# qīmā



## panjabigator

Greetings,

What is the origin of this dish?  Wikipedia calls it Indic, but the phonetics suggest otherwise.  

As a side note, it's still a stretch for me to pronounce the _qaaf_ in this one.  It feels very artificial, but that's probably because of my general unease with _qaaf_ in Panjabi.  

Cheers,
PG


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## arsham

As far as I know, the word itself qima/qeyma/qeyme/qimaa is of Turkish origin.


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## Faylasoof

Now here is a surprise! Platts has a very intriguing take on this!

P قيمه _qīma_ (for A. قيمة _qīmat_, prob. fr. Gr. χυμὸς),  s.m. Pounded or minced meat:—_qīma-pulāʼo_, s.m. A kind of dish made of rice and pounded meat, &c.:—_qīma karnā_, v.t. To pound (meat), to chop up meat very fine; to make mince-meat of; to hack, mangle. REF.

P = Persian, A = Arabic and of course Gr = Greek.

I have to now look up my Greek dctionary!!


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## panjabigator

Yes, I do remember reading that it has a Greek cognate, now that I think about it.  Good to know.


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## lcfatima

Gulf Arabs have the dish and call it keema. In the local dialect if the /q/ were retained by whoever brought the dish here, it would have become geema or even jeema, so I suspect it entered the language from Hindustani speakers who didn't say /q/. They have a lot of other dishes picked up from Hindustanis like jaabaati and achaar and other stuff.

In my ILs family, it is a tongue in cheek marker of refinement to be sure to say qeema and never ever keema.


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## panjabigator

> In my ILs family, it is a tongue in cheek marker of refinement to be sure to say qeema and never ever keema.



ICF, this is a very relevant and interesting point, and one that I had not considered.  I now remember that during my sojourn in Lucknow, my Khala would comment on Urduphone accents and the "qaaf" was a deal breaker.  A person may have attrocious grammar and a tenuous grasp on syntax, but if they could pronounce this phony, there Urdu was _qābil e dād  _


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## Faylasoof

I remember we did this Lakhnavi <shiin-qaaf> before! 

It was /is not just <qaaf> but also <shiin> that was /is  emphasized as one of the marks of good diction - and other considerations too, of course.

As a new (perhaps recent) development, I've seen in the UK <qīmā> products are now being labelled with these terms: <k-hīmah / k-hīmāh etc.>- with an aspirated <k>!


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## lcfatima

I have seen this, too. Recently I saw "kheema matter" written for qiima maTar.


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## bakshink

You can't expect Cook Books to be linguistically correct or they will become course books for language studies.


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## Faylasoof

Firstly, this is not from any cook book but a marketed product in the UK where there is a large community of Urdu-Hindi speakers. I can uderstand people saying <_kīma> instead of _<_qīma_> but to mutate it to <_khīma_> is the height of “laziness”!

Besides, even authors of cook books have a responsibility towards the correct use of spellings!


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## bakshink

Authors of Cook Books are not pedants and care two hoots about linguistic correctness and the food lovers care even less.
And Fay, How did you conclude that calling Keema as Kheema is a sign of laziness? Technically speaking (from the point of view of an engineer ofcourse) kheema has more syllables than kima or qima has so it will require more expenditure of energy for saying khima than saying kima or qima.
So I conclude people saying kheema are spending more energy and thus can't be lazier than those saying qima.


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## Faylasoof

bakshink said:


> Authors of Cook Books are not pedants and care two hoots about linguistic correctness and the food lovers care even less.



This is not a matter of pedantry but of using good and correct language when communicating. It includes using accepted spellings (and consequently pronunciation) of words. It doesn't matter whether we are writing a novel, a cookbook, a PhD thesis or a particularly turgid treatise on existential philosophy, we ought to stick to accepted terminology with correct spellings! 



> And Fay, How did you conclude that calling Keema as Kheema is a sign of laziness? Technically speaking (from the point of view of an engineer ofcourse) kheema has more syllables than kima or qima has so it will require more expenditure of energy for saying khima than saying kima or qima.
> So I conclude people saying kheema are spending more energy and thus can't be lazier than those saying qima.



OK Bak, here is my reason as an engineer of another kind - a genetic engineer- for asserting that this is a sign of a "lazy" pronunciation. 

I know for a fact that many even amongst the Urduphones have trouble pronouncing the letter <qaaf  ق>. They either resort to using <kaaf  ك> or the fricative <khe خ> or the aspirated <kaaf كھ>. Very few ever even bother try learning how to prononce <qaaf  ق>.

It would take a lot more effort and energy for these people try to learn how to pronounce <qaaf  ق> than to get by with these "lazy" alternatives.  Q.E.D. 

The mutation of <qīmā> to <khīmā>, I feel is unacceptable.


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## Frank06

Hi,


Faylasoof said:


> I know for a fact that many even amongst the Urduphones have trouble pronouncing the letter <qaaf ق>. They either resort to using <kaaf ك> or the fricative <khe خ> or the aspirated <kaaf كھ>. Very few ever even bother try learning how to prononce <qaaf ق>.
> It would take a lot more effort and energy for these people try to learn how to pronounce <qaaf ق> than to get by with these "lazy" alternatives. Q.E.D.


From which I interfere, that for a lot of Urduphones, these 'alternative' pronunciations are acceptable. So what's your problem? That you spent time on doing something so ephemeral as learning how to pronounce ق "correctly"?

"Language, the history of laziness". Now, that is a book I'd like to write. Isn't it a wonder that after all those 1000s years of complaints about people being 'lazy' language users, those people still manage to utter sounds other than "mmmmwh"?
Anyway, this monomanic way of thinking about language, or rather, lack of thinking about language, I find incredibly lazy.

Groetjes,

Frank


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## lcfatima

Frank06 I am with you on this and other posts you have made critiqueing the dismissal of linguistic change as "laziness."

About qiima represented in writing as kheema, I have usually seen this from non-Urduphone Indians. There are a lot of idiosyncracies in mainstream non-linguist people transliterating Hindustani to English orthography. Many Indian (and Pakistani) TV serial names, Hindi movie names, etc. are transliterated in English in very peculiar ways, too. Also, as Hindi language politics has moved towards distancing from "Islamic" sounds and words, and the period during which Muslims/Islam were influential on Indian culture/language gets further and further way, q as kh just doesn't seem to be strange. I don't believe that the people who write kheema are thinking of it as an aspirated /kh/, but a /k/. Since there is no qaaf in their languages, it would actually be strange if they kept the qaaf here.

As for Urduphones, especially in Pakistan, saying kiima rather than qiima, that is a different phenomenon. Although I do hear qiima as kiima, it seems that educated non-Punjabi Urduphones do preserve qaaf in most other words. I am trying to think of a common word that educated Urdu speaking non-Punjabiphones sometimes change. Are there more? Maybe farq as fark?  I think that this could be be because of the physicial difficulty of saying farq without making the word two syllables (actually many uneducated speakers say farak, too).

The qaaf is a funny phoneme anyhow. Most Arabic dialects change qaaf to another sound in daily speech as well.


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## Faylasoof

Frank06 said:


> Hi,
> 
> From which I interfere, that for a lot of Urduphones, these 'alternative' pronunciations are acceptable. So what's your problem? That you spent time on doing something so ephemeral as learning how to pronounce ق "correctly"?


 
These "alternatives" may be acceptable to some but not all, and certainly not me. You have no idea what is happening to some of the languages of South Asia. 

This may appear ephemeral but is _part of a mush bigger issue_. All to do with language integrity and _meanings_ of words. Change of <qaaf> to <kaaf> can and do change meanings!

The present discussion goes back to an earlier one which many of us (i.e. Urdu-Hindiphones) had about how poor teaching has resulted in the continuing rise of grammatically incorrect and vocabulary-poor speech in South Asia. I specifically refer to Urdu as I feel a lot for my language. The issue is very close to me. We are all entitled to our opinions. 

All living languages evolve but we do need to have standards and I like to maintain standards. 





> "Language, the history of laziness". Now, that is a book I'd like to write. Isn't it a wonder that after all those 1000s years of complaints about people being 'lazy' language users, those people manage to utter a sound other than "mmmmwh"?


 
You are most welcome to write this book but do let me know when you come to write about Urdu. I shall be only too happy to provide you with plenty of examples from my "educated" colleagues who can hardly put a grammatically correct sentence together, besides committing other linguistic abominations.



> Anyway, this monomanic way of thinking about language, or rather, lack of thinking about language, I find incredibly lazy.
> 
> Groetjes,
> 
> Frank


 
This is what I call simplistic thinking about the way you think others think!


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## bakshink

Is simplistic thinking a prerogative of all simpletons? When I was young and was visited upon by the desire to learn Urdu, I was intrigued by the necessity of having two &quot;ka&quot;s in the language and I still am and have hardly ever come across anyone caring to stress upon the ephemeral difference between them in day to day speech and I dare say, the people I mostly converse with are educated. Will qima become less savoury, if it's pronounced as keema or kiima? I am more intrigued than I have been ever before.


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## bakshink

There are so many “na”s in Hindi that one wonders about their use and utility. Then there are “Sh” and “Sh” and “Ra” and “Ri” and so on. (See here: http://www.omniglot.com/writing/hindi.htm).
 After learning the alphabets one hardly ever gets to use them.
I think they were put there for the sadistic pleasures by the ill natured Gurus, who wanted to make the lives of their pupils miserable. 

Atleast  now we should jettison all unnecessary baggage with the languages and make them user friendly. 

But it can happen only if the die-hard sticklers change their mindset.


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## Faylasoof

bakshink said:


> .... When I was young and was visited upon by the desire to learn Urdu, I was intrigued by the necessity of having two &quot;ka&quot;s in the language and I still am and have hardly ever come across anyone caring to stress upon the ephemeral difference between them in day to day speech and I dare say, the people I mostly converse with are educated.



We obviously move in different  circles!! 



> Will qima become less savoury, if it's pronounced as keema or kiima? I am more intrigued than I have been ever before.



We don't eat words (only metaphorically speaking soemtimes we are obliged to) so it is not relevant to say whether <qīmā> will tatse less savoury if we pronounce it as you do.

I have no intention to keep on with this except make one or two final points.

 The <ق > to <ك > difference _is_ one of the characteristic of our language - the sign of good Urdu diction- and as I say above, not distinguishing between the two will result in a change of meaning or make something meaningful completely meaningless!

Let me illustrate with this expression in Urdu:

قَلبی سُكون_ qalbii sukoon_ = peace of mind, ease of conscience.  
قَلبی _qalbii_ from قَلب_qalb_ (in Arabic) = heart; سُكون  _sukoon =  _ peace, calm, tranquillity, serenity. 

With  < ق > to < ك > change you get:
كَلبی سُكون_ kalbii sukoon_- this actually has no meaning and amuses me no end when I hear it when in fact the speaker wished to say قَلبی سُكون. 

كَلبی_kalbii_ = canine, from كَلب_kalb_ (in Arabic) = dog. BTW, we also use كَلبِیَت_ kalbiyat _(again from كَلب) in Urdu to mean <<cynicism>>.

But I guess one could translate كَلبی سُكون_ kalbii sukoon_ as <<_canine serenity / _tranquillity !!>> - pretty handy for dog owners or those like me who are victims of hyperactive dogs in the neighborhood. That would be one of my earnest desires. 

Also, many Urduphones (I would say the majority) happen to be Muslims and read the Quran. Those who never bother with learning how to pronounce <qaaf>, amongst other Arabic sounds, recite the text with these deficiencies that completely change the meaning of the verses. Most find this sacrilegious. I find it both painful and hilarious.

... and about your other point of making langauges user friendly, I think we'll an entire forum devoted just to this.


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## Mahaodeh

Faylasoof said:


> Now here is a surprise! Platts has a very intriguing take on this!
> 
> P قيمه _qīma_ (for A. قيمة _qīmat_, prob. fr. Gr. χυμὸς), s.m. Pounded or minced meat:—_qīma-pulāʼo_, s.m. A kind of dish made of rice and pounded meat, &c.:—_qīma karnā_, v.t. To pound (meat), to chop up meat very fine; to make mince-meat of; to hack, mangle. REF.
> 
> P = Persian, A = Arabic and of course Gr = Greek.
> 
> I have to now look up my Greek dctionary!!


 
I don't know the dish, but I do know that in Arabic qiima(t) means "value"; in cooking, the qiima(t) is minced meat and finly chopped onions that is simmered with vegitable oil until the liquid is almost all dried, you may add some herbs or spices and salt depending on your own taste. It's not a dish in itself but is added to other ingredients in order to make it "meaty"; hence the name; this is the value part of the dish (in terms of food).

As I understand it, the Gulf dish is this basic qiima with rice, in Iraq that dish is called timman wo-qiima (rice and qiima).

In Arabic, minced meat is لحم مفروم  = laHm mafroom.


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## Faylasoof

Mahaodeh, in Urdu too we use qiima(t) and with the same meaning, i.e. <value> as in Arabic. However, as the word has had a passage through Persian, the < تاء  تانیث > is now a proper <ت >  to give us قِیمَت . 

 The dish you describe is very much the way it is made in many parts of the M.E. and South Asia though we have several variations on this. One can have it with either rice or bread. The latter seems more common for us.

 I have been pursuing the etymology of  قيمه and it seems it is from Turkish. 

  Talking to Turkish colleagues I gather that in Modern Turkish we have:

  Kιyma (noun) = mince
 Kιymak (verb) = to cut into small pieces; to mince.

 While in Ottoman Turkish (Arabic script), the initial <k>was a <qaaf> but otherwise the word was the same.  So our قیمہ is from there.  Arsham you were right! Dehkhoda says the same. Platts seems to have got this one “wrong” (rather not quite correct) on two counts at least.

 He says it is probably from the Greek χυμός (_chymos_) which actually means <juice>. So that can’t be the origin of our qīmā / qīmāh and although in Modern Greek <mince> is indeed κιμάς_ kimas_,this word is not derived from Ancient Greek and perhaps has a non-Greek origin -borrowing of the Turkish word (?). Some of my Greek colleagues seem to concur but I’m waiting for an expert to confirm this.   

 … and indeed in fus7a, mince meat = لحم مفروم


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## panjabigator

Faylasoof said:


> As a new (perhaps recent) development, I've seen in the UK <qīmā> products are now being labelled with these terms: <k-hīmah / k-hīmāh etc.>- with an aspirated <k>!



This is a certainly an odd transliteration, but as IcFatima wrote earlier, there are a bunch of peculiar transliterations that are far from reflective of an "actual" pronunciation.  I initially thought that these were geared to the diaspora community, but while visiting South Asia I discovered people would insert the letter H in all sorts of words.  Many of these transliterations didn't make the slightest sense, for example: <qasamh se>.  What is an H doing there?  And then of course there is the auspiciousness that certain numerological permutations bring - having contiguous vowels in a word is a favorable cluster, for example.  Rani Mukherjee, I believe, removed the H from her name for numerological reasons.  Now, I doubt that this is the reason behind the aphonetic representation of <qīmā> as <khīmā>, but interesting (and frusterating!) nonetheless.

Curious, Faylasoof bha'ī, the majority of Urduphones in the UK are also Panjabiphones, correct?  A change from <q> to <kh> is a very Hyderabadi shift, for my ears at least.

I recently became friends with an Urduphone (who hails from a line of Hindko speakers, but doesn't speak the language) who said that she (and her circle of _Urdugo_ friends and family) don't distinguish typically between the <q> and <k>.  They call the former the <qainchī wālā kāf>.  Have you heard of this before?


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## Faylasoof

panjabigator said:


> This is a certainly an odd transliteration, but as IcFatima wrote earlier, there are a bunch of peculiar transliterations that are far from reflective of an "actual" pronunciation.  I initially thought that these were geared to the diaspora community, but while visiting South Asia I discovered people would insert the letter H in all sorts of words.  Many of these transliterations didn't make the slightest sense, for example: <qasamh se>.  What is an H doing there?  And then of course there is the auspiciousness that certain numerological permutations bring - having contiguous vowels in a word is a favorable cluster, for example.  Rani Mukherjee, I believe, removed the H from her name for numerological reasons.  Now, I doubt that this is the reason behind the aphonetic representation of <qīmā> as <khīmā>, but interesting (and frusterating!) nonetheless.


 I'm aware of this. Regrettably, many words / names are falling victim to this. But as you say <qīmā> to <khīmā> doesn't _seem_ to be in this category.


> Curious, Faylasoof bha'ī, the majority of Urduphones in the UK are also Panjabiphones, correct?  A change from <q> to <kh> is a very Hyderabadi shift, for my ears at least.


 Janaab PG mia.n, that is possible but I'm not sure of the exact data. Besides, I now feel that this change of <qaaf> to <kh - the aspirated _k_> might be for reasons other than targeting a specific group. There is much "linguistic confusion" and unwareness about simple pronunciations. This could be Hyderabadi shift but again I've no hard facts about this particular example as presented to us in the ad being Hyderabadi inspired. 


> I recently became friends with an Urduphone (who hails from a line of Hindko speakers, but doesn't speak the language) who said that she (and her circle of _Urdugo_ friends and family) don't distinguish typically between the <q> and <k>.  They call the former the <qainchī wālā kāf>.  Have you heard of this before?


 Many Urduphones in both India and Pakistan are doing this. That is the way they have been taught!  Yes, Ive heard this but as <qainchī wālā *q*āf>, _*not*_ <*k*āf>. Primary Urdu books often present < *q*āf se *q*ai.nchī>! So _we are supposed to distinguish between the two letters._


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## BP.

We've digressed from searching the etymology of _qiimaa_, but let's continue nonetheless until threads are split.

Here's a rule of thumb: _q _as _kh _is fine iff from a Hyderabadi, and wrong otherwise*. Their _kh _is a dialectical change, non a result of mal-education.

To bakshink: _qaaf _isn't redundant or obsolete like the examples you cite. You hardly speak two sentences without therein being a _qaaf_. I'm sure new words with _qaaf _in them are being thought of as we speak.

* One exception is some _khaandaanii _idiosyncracies e.g. personally I do the q->kh shift in one word: _waqt_-time-which our household calls _wakht_. I was digging for the reasons, which i didn't find, but I did come accross the interesting bit that both Sindhi and Pashto spell the word _wakht/wakhat_.


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## lcfatima

Panjabigator: I have also heard people use the expression qainchi wala qaaf.

Since this thread, I have tried to pay special attention to the /qaaf/ articulation. I have noticed that Pakistani Urduphones articulate many words with /qaaf/ in a way that the /qaaf/ is somehow closer to a /kaaf/, but still has a glottal effect. Then there are some who really over articulate the /qaaf/ and the phoneme has this distinct clicking sound effect. 

What would be the most authentic way to say it? Should it sound soft, or have a click? 

By the way, I don't think Indians/Hindi speakers are changing qaaf to aspirated kh, it is to /k/. So on the menus someone writes kheema but means /kiima/.


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## chrysalid

Greetings,

This issue seems to be closed but let me give it a Turkish breath 

Yes, as Faylasoof Sahab has said, the origin of the word is Turkish "kıyma". The Greek word kima is most likely a borrowing from Turkish, I checked from an etymological dictionary and wiktionary says the same thing. 

Now, the use of qaf. As you might know, Turkish has 8 vowels- 4 front, 4 back- and in the Ottoman times, the letter qaf was used to distinguish the back vowels ı, o, u from the front vowels i, ö, ü. Today we use just "k".

qaf + waw= ko, ku  
qaf + yeh= kı

while

kaf + waw= kö, kü
kaf + yeh= ki

You might know this one. Another culinary term, the Turkish word kavurma - roasting has made its way into Persian as "ghormeh" and Hindustani as "qorma".


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## panjabigator

chrysalid said:


> Now, the use of qaf. As you might know, Turkish has 8 vowels- 4 front, 4 back- and in the Ottoman times, the letter qaf was used to distinguish the back vowels ı, o, u from the front vowels i, ö, ü. Today we use just "k".



Welcome back Chrysalid!

Your comments on the letter Q/K reminded me of this article.  Perhaps this merits its own thread...


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