# Persian rustaki and Latin rusticus "rustic"



## CyrusSH

Do they relate to each other?


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## Treaty

What is Persian "rustaki"? Would you please transliterate it more accurately or write it in Persian script?


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## CyrusSH

It is the older form of روستایی: 
معنی روستاک | لغت‌نامه دهخدا


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## Awwal12

The root in the Latin "rusticus" is actually "ru-" (cf. "rural"). Now make your bets.


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## Treaty

Apparently MP _rōstāk_ is shortened of MP _rōtastāk_. My layman guess is that it is related to _rōd_- (NP _rūy_) meaning "to grow" _<_Ir. *_Hraud _< PIE *_h1leudh, _with the sense of "arable land". If I am correct, it would be unrelated to Latin _ru- _(<PIE *_reue_).


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## CyrusSH

The Persian word is really similar to the verb _rostan_ "to grow" from PIE *_h₁lewdʰ-_, of course this PIE word also means "people, members of a particular community".


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## berndf

A likely derivation from the same PIE root as Latin _rur- _is Germanic _*ruma- _with modern words English _room_ and German _Raum_. This points towards an original meaning _wide open_ And as a noun _wide open space_.


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## fdb

The Latin etymon is rus, genitive ruris (with the usual s > r between vowels), meaning “country, open space”. An Iranian cognate is Avestan rauuah- “open space” (with s > h).


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## CyrusSH

I think it is possible that the Persian word had a Latin origin, in fact "rustic" seems to be a Roman-style concept, like the concept of "civic".


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## berndf

CyrusSH said:


> I think it is possible that the Persian word had a Latin origin, in fact "rustic" seems to be a Roman-style concept, like the concept of "civic".


A semantic link could be possible but that's not what you asked. You asked if the words were indeed related and the answer is _no_.


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## CyrusSH

berndf said:


> A semantic link could be possible but that's not what you asked. You asked if the words were indeed related and the answer is _no_.



Do you mean Persian _rustak_ couldn't be a loanword from Latin?


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## fdb

MP rōstāg, NP rōstā “district”, but also “river bed”, goes with Parthian rōdestāg, suggesting a derivation from Middle and New Persian rōd, Old Persian rautah- “river”, Indo-Iranian rautas-, IE *sreu- “to flow”. The further back you take it the less it looks like "rusticus".


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## PersoLatin

fdb said:


> MP rōstāg, NP rōstā “district”, but also “river bed”, goes with Parthian rōdestāg


Thanks for this fdb. It makes perfect sense since most Iranian villages are located in the upper parts of river valleys, obviously that's the pattern world over, but Iran's arid & mountainous areas, almost dictate that to be the case.


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## CyrusSH

fdb said:


> MP rōstāg, NP rōstā “district”, but also “river bed”, goes with Parthian rōdestāg, suggesting a derivation from Middle and New Persian rōd, Old Persian rautah- “river”, Indo-oIranian rautas-, IE *sreu- “to flow”. The further back you take it the less it looks like "rusticus".



That is clearly a non-Iranian folk etymology, what you said explains the Persian word for "intestine", as I mentioned in this thread: The first s in "Oasis" Ancient Persians created inhabitable places by building qanats, in fact Iran can be considered as a riverless country.


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## berndf

CyrusSH said:


> That is clearly a non-Iranian folk etymology


Non-Iranian folk etymology of an Iranian word is a contradiction in terms. _Folk etymology_ is an association (erroneously) deemed etymological by native speakers based on modern word forms and meaning.


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## PersoLatin

CyrusSH said:


> Iran can be considered as a riverless country.


Iran of 500-1000 BC was much larger, so had lots of small & many major rivers, even the current arid parts were much greener 1400 years ago, of course, you have to believe the veracity of hunting scenes at Sassanian times with hordes of different animals.


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## berndf

PersoLatin said:


> Iran of 500-1000 BC was much larger, so had lots of small & many major rivers, even the current arid parts were much greener 1400 years ago, of course, you have to believe the veracity of hunting scenes at Sassanian times with hordes of different animals.


Not to forget that Mesopotamia was once part of the Achaeminid empire. The idea that Old Persian should not have had a word for river is a bit outlandish.


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## CyrusSH

berndf said:


> Non-Iranian folk etymology of an Iranian word is a contradiction in terms. _Folk etymology_ is an association (erroneously) deemed etymological by native speakers based on modern word forms and meaning.



That is just one type of Folk etymology , I think those ones which are made by native speakers are more believable than other ones.


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## berndf

CyrusSH said:


> That is just one type of Folk etymology , I think those ones which are made by native speakers are more believable than other ones.


On the contrary. The very term _folk etymology_ was coined to describe how native speaker's intuition can be seriously mislead by intuitive associations based on contemporary word forms. If there are traceable ancient word forms and meanings they should always be the basis of etymological analysis and not modern day semantic and phonetic similarities.

Having said that, folk etymology can in itself give rise to new words or meaning and in that respect become an etymological fact in itself. But that is a different matter.


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## CyrusSH

PersoLatin said:


> Iran of 500-1000 BC was much larger, so had lots of small & many major rivers, even the current arid parts were much greener 1400 years ago, of course, you have to believe the veracity of hunting scenes at Sassanian times with hordes of different animals.



It doesn't relate to Iran, in that thread about Oasis, I talked about ancient Persian settlements in the south of Egypt which were totally dependent on the Qanat system.


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## berndf

CyrusSH said:


> It doesn't relate to Iran, in that thread about Oasis, I talked about ancient Persian settlements in the south of Egypt which were totally dependent on the Qanat system.


I don't know why you mention that thread here then, especially since the word Oasis has nothing to do with Persian.


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## CyrusSH

berndf said:


> Not to forget that Mesopotamia was once part of the Achaeminid empire. The idea that Old Persian should not have had a word for river is a bit outlandish.



I never said there was no word for river in the Old Persian but it is meaningless to say the Persian word for village relates to river, it is like saying the Germanic word for village relates to oasis.


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## berndf

CyrusSH said:


> I never said there was no word for river in the Old Persian but it is meaningless to say the Persian word for village relates to river, it is like saying the Germanic word for village relates to oasis.


The explanation was that the MP word for district goes back to an OP word for river bed.


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## CyrusSH

berndf said:


> The explanation was that the MP word for district goes back to an OP word for river bed.



Why you talk about "district"? The Persian word for "district" is _rastag_ (راسته), you are probably talking about the origin of this word, it can be related to riverbed too. Of course I think it is cognate with _region_.


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## berndf

CyrusSH said:


> Why you talk about "district"?


If you don't know that, re-read the explanation (#12).


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## CyrusSH

Fdb is certainly wrong, MP _rōstāg_, NP _rōstā_ never means "district" but it means "village, countryside".


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## inquisitiveness1

CyrusSH said:


> Fdb is certainly wrong, MP _rōstāg_, NP _rōstā_ never means "district" but it means "village, countryside".


I am having difficulty find any source that DOESN'T say it means "district" (in the case of MP _rōstāg _at least).


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## CyrusSH

inquisitiveness1 said:


> I am having difficulty find any source that DOESN'T say it means "district" (in the case of MP _rōstāg _at least).



Persian is not an extinct language, it is clear what _rusta_ "village" (Arabicized روستاق) and _rasta_ "district" (Arabicized رَستاق) mean, these problems about Middle Persian mostly relate to Huzwaresh.


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## berndf

CyrusSH said:


> Persian is not an extinct language


MP is. Words so not have to means the same thing in different stages of its developmemt.


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## PersoLatin

CyrusSH said:


> _rasta_ "district" (Arabicized رَستاق)


I don't know what راسته/râsté has to do with this thread, the sense of راسته as district, is secondary.

With my limited knowledge I know it is bad practice to attempt to link two words, based on primary meaning of one and secondary of the other. I am not saying you are doing that but confusion in these threads, give that impression.

I can't see why you have problems linking river/rō and NP/MP _rōstā/rōstāg._ fdb said the word means 'river bed' i.e. 'r_ō_d + st_ā_' which to me means where a river widens due to the flatness of land and where flow is slowed right down so human settlement can occur. And due to geography these _rōstās_ stay as small villages and rarely become major towns.

The problem I see is that when you don't get an answer you expect, you muddy the waters, sometimes inadvertently but mostly on purpose.


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## fdb

May I call the attention of the participants to the entry on ταγο /tāg/ in the glossary to Sims-Williams, _Bactrian documents_:


*ταγο  noun “river-valley” (or simply “river”, Skjærvø 2006, p. 316) < *tāka-, Pashto tōe “river, mountain torrent”, MP -tāg in rōstāg “river-bed, district”.*


This belongs to the Iranian root tač- (tak-) “to flow, to run” (as in NP tāxtan). In Old Iranian there are two very similar words for “river”: rautah- (Old Persian rautah- > NP rōd) and raudah- (Avestan raoδah-). The latter seems to be the source of the compound *raudas-tāka- > rōstāg.


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## Treaty

Persian _rāsta, _in its geographic sense, doesn't mean "district". It is a word used for certain urban setting, esp. a straight continuous (hence _rāst_) corridor in bazaar, where usually a number of related people - by business or ethnicity - dwelt or worked. Its Arabicized versions (_razdaq_, _rastaq < rastag_) mean "row" (i.e. السّطر من النخل والصّفّ من الناسِ) not "district". It is more than obvious that these have nothing to do with _rōstāg. _The Arabicized version of _rōstāg _is _r_*u*_stāq, r*u*sdāq _or_ r*u*zdāq _not _r*a*stāq._


fdb said:


> compound *raudas-tāka- > rōstāg.


Thanks. Can it be from a time before _s>h_ change so the cluster -_st_- was preserved in the middle of the word?


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## CyrusSH

PersoLatin said:


> I don't know what راسته/râsté has to do with this thread, the sense of راسته as district, is secondary.
> 
> With my limited knowledge I know it is bad practice to attempt to link two words, based on primary meaning of one and secondary of the other. I am not saying you are doing that but confusion in these threads, give that impression.
> 
> I can't see why you have problems linking river/rō and NP/MP _rōstā/rōstāg._ fdb said the word means 'river bed' i.e. 'r_ō_d + st_ā_' which to me means where a river widens due to the flatness of land and where flow is slowed right down so human settlement can occur. And due to geography these _rōstās_ stay as small villages and rarely become major towns.
> 
> The problem I see is that when you don't get an answer you expect, you muddy the waters, sometimes inadvertently but mostly on purpose.



What do you want to prove? Fdb says that Persian _rusta_ means "district/riverbed", not "village", I'm not here to say "Thanks fdb, I didn't know what this word means in my language". It is clear that you also believe _rusta_ means "village" in Persian and try to link what fdb said to it, but as I said he is talking about _rasta_, cognate with Latin regio (direction, line, boundary line, region, district, province) from Proto-Indo-European *_h₃réǵeti_ (“to straighten; right”).


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## CyrusSH

fdb said:


> May I call the attention of the participants to the entry on ταγο /tāg/ in the glossary to Sims-Williams, _Bactrian documents_:
> 
> *ταγο  noun “river-valley” (or simply “river”, Skjærvø 2006, p. 316) < *tāka-, Pashto tōe “river, mountain torrent”, MP -tāg in rōstāg “river-bed, district”.*
> 
> This belongs to the Iranian root tač- (tak-) “to flow, to run” (as in NP tāxtan). In Old Iranian there are two very similar words for “river”: rautah- (Old Persian rautah- > NP rōd) and raudah- (Avestan raoδah-). The latter seems to be the source of the compound *raudas-tāka- > rōstāg.



Ok, both _rus_ and _tak_ meant "river" but how it could be related to a group of houses and associated buildings situated in a rural area?


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## fdb

Treaty said:


> Thanks. Can it be from a time before _s>h_ change so the cluster -_st_- was preserved in the middle of the word?



IE *st is normally preserved as such in all Iranian languages.


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## Treaty

fdb said:


> IE *st is normally preserved as such in all Iranian languages.


I meant whether the combination *raudas-tāka was made before the change *raudas>raudah in Iranian, so that it was treated as a single word containing the st cluster, rather than a conscious combination of raudah+tāka.


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## PersoLatin

CyrusSH said:


> What do you want to prove? Fdb says that Persian _rusta_ means "district/riverbed", not "village", I'm not here to say "Thanks fdb, I didn't know what this word means in my language".


Fair enough but come up with a plausible alternative that can not be dismissed with little effort.



CyrusSH said:


> It is clear that you also believe _rusta_ means "village" in Persian and try to link what fdb said to it, but as I said he is talking about _rasta_, cognate with Latin regio (direction, line, boundary line, region, district, province) from Proto-Indo-European *_h₃réǵeti_ (“to straighten; right”)


There's no hope, you still insist on using the secondary meaning of راست (and yes I know it is cognate with straighten/right/regio/*_h₃réǵeti_), despite what has been argued. Ok then prove راسته as district,  is older than روستا, then you might be on to something. Don't rely too much on 'g/k' ending and its Arabized version to give you a link with 'rusti*c*', this only appeared in Parthian times and disappeared very soon after, or even during their time.


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## CyrusSH

In the post #11 I asked that Persian _rustak_ could be a loanword from Latin or not and no one has still replied to it, for some reasons I think it is possible, one of them is the concept of "rustic" in the Roman culture (we can find similar words in other languages, like Finnish _rustiikki_, Serbian _rustičan_, ...) and another important point is that we can't find it in Persian compounds, compare to _shahrdar_, _dehdar_, _otandar_, _sharestan_, _dehestan_, ... it is also similar to other Persian loanwords from Latin, like Middle Persian _sofistāk_ from Latin _sophisticus_.


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## fdb

Treaty said:


> I meant whether the combination *raudas-tāka was made before the change *raudas>raudah in Iranian, so that it was treated as a single word containing the st cluster, rather than a conscious combination of raudah+tāka.



I understand your point. It is indeed possible that *raudas-tāka- is a very old compound (pre s > h shift), but we should not underestimate the capacity of ancient languages to create etymologically correct forms by analogy to inherited forms. s and h frequently fluctuate within the same paradigm, e.g. ahmi “I am” vs asti “he is”, and on this basis native speakers could have felt that there is a rule that h turns to s before t.


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## fdb

CyrusSH said:


> In the post #11 I asked that Persian _rustak_ could be a loanword from Latin or not and no one has still replied to it,



Look at #12.


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## CyrusSH

fdb said:


> Look at #12.



Thanks but your post doesn't explain the meanings of this word that I asked: روستایی - Persian-English Dictionary - Glosbe

country {adjective }
rustic {adjective }
peasant {noun }
boor  {noun }
churl {noun }
villager {	noun }
agrestic {adjective }
barbarian   {noun }
barnyard {adjective noun }
bucolic  {adjective noun }
carl  {verb noun }
churlish  {adjective }
clown  {verb noun }
cottar  {noun }
countrified {adjective }
countryman {noun }
hillbilly {verb noun }
praedial {adjective }
rural  {adjective }
russetting {noun }
tike {noun }
tyke {noun }
villatic {adjective }

The important point is this concept in the Persian culture.


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