# Turkish - Etymology: Cumhuriyet جمهورية



## john welch

I have tried to find the sense of this word meaning "republic" and found that kamu means "public". So its structure is different from European forms. Could you tell me the background to the word and its separate parts?


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## sound shift

I think it derives from an Arabic word.


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## john welch

Turkish cumhuriyet means "republic" and I am told it may be from Arabic language. Could you comment on that, and if correct explain the idea behind the word and its separate parts?


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## cherine

Yes, it's from the Arabic jumhureyya جمهورية which comes from the Arabic word جمهور (from the 4-letters root جمهر) and جمهور (jumhuur) is defined in the dictionary لسان العرب as:
جُمهورُ الناس: جُلُّهُم.
The "jumhuur" of people are "most of them". In other words: a majority of people or a great number of people.


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## maxguncel

Cumhur = halk = kamu = public


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## CapnPrep

john welch said:


> Could you tell me the background to the word and its separate parts?


According to this etymological dictionary, the root is Arabic jumhūr جمهور "crowd, multitude, masses (of the people)" and the use of the suffix _-iyyet _added to the masdar form is specific to Turkish. But Arabic uses exactly the same word (جمهورية jumhūriyya), so I'm not sure what they mean by this.


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## Ustaath

it's probably a loan word from Persian


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## Josh_

I don't think it is a loan from Persian. The meaning of the root ج-م-ه-ر (j-m-h-r) is very similar to the other Arabic roots ج-م-ع (j-m-3), ج-م-ل (j-m-l), and ج-م-م (j-m-m)(we could possibly add ج-م-د (j-m-d) in there), which all have meanings related to 'collecting' or 'gathering together'. This may suggest a biliteral proto-root of ج-م (j-m).


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## Mahaodeh

Ustaath said:


> it's probably a loan word from Persian



Why do you assume it's a loan word from Persian?


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## john welch

Thanks. It reminds me of jamboree, Hindi jamavadda "festival, large assembly". And the suffix resembles Russian, as in sovIET "republic". But /jumhur/ seems different from IE kom  which I was guessing was the basis. Is it possible that IE *kom "with", Latin cum , was borrowed for this, and for kamu "public"?
Another possiblity may be cham "goat-wool tent of chief " (of horse tribes from steppes), seen in Russian Lapp chum "tent". Are there many loan words between Russian and Turkish?


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## Ustaath

Mahaodeh said:


> Why do you assume it's a loan word from Persian?


it doesn't follow typical four letter stem word order, the combination of consonants are more commonly used in Persian- (sounds more Indo-European than Semitic) , knowing its a word also used in Persian, the history of administrative words used in Arabic borrowed from neighboring cultures - (dostoor ,qanoon) ... and the linguistic tendency of conjugating borrowed words in the receptor's language syntax  (ex. Italian conjugated according to Arabic grammar in contemporary Maltese):
A  three or  four letter root could have been borrowed from another language originally.
example: it became common in Lebanon during the civil war to use the verb بَلْوَرَ to mean clarify, from colloquial for glass window : بَلّور --

 Each one of these on their own aren't conclusive -but together make up a possibility- a Persian speaker could help us out
 - 
Google Translate for "republic' in Persian reads:جمهوری


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## sound shift

A derivation from Latin "cum" seems unlikely to me, because the "c" in "cumhuriyet" is pronounced like the "j" in "job".


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## CapnPrep

The derivation of _jamboree_ from Hindi is not established.

Russian _soviet_ does not mean "republic", and the structure of this word is _so_ + _vet_. There is no suffix _-iet_ and there is no connection with Turkish _cumhuriyet_.

It seems that _cumhuriyet_ and _kamu_ are also unconnected etymologically, and I seriously doubt there is any way to link Turkish _kamu_ with PIE *_kom_.

I like goats, too.


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## Masjeen

ustaath said:


> it doesn't follow typical four letter stem word order, the combination of consonants are more commonly used in persian- (sounds more indo-european than semitic) , knowing its a word also used in persian, the history of administrative words used in arabic borrowed from neighboring cultures - (dostoor ,qanoon) ... And the linguistic tendency of conjugating borrowed words in the receptor's language syntax  (ex. Italian conjugated according to arabic grammar in contemporary maltese):
> A  three or  four letter root could have been borrowed from another language originally.
> Example: It became common in lebanon during the civil war to use the verb بَلْوَرَ to mean clarify, from colloquial for glass window : بَلّور --
> 
> each one of these on their own aren't conclusive -but together make up a possibility- a persian speaker could help us out
> -
> google translate for "republic' in persian reads:جمهوری




أنت فقط تخمن وتبني على التخمينات نظريات ثم تريد أن تحول كل ذلك إلى حقائق من لا شيء
على كل حال يمكنك القاء نظرة على الرابط التالي

http://fa.wikipedia.org/wiki/جمهور_(ابهام‌زدایی)

وإذا كنت لا تفهم الفارسية فالمكتوب هو : جمهور كلمة من أصل عربي معناها مردم


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## Ustaath

انا لم أنكر ذلك  !
كما وانني ذكرت وجوب استشارة من هو ملم بالفارسية

 " a Persian speaker can help us out "  

could you please check the link you posted, it seems to be wrong

*Jumhūrīya* (جمهورية) is the word for "republic" in the Arabic language. It appears in the original official names of a number of countries whose language is Arabic.
 A derivation of the term is jamahiriya, coined by Libyan ruler Muammar al-Gaddafi; while _jumhūrīya_  translates as "rule by the public" or "state of the public", jamahiriya  - a form derived from the plural of jumhūr - translates as "rule by the  masses". In the Libyan sense, the closest English equivalent of such a  term would be "People's Republic".
 The word "Republic" in the languages of areas influenced by Islam are  derived from the word Jumhūrīya an example is Hindi the word Gaṇarājya  (गणराज्य) and the Urdu word Jumhūrīyat ( بھارت) both are languages of  India.


copied directly from: 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumhuriya


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## john welch

"It doesn't follow typical four letter stem word order, the combination of consonants are more commonly used in Persian- (sounds more Indo-European than Semitic)".
If Ar. jamal= kamelos, chameaux, camel, then the Persian form may be *cumhuriya. Persian ushtur is 'camel' so I can't find the j:c. (Hindi ganarajya with /g/ tends towards /c/). Does that allow for a PIE origin to Persian, loaned to Arabic then Turkish? And then was PIE *kom the first element?


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## Masjeen

john welch said:


> "It doesn't follow typical four letter stem word order, the combination of consonants are more commonly used in Persian- (sounds more Indo-European than Semitic)".
> If Ar. jamal= kamelos, chameaux, camel, then the Persian form may be *cumhuriya. Persian ushtur is 'camel' so I can't find the j:c. (Hindi ganarajya with /g/ tends towards /c/). Does that allow for a PIE origin to Persian, loaned to Arabic then Turkish? And then was PIE *kom the first element?



WOW.. Your imagination is very broad just as those who say shakespeare comes from Arabic (shaikh zubair)..
the evidences is something very different from the fantasies.


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## john welch

I quoted part of #11. Most of my post is factual. Which point do you say is imaginative?


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## Lugubert

Platts' Urdu etc. dictionary has 4 entries starting with jumhur-. All are referred to A جمہور _jumhūr_ (fr. جمہر 'to collect together'); no mentioning of Persian.

I liked Josh's No. 8, reducing to a bi-consonantal root.


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## Abu Rashid

Lugubert said:
			
		

> All are referred to A جمہور _jumhūr_ (fr. جمہر 'to collect together'); no mentioning of Persian.



No mention of Persian? What does fr. stand for?


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## Faylasoof

Abu Rashid said:


> No mention of Persian? What does fr. stand for?



The Platts entry is here, and "fr." stands for "from"! Platts always uses "P" for Persian and  "A" for "Arabic".

This word doesn’t seem to have a Persian etymology! It is from the quadrilateral Arabic verb جَمهَرَ  (= to collect, gather), as has been mentioned above.  

Middle Persian used completely different verbs and nouns when referring to the same:

 To collect / gather in Pahlavi is:

(transitive verb) _hambaareedan; amwashtan; gird kardan; cheedan_
(transitive verb) _gird aamadan_

The equivalent of جمهور for “collective body of people” in Pahlavi (Middle Persian) is _mardom_ or _paayram_. 

New / Modern Persian uses جمهور , جمهوری and جمهورية / جمهوریت but they are recognised to be of Arabic etymology.


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## john welch

Post #11 indicates it is not originally Arabic and seems PIE.
From the Persian Forum:
"If you take a look at Persian dictionaries like:"فرهنگ معین" and "لغتنامه دهخدا", you'll get it's a loanword,which has come from Arabic,as mentioned.That's why I'm quite sure, although it mightn't be originally Arabic, it couldn't be Persian at all."
-------------
Could that take us back to Turkish cumhuriya as the source? Or...>?
The word Hurrian comes to mind, the ancient people in Hittite times. *jum Hurrian?


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## Masjeen

Faylasoof said:


> The Platts entry is here, and "fr." stands for "from"! Platts always uses "P" for Persian and  "A" for "Arabic".
> 
> This word doesn’t seem to have a Persian etymology! It is from the quadrilateral Arabic verb جَمهَرَ  (= to collect, gather), as has been mentioned above.
> 
> Middle Persian used completely different verbs and nouns when referring to the same:
> 
> To collect / gather in Pahlavi is:
> 
> (transitive verb) _hambaareedan; amwashtan; gird kardan; cheedan_
> (transitive verb) _gird aamadan_
> 
> The equivalent of جمهور for “collective body of people” in Pahlavi (Middle Persian) is _mardom_ or _paayram_.
> 
> New / Modern Persian uses جمهور , جمهوری and جمهورية / جمهوریت but they are recognised to be of Arabic etymology.





Perfect answer


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## Frank06

john welch said:


> Could that take us back to Turkish cumhuriya as the source? Or...>?
> The word Hurrian comes to mind, the ancient people in Hittite times. *jum Hurrian?


I start to get the impression that every single word with an h, j, c, k, u, r, m, etc. etc. etc. (ad nauseam) in whatever language comes to your mind. Your guesswork has nothing to do with linguistics.

Frank


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## john welch

Turkish hurriya means 'liberty' but Ar. *hurraya seems not to exist. This indicates a northern origin, in line with the comments on PIE rather than Arabic structure.


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## CapnPrep

john welch said:


> Turkish hurriya means 'liberty' but Ar. *hurraya seems not to exist.


The Turkish word is _hürriyet_, and it corresponds to Arabic حرّيّة ḥurriyya, derived from  حرّ ḥurr "free".

But why are we talking about _hürriyet_ now? It is not linked etymologically to _cumhuriyet_, and the concepts "republic" and "freedom" are also quite distinct. Remind us, what is the point of this thread again?


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## john welch

My mistake. I didn't know that the words are unrelated, and my errors are useful in clarifying what is accurate .The q. was about the semantics of the morphemes and that has been answered as "all (most). people.-". The consonant structure may be non-Arabic. I am exploring the similarity in concept to the Celtic name of Wales Cymru from 'cum.broges' "with. borders" (comrades within the same borders). Celts from Gaul were in Asia Minor.


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## CapnPrep

Welsh, too, now? Normally I would say that there are too many distinct questions in this thread, but it looks like the answer is always the same: No, there is *no etymological link* (this time between _cumhuriyet_ and _Cymru_), or at least none that can be reliably established based on the available evidence. 



john welch said:


> The consonant structure may be non-Arabic.


You keep repeating this claim (about the Arabic root √jmhr), but the fact is that not all quadriliteral roots are borrowings. As Josh_ pointed out above (#8), there is reason to believe that √jmhr is a complex root, and not a shred of evidence has been provided thus far to suggest any influence from IE.


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## apmoy70

john welch said:


> ...Celts from Gaul were in Asia Minor.


...who were hellenised long before any Turk arrived in Minor Asia (Paul wrote his Epistle _to Galatians_, to the Gauls of Galatia, Minor Asia, in Greek). 
I apologise for the OT but IMHO the OP took a gigantic leap in history (of at least 9-10 centuries)


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## Abu Rashid

john welch said:
			
		

> I am exploring the similarity in concept to the Celtic name of Wales  Cymru from 'cum.broges' "with. borders" (comrades within the same  borders). Celts from Gaul were in Asia Minor.



Not sure if you realise this, but Turkey adopted the Latin alphabet in the 1920's, when they did, they decided to use the letter 'c' (which is a redundant letter) for the sound [j]. Therefore any attempt to link it to IE words beginning with 'c' is just fanciful.


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## berndf

Abu Rashid said:


> ...they decided to use the letter 'c' (which is a redundant letter) for the sound [j]. Therefore any attempt to link it to IE words beginning with 'c' is just fanciful.


You surely mean [dʒ] as in "*J*ane" and not [j] as in "*y*oung", right?


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## john welch

CapnPrep,
My post said "similarity in concept" referring to semantics, not etymology. The notion may allow for Celtic borrowing of the concept from Arabic.
apmoy70,
Paul visited the southern towns of Galatia, not those listed as Celtic by Strabo etc. He said they spoke a Celtic language.
Abu,
Yes, jum is not Latin cum. I accept that the word is Arabic in roots. 
-----
A similar thing may have happened with Ar. khamlat / kemel and Fr./Eng. camelot. (OED Dictionary). Khamlat appears to be irregular. That is why I am exploring the possibility of cumhuriyet before the Mods. shut down the thread.


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## berndf

john welch said:


> My post said "similarity in concept" referring to semantics, not etymology. The notion may allow for Celtic borrowing of the concept from Arabic.


Following such an unrestraint flow of far fetched associations, everything "may" eventually relate to everything, hence, telling us nothing. I can only agree with Frank, this kind of "guesswork has nothing to do with linguistics".


john welch said:


> Paul visited the southern towns of Galatia, not those listed as Celtic by Strabo etc. He said they spoke a Celtic language.


This was about 1000 years before the Turks came to Anatolia (at a time when the Galatian language had been extinct for 600 years) bringing Arabic loans with them. I really can't see the relevance.


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## john welch

OED has "inf." for influenced words, and "by assoc." OED connects the Arabic words in #32 with Eng. camelot.  Galatia had movable borders as did Asia Minor in general, and was proximate to Syria.  If Turkish borrowed from Arabic, then Galatians were able. The Syrian myth of Typhon is connected with Gaulish legend.
(How far may I diverge from the thread title?..)


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## berndf

john welch said:


> Galatia had movable borders as did Asia Minor in general, and was proximate to Syria.  If Turkish borrowed from Arabic, then Galatians were able.


The Syrians spoke Aramaic, not Arabic.


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## john welch

[Verbs and nouns have a three-consonant "root," meaning every word with those three consonants is conceptually related. Students of Semitic languages can guess the meaning of new vocabulary by identifying these root letters. Arabic and Aramaic share this quality, along with other Semitic languages, such as Hebrew, and the Ethiopian languages of Amharic and Tigrinya. ]


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## berndf

The phoneme [dʒ] doesn't exist in Aramaic and it is still debated if it existed in pre-Islamic Arabic.


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## john welch

I can't find Aram. terms similar to T. cumhuriyet, but the similar term for Ar. 'freedom' is Aram. *ḥyryw, ḥyrywtʾ* (ḥēˀrāyū, ḥēˀrāyūṯā) n.f. *freedom.*
*If the concept is expressions meaning "all. people", the Aram. term may be roots * bkul. huur. It may be that Aram. had the root jm with another initial phoneme.*


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## berndf

We had already established that the Arabic roots of Turkish _cumhuriyet_ and _hürriyet_ aren't related. I'm not sure why you bring this up again.

If you are interested in finding Semitic root of the Arabic four letter root _ǧ__mhr_ (_to collect, to gather_), I would look at the two letter root _gm_ which means "also" in Hebrew and Aramaic (Arabic /ǧ/ is corresponds to /g/ in other Semitic languages). If Semitic roots are extended, they are extended at the end and not at the beginning (sometimes in the middle). If roots differ in the first root consonant you can be reasonably sure they are unrelated (except for some letter groups within which switches occur, like _s1_, _s2_ and _s3_; but _g_ and _ḥ_, are not normally exchanged although the letters share the same undotted shape ح in Arabic).


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## Abu Rashid

berndf said:
			
		

> You surely mean [dʒ] as in "*J*ane" and not [j] as in "*y*oung", right?



Yes, thank you. I am not too clued up on IPA and such things.

I meant what we pronounce as 'j' in English.



			
				berndf said:
			
		

> The Syrians spoke Aramaic, not Arabic.



Perhaps at some time in its history Syria was Aramaic-speaking, but for the past 2000 odd years, Syria has been a largely Arabic-speaking land. It is often assumed Arabic was never spoken there until the Islamic period, but this is not true, it was widely spoken there long before this.


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## origumi

berndf said:


> If Semitic roots are extended, they are extended at the end and not at the beginning (sometimes in the middle).


There are many examples of extending roots at the beginning. In Hebrew seondary roots are created sometimes by prepending _shin_ or _taw_. The same with Aramaic. Yet, this kind of extension is with specific consonants and not other. Addition of _gimel_ at the start is not typical, at least for Hebrew / Aramaic.


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## Abu Rashid

origumi said:
			
		

> There are many examples of extending roots at the beginning. In Hebrew seondary roots are created sometimes by prepending _shin_ or _taw_.



And also 'he' no? Same for Arabic, aleph (instead of he), taa and sin (equivalent to hebrew shin) can be prepended to make different awzaan (binyanim).

In fact berndf I can't think of a single case, in Arabic at least, where secondary roots are formed by appending letters. They either precede the first or the second radical.


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## berndf

Abu Rashid said:


> In fact berndf I can't think of a single case, in Arabic at least, where secondary roots are formed by appending letters. They either precede the first or the second radical.


I was referring to the, admittedly still controversial, theory that tree and four letter roots developed out of a two letter root system in early proto-Semitic. I think, we discussed that before.


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## berndf

Abu Rashid said:


> Perhaps at some time in its history Syria was Aramaic-speaking, but for the past 2000 odd years, Syria has been a largely Arabic-speaking land. It is often assumed Arabic was never spoken there until the Islamic period, but this is not true, it was widely spoken there long before this.


Your comment surprises me. Are we talking about the same thing? Do you mean to imply that the areas around Roman Antioch, Aleppo and Damascus were Arabic speaking?

If you think of maps like this which show the entire Levant as Aramaic speaking all the way down to the Gulf of Aqaba as Aramaic speaking, then I agree with you: This is certainly not correct. The Nabataeans might have written Aramaic (and later mainly Greek) but they were Arabic speaking.


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## john welch

Then the Aram. form may be root *gmhr. huur. That would tend to fit my theory.


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## CapnPrep

john welch said:


> That would tend to fit my theory.


I'm sorry, what is your theory, exactly? That there was "Celtic borrowing of the concept from Arabic [now, Aramaic]"?

Which concept? "republic", "freedom", "gather", or "people"?
Which Celtic word(s) do you have in mind? You have only mentioned _Cymru_, and you accept that there is no etymological connection, but we may possibly allow ourselves to speculate about a conceptual similarity. 

So what is the conceptual connection? Are you saying that the Celts learned about "gathering" or "freedom" from some Semitic people?


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## john welch

They run a tight ship here and discursion is not advisable. "Freedom" is not on the menu, but is a guide to Aram./Ar. similarity for those phonemes. I'm not arguing for an historic event and have indicated what the circumstances were. I appreciate the help given to me.


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## origumi

john welch said:


> Then the Aram. form may be root *gmhr. huur. That would tend to fit my theory.


Not sure that *gmhr ever existed in Aramaic or an ancestor language.


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## john welch

OK then would it be root *gm.huur? That's getting to sound rather more like Cymru, which is also Gymru when assimilated to a previous g.


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## Lugubert

john welch said:


> OK then would it be root *gm.huur? That's getting to sound rather more like Cymru, which is also Gymru when assimilated to a previous g.


I think that you haven't understood how Welsh soft mutation works. I don't blame you; it's a jungle. Anyway, c to g relies more on grammar phenomena than on phonetics.

For some reason, I remember Voltaire's sarcasm that in etymology, consonants mean little and vowels less.

How do you explain the difference in the last vowels between your [u:] and the Welsh [ɨ] in [kəmrɨ]?


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## berndf

john welch said:


> They run a tight ship here and discursion is not advisable. "Freedom" is not on the menu, but is a guide to Aram./Ar. similarity for those phonemes. I'm not arguing for an historic event and have indicated what the circumstances were. I appreciate the help given to me.


*Then we are done here, aren't we?

Thread closed.
*


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