told about it above.)

Lets not do a false generalization to all words in vocabularies with "r", but, still, it is clear that "r" is a potential commanility in all "earth" word forms including "gRound" and "earth" was not a word used for "planet", but, for "ground".


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## Testing1234567

garipx said:


> You "obviously" know what he does think? What I got from his this word "I will not entertain the Turkic words (yir etc.) by commenting on them." is that he probably has no idea, has no knowledge about "Yir" and he just tried to hide his illiterate about this by "entertain" instead of saying simply "I do not know" that is a must to be said by a person with an academic approach that he showed some sign of it when commenting on other forms of "earth".



What I said was equivalent to the comment that the argument relating "yir" to "earth" is not even wrong, so berdnf interpreted it correctly.



garipx said:


> I didn't (try to) establish any relation, but, their sounds (pronounciations/phonetics) of "Yir/Yer/Jir/etc" and "Earth/Erd/Erde/Eretz/etc" are not far from each others even if they are not very close to each others. (consonants here "y/j/etc" in "yir/yer/jir/etc" are not emphasized when they are pronounced. So, you may hear them as if "ir/er/etc"



Please refer to what I said earlier: Anyone can find similarities in a set of words. However, not everyone can derive a productive rule from the correspondences in order to prove that those words are really related.

This is the step missing, from a pseudo-linguistic theory to a proper linguistic theory: testing your hypothesis.


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## garipx

Testing1234567 said:


> What I said was equivalent to the comment that the argument relating "yir" to "earth" is not even wrong, so berdnf interpreted it correctly.



You are missing a point here. What I am trying to do is not "relating yir to earth". If I do what it is done here (borrowing/loaning from this language, etc), it is better to say "earth" is related to "yir". Root is closer to simple "yir". Anyway, I am not saying "earth" comes from "yir" or "yir comes from earth" that's how people here are saying. What I am saying is "there is a relation between yir and earth and which comes from which is unknown." However, if you know, just say. Even by entertaining, can you make any ANY comment on "yir" ? I do NOT think so...

As for your words about "similarities" , "pseude-theories", etc.. Wait a minute. Languages that are studied academically are not produced academically, often produced by totally illiterate people. So, what we are doing here is learning illiterate people productions. I for one who also lived among those totally illiterate people and also lived in high level science field by researching similarities/symmetries/invariants/etc in a complex field like chaos from pure theoretical math to experimental/practical can say this the language here we are talking is written language, for me, a symbolic mathematics, a small subgroup of general language group which is spoken language which is done by people whose majority is not academic at all. So, using academic arguments such as "similarity/pseudo/etc" does not work for me if you are subjective.

Having said these also, now, please, entertain with "yir"... a simple word. Ok, you can make just a simple comment if you gave up entertainment.

(if you don't know anything about "yir", your claim "there is no relation between yir and earth" is nonsense... logic tells this.)


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## berndf

garipx said:


> I didn't (try to) establish any relation


Then your are talking off topic. We are discussing etymology here.


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## rushalaim

I think, no matter what group of languages from the etymology of _"land"_ came. 
Maybe, there was the Proto-language of agriculture, family and so on. For example, Estonian is PIE [_ema_] (_"mother"_), and Aramaic is Semitic [_ima_] (_"mother"_). 
The same with _"land"_. Greek [_hora_], Semitic [_ara_], Russian [_or_], because the root is *AR*.


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## Testing1234567

rushalaim said:


> Estonian is PIE [_ema_] (_"mother"_), and Aramaic is Semitic [_ima_] (_"mother"_).
> The same with _"land"_. Greek [_hora_], Semitic [_ara_], Russian [_or_], because the root is *AR*.



Estonian is Proto-_Finnic_ **emä* < Proto-Uralic **emä*, not PIE.
The Proto-Semitic word is **ʾimm-* or **ʾumm-*.

I fail to find the Greek word you are referencing. Please provide the word in its native script.
The reconstructed Proto-Semitic word is **ʾarṣ́-* < Proto-Afro-Asiatic **ʔariĉ̣-*.
I also fail to find the Russian word.
You can't just cut out letters and assert that the words are related.


----------



## rushalaim

Testing1234567 said:


> Estonian is Proto-_Finnic_ **emä* < Proto-Uralic **emä*, not PIE.
> The Proto-Semitic word is **ʾimm-* or **ʾumm-*.
> 
> I fail to find the Greek word you are referencing. Please provide the word in its native script.
> The reconstructed Proto-Semitic word is **ʾarṣ́-* < Proto-Afro-Asiatic **ʔariĉ̣-*.
> I also fail to find the Russian word.
> You can't just cut out letters and assert that the words are related.


https://phys.org/news/2013-05-linguist-core-group-words-survived.html
Estonian _"mother"_ [ema] ema
Aramaic _"mother"_ [ima] אמא
Greek _"land"_ [hora] χώρᾳ
Aramaic _"land"_ [ara] ארעא
Russian _"plough"_ [or] ор


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## Ihsiin

Testing1234567 said:


> Would anyone who has been following this thread be so kind as to summarize the questions asked in this thread which are still open?



To answer this, any meaningful questions in this thread have long since been answered. What followed has been a long stream of effluent that doesn't bear attention.


----------

