# إمّ



## Ali Smith

Hi,

Does anyone know the etymology of the word for 'mother' in colloquial Syrian/Lebanese/Palestinian Arabic, namely إمّ? I suspect it may be a descendant of the classical Arabic أُمّ or a borrowing from another language.

Thanks!


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## WadiH

Why wouldn't it be related to the أمّ of Classical Arabic?  It's just a vowel shift that can be accounted for with other similar vowel shifts in these dialects.


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## fdb

The fact that Levantine Arabic agrees with the vocalisation of Aramaic ʾemmā rather than with CA ʾumm does raise the question of whether the Levantine form was influenced by the Aramaic substratum.


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## WadiH

But this vocalisation is pervasive in these (north) Levantine dialects and not restricted to this one word, correct?  Which would mean it's not a loanword.


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## wriight

Yeah, original /i/ and /u/ have overwhelmingly merged into the former in North Levantine dialects (unless they're in a CVC# syllable, i.e. the last syllable of a word whose last consonant has no شدة). There are still people who tend towards retaining /u/ because the merger isn't complete everywhere, and I know I've heard أُمّ from that kind of person, so I don't see anything special about إمّ.

The Aramaic pronunciation doesn't have to be unrelated, but isn't the word generally أُمّ in South Levantine dialects, even though Aramaic speakers were spread throughout the entire Levant? If we don't see an anomalous *إمّ in a large community of speakers for whom we'd expect Arabic /u/ to be retained, e.g. speakers of South Levantine Arabic in general, then I don't see a reason to explain North Levantine إمّ (where we *don't* expect Arabic /u/ to be universally retained) as necessarily non-Arabic.

Plus, what could cause only the term for "mother" to be incorporated from another language and not "father" or other kinship terms? _Father_ is بَيّ in most of Lebanon, reflecting either *وْبَيّ or *أْبَيّ from an original أُبَيّ, the Arabic diminutive of أَبْ... and I think you mostly get أب in Syrian North Levantine, with possessive forms like أَبُوي that reflect the Arabic construct أَبو. It seems to me that these can't be reflexes of Aramaic _ʾabbā_, for one (especially considering the geminate), with a similar story for خَيّ/أخو and أخت => إخت. That would make إمّ the only borrowed item here if it turned out to be borrowed.


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## elroy

Wadi Hanifa said:


> But this vocalisation is pervasive in these (north) Levantine dialects and not restricted to this one word, correct?


The vowel shift occurs in North Levantine only, but ّإِم occurs in South Levantine.


wriight said:


> isn't the word generally أُمّ in South Levantine dialects


Nope.  At least in Palestinian I’ve almost never heard ّأُم, and I’m familiar with a number of different regional varieties.

This, to me, supports the Aramaic substratum hypothesis.  (It’s also “em” in Hebrew, by the way.)


wriight said:


> Plus, what could cause only the term for "mother" to be incorporated from another language and not "father" or other kinship terms?


If only etymology were that straightforward.  In fact, inconsistencies like this abound, so this is not an argument against an Aramaic influence.


wriight said:


> I think you mostly get أب in Syrian North Levantine, with possessive forms like أَبُوي that reflect the Arabic construct أَبو.


Syrian has أب and أبي.
Palestinian has أبو and أبوي.


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## Ali Smith

fdb said:


> The fact that Levantine Arabic agrees with the vocalisation of Aramaic ʾemmā rather than with CA ʾumm does raise the question of whether the Levantine form was influenced by the Aramaic substratum.


Do you mean the Aramaic word אִמָּא‎‎ (Syriac: ܐܶܡܳܐ)?

By the way, I believe the proto-Semitic word was _*ʾimm-_. I wonder where Arabic got the _u_ vowel from.


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## wriight

elroy said:


> Nope.  At least in Palestinian I’ve almost never heard ّأُم, and I’m familiar with a number of different regional varieties.
> 
> This, to me, supports the Aramaic substratum hypothesis.  (It’s also “em” in Hebrew, by the way.)


Cool! My Jordanian friends say أُمّي (also a guy from Saida), but I don't know many Palestinians I can speak Arabic with, so this is news. I don't see a reason to refute the borrowing-from-another-language idea in light of this. (The "only the term for 'mother'" thing was just there to reinforce the idea's unlikelihood, but evidence for it trumps that.)



elroy said:


> Syrian has أب and أبي.
> Palestinian has أبو and أبوي.


Forgot, my bad. Pretend I said أبوه instead


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## Abaye

elroy said:


> The vowel shift occurs in North Levantine only, but ّإِم occurs in South Levantine.


Can you define it please in geographical terms? Is it Syria/Lebanon vs. Jordan/Israel/Palestine?


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## fdb

There are other examples where Semitic /i/ before /m/ or /b/ is rounded to /u/ in Arabic, e.g. Akkadian libbu, Aramaic lebbā, Hebrew lēḇ, corresponding to Arabic lubb.


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## WadiH

fdb said:


> There are other examples where Semitic /i/ before /m/ or /b/ is rounded to /u/ in Arabic, e.g. Akkadian libbu, Aramaic lebbā, Hebrew lēḇ, corresponding to Arabic lubb.



Yes, but _libb _also exists in Arabic dialects (including in places like Egypt and the Peninsula), so it is not necessarily an Aramaic influence, and an Aramaic influence on vowelizaton is not the same as the word itself being loaned.

Arabic and Aramaic did co-exist alongside each other for a long time so I can of course imagine a situation where Aramaic vowelization influenced Arabic pronunciation in the same way that Arabic dialects influence each other today, but it's also plausible that this vowelization is just a very old feature of the Arabic of Syria-Palestine, since Arabic's presence there is about as old as Arabic itself.


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## elroy

Abaye said:


> Can you define it please in geographical terms? Is it Syria/Lebanon vs. Jordan/Israel/Palestine?


For the vowel shift, yes (with possible exceptions in border areas).
For إِم, I’ve learned since my last post that in Jordan أُم is used except by Palestinian Jordanians / Jordanian Palestinians.  So إِم seems to be a feature of all Levantine varieties except Jordanian.


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## love-Liebe-Lub(Arbc)

Ali Smith said:


> Do you mean the Aramaic word אִמָּא‎‎ (Syriac: ܐܶܡܳܐ)?
> 
> By the way, I believe the proto-Semitic word was _*ʾimm-_. I wonder where Arabic got the _u_ vowel from.


In Ugratic, Eblaite  and Akkidian it occurred as  *umm,* as the case as in Arabic, so the question could be the other way around possibly.


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## raamez

Just for the record in Homs it is umm but Homs generally didn't undergo the shift u->i , this can only support the hypothesis of the Arabic origin otherwise it would have been emm in Homs. Already two millenniums ago major Syrian cites like Emesa and Palmyra consisted of Arabic and Aramiac populations living side by side. So detecting what is Arabic and what is Aramiac is not so easy. Exception is the agricultural lexicon in Syrian Arabic which is undoubtedly rich in Aramaic loanwords.


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## WadiH

It seems to me that the rule is to have an 'i' vowel in words with germinated roots (e.g. لبّ) whether in northern or southern dialects.  That seems to me like a simpler and more proximate explanation than an isolated Aramaicism that could just as likely be a false friend, especially if we don't know what the dialect (or this particular word) sounded like for most of the period during which Arabic was spoken in the region.


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## elroy

raamez said:


> in Homs it is umm but Homs generally didn't undergo the shift u->i , this can only support the hypothesis of the Arabic origin otherwise it would have been emm in Homs.


Or maybe it used to be "imm" in Homs (by Aramaic influence) and then evolved into "umm" via phonological leveling.



Wadi Hanifa said:


> It seems to me that the rule is to have an 'i' vowel in words with germinated roots (e.g. لبّ) whether in northern or southern dialects.


No, it's لُبّ in South Levantine, and the vowel shift is not, to my knowledge, related to gemination.  It affects many words without gemination in their roots.  A few examples: مُستشفى (S) / مِستشفى (N) | أُستاذ (S) / إِستاذ (N) | تُركيا (S) / تِركيا (N).  There are many, many more.  This is one of the major phonological differences between South and North Levantine.



Wadi Hanifa said:


> an isolated Aramaicism *that could just as likely be a false friend*


What do you mean by the part in bold?  Can you elaborate?


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## raamez

elroy said:


> Or maybe it used to be "imm" in Homs (by Aramaic influence) and then evolved into "umm" via phonological leveling.


Maybe but this is very difficult to prove in my opinion.


elroy said:


> Syrian has أب and أبي.


أبي in Homs and Damascus, أبوي in Hama and Aleppo, بيّ in Tartus


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## elroy

raamez said:


> أبي in Homs and Damascus, أبوي in Hama and Aleppo, بيّ in Tartus


Thank you.  We generally oversimplify and say "Syrian Arabic" when we really mean "Damascene Arabic."  In fact, as I'm sure you know, there's a lot of regional diversity within each country, so it would be linguistically more precise to refer to more specific regions.  For example, in this case we could refer to the five major urban centers (Damascus, Aleppo, Beirut, Jerusalem, and Amman) and say that Damascus has أبي, Aleppo and Jerusalem have أبوي, Beirut has بَيِّ, and Amman has أبويا.  Interesting Aleppo-Jerusalem connection.


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## WadiH

elroy said:


> Or maybe it used to be "imm" in Homs (by Aramaic influence) and then evolved into "umm" via phonological leveling.



Ok but how would we know that?  Just because Aramaic happened to be spoken there a long time ago?  That's not enough evidence.



elroy said:


> No, it's لُبّ in South Levantine



Ok I stand corrected then.



elroy said:


> , and the vowel shift is not, to my knowledge, related to gemination.  It affects many words without gemination in their roots.  A few examples: مُستشفى (S) / مِستشفى (N) | أُستاذ (S) / إِستاذ (N) | تُركيا (S) / تِركيا (N).  There are many, many more.  This is one of the major phonological differences between South and North Levantine.



This feature isn't specific to the Levant.  It's the typical bedouin pronunciation.  I think these vowel shifts are all over the place, and are very variable by nature, which is why I am suspicious of 'substrate' theories based on occasional similarities, especially when we have such huge gaps in the record and hundreds of years of population movements.



elroy said:


> What do you mean by the part in bold?  Can you elaborate?



Meaning two words look like they're the same word but actually arose independently.



elroy said:


> Thank you.  We generally oversimplify and say "Syrian Arabic" when we really mean "Damascene Arabic."  In fact, as I'm sure you know, there's a lot of regional diversity within each country, so it would be linguistically more precise to refer to more specific regions.  For example, in this case we could refer to the five major urban centers (Damascus, Aleppo, Beirut, Jerusalem, and Amman) and say that Damascus has أبي, Aleppo and Jerusalem have أبوي, Beirut has بَيِّ, and Amman has أبويا.  Interesting Aleppo-Jerusalem connection.



It has indeed been remarked that the dialects of Damascus, Aleppo, Beirut and Jerusalem are more similar to each other than any of them is to its surrounding hinterland (I think I read this in the Encyclopedia of Islam II article on these dialects).  A similar phenomenon is definitely in place with the Hijazi cities of Jeddah, Mecca, Medina, Yanbu' and (partially) Al-Ta'if.


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## elroy

Wadi Hanifa said:


> Ok but how would we know that? Just because Aramaic happened to be spoken there a long time ago? That's not enough evidence.


Of course that's not enough evidence.  I'm only saying that, pending further evidence, what I presented is a possibility.  I don't think we have enough information so far to either confirm or discount it.



Wadi Hanifa said:


> I think these vowel shifts are all over the place, and are very variable by nature


I don't know about areas outside the Levant.  In the Levant, this particular vowel shift is not "all over the place" or "variable."  It's a very consistent and robust pattern with a clear distinction between North and South Levantine.  Within the Levant, it's a shibboleth: you can tell whether someone is from the North or the South by whether they have this vowel shift.


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## WadiH

elroy said:


> I don't know about areas outside the Levant.  In the Levant, this particular vowel shift is not "all over the place" or "variable."



I meant that vowel changes in general happen frequently, not this particular vowel pattern.


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