# carrot



## CyrusSH

In this thread: g>k in Greek loanwords from Semitic I mentioned Akkadian word girisu "cherry" and Persian _gilas_ and compared them to Arabic _karaz_ and Ancient Greek _κέρᾰσος_ (kérasos).

By considering _l>r_ and _g>k_, I wanted to mention "carrot", from Ancient Greek _karôton_ to Sanskrit _gārjarat_, the original word could be _galrot_ or Icelandic gulrót: From _gulur_ (“yellow”) and _rót_ (“a root”)?

It is good to mention that carrot is native to southwestern Asia and the plant originated in Persia.


----------



## desi4life

Carrots had already spread into Europe by the 3rd millennium BCE, long before the arrival of Iranian tribes to Persia or the existence of Proto-Germanic.


----------



## CyrusSH

desi4life said:


> Carrots had already spread into Europe by the 3rd millennium BCE, long before the arrival of Iranian tribes to Persia or the existence of Proto-Germanic.



I certainly agree about the arrival of Iranian tribes to Persia but not about the existence of Proto-Germanic, the European carrot has an orange color but the Iranian carrot which is called زردک - Wiktionary (zard “yellow” + -ak “diminutive suffix”) in Persian has a yellow color:


----------



## berndf

There is absolutely no question that the 3rd millennium BC is before PGm. 

The orange carrot is a 18th century breeding and has certainly no relevance for the etymology of the name of the plant.


----------



## CyrusSH

berndf said:


> There is absolutely no question that the 3rd millennium BC is before PGm.



We have discussed about it in this thread: Semitic & Germanic similarities As I said "According to this research that you consider it newer, Germanic existed in the 3rd millennium BC and is older than Indian, Iranian, Italic, Celtic, Baltic and Slavic languages."



> The orange carrot is a 18th century breeding and has certainly no relevance for the etymology of the name of the plant.



Carrots are subdivided into two groups:

1) Anthocyanin (Eastern) group: yellow/purple/black roots
2) Carotene (Western) group: orange/red/white roots


----------



## berndf

CyrusSH said:


> Carrots are subdivided into two groups:
> 
> 1) Anthocyanin (Eastern) group: yellow/purple/black roots
> 2) Carotene (Western) group: orange/red/white roots


The orange carrot is an 18th (or maybe 17th)  century cross-breading of Western and Eastern varieties, which had both been common in Europe.


----------



## Treaty

I told you he'll dig up some irrelevant "discussed" link from long ago .


CyrusSH said:


> We have discussed about it in this thread: https://forum.wordreference.com/attachments/iechart-gif.23433/ As I said "According to this research that you consider it newer, Germanic existed in the 3rd millennium BC and is older than Indian, Iranian, Italic, Celtic, Baltic and Slavic languages."


The tree graph only shows that the IE branch which later became Germanic/PG separated from Italic/Celtic in late 3rd m. BC. The chart confirms berndf that PG dates to around late 1st m. BC, as we always have said. I think we explained this to you that time. It is not our fault that after 3 years, you still don't get it.  

I don't understand what's going on here. How do modern Nordic words have to do anything with PG, Iranian, etc.? Yellow carrot was already long in Europe before the modern orange one was *bred out of it*. So whether the modern Nordic words referred to the original yellow carrots from the Medieval era, or to the later orange cultivar, it has nothing to do with PG.


----------



## berndf

Same thing in German. The traditional name was _Gelbe Rübe_ (_yellow beet_) or _Möhre/Mohrrübe_ (_more/more-beet_). The term _gelbe Rübe_ fell out of fashion some time in the 19th century because the orange variety became dominant and _Möhre/Mohrrübe_ is still in use.

Like English _more_, German _Möhre _historically referred to both, carrots and parsnips.


----------



## CyrusSH

Treaty said:


> The tree graph only shows that the IE branch which later became Germanic/PG separated from Italic/Celtic in late 3rd m. BC. The chart confirms berndf that PG dates to around late 1st m. BC, as we always have said. I think we explained this to you that time. It is not our fault that after 3 years, you still don't get it.



Please don't play with words and don't try to fool me or others, as you see in the chart the name of language which was separated from Italic/Celtic in the 3rd millennium BC is Germanic, in late 1st millennium BC this language divided into East Germanic and West/North Germanic, after 100 years no one can see anything other than it in this chart.



Treaty said:


> I don't understand what's going on here. How do modern Nordic words have to do anything with PG, Iranian, etc.? Yellow carrot was already long in Europe before the modern orange one was *bred out of it*. So whether the modern Nordic words referred to the original yellow carrots from the Medieval era, or to the later orange cultivar, it has nothing to do with PG.



It is not a strange Nordic word but a meaningful compound, like _blackboard_ (Persian _taxte siah_), which can be considered as the most proper Germanic name for this root vegetable, compare to _beetroot_.


----------



## berndf

CyrusSH said:


> Please don't play with words and don't try to fool me or others, as you see in the chart the name of language which was separated from Italic/Celtic in the 3rd millennium BC is Germanic, in late 1st millennium BC this language divided into East Germanic and West/North Germanic, after 100 years no one can see anything other than it in this chart.


The only one who is fooling someone is you who is fooling yourself. The black bar is representing the development reconstructed development stage that is called "Proto Germanic". The previous development stages are unknown. That's why there are no black bars in between.


CyrusSH said:


> It is not a strange Nordic word but a meaningful compound, like _blackboard_ (Persian _taxte siah_), which can be considered as the most proper Germanic name for this root vegetable, compare to _beetroot_.


*Modern* (I.e. post medieval) Germanic languages call the plant Yellow Beet because it was yellow in *modern* times in Europe. End of story.


----------



## CyrusSH

berndf said:


> Same thing in German. The traditional name was _Gelbe Rübe_ (_yellow beet_) or _Möhre/Mohrrübe_ (_more/more-beet_).



Another Sanskrit word for "carrot/wild carrot"  is pitamulaka literally "yellow root", from pita "yellow" and mulaka "root", the second part seems to be cognate with more: Old High German _morha_, _moraha_ (“root of a plant or tree”) and Lithuanian _morka_.

The main PIE word for "root" is *_wréh₂d_, proto-Germanic *_wrōt_ is from the same origin, cognate with Latin _rādīx_, Ancient Greek _rhíza_ and Persian _risha_. Dutch wortel is from this Germanic origin which also means "carrot".

In fact we see "yellow" + "root" as the general word for "carrot" in different languages, without considering the Nordic words for "carrot", Proto-Germanic: *_gul(w)a-_ "yellow" + *_wrōt_ "root" could be another word for "carrot" and at least the second part of this word is the same as _car*rot*_.


----------



## aruniyan

CyrusSH said:


> Another Sanskrit word for "carrot/wild carrot"  is pitamulaka literally "yellow root", from pita "yellow" *and mulaka "root", the second part seems to be cognate with more: Old High German morha, moraha (“root of a plant or tree”) and Lithuanian morka*.
> 
> The main PIE word for "root" is *_wréh₂d_, proto-Germanic *_wrōt_ is from the same origin, cognate with Latin _rādīx_, Ancient Greek _rhíza_ and Persian _risha_. Dutch wortel is from this Germanic origin which also means "carrot".
> 
> In fact we see "yellow" + "root" as the general word for "carrot" in different languages, without considering the Nordic words for "carrot", Proto-Germanic: *_gul(w)a-_ "yellow" + *_wrōt_ "root" could be another word for "carrot" and at least the second part of this word is the same as _car*rot*_.




Mulaka, comes from the south Indian word Mulangi(raddish), the _*mul*_ here is for the "*thorn*" shaped.


----------



## Treaty

I love your ability to mass-produce nonsense. Some carrots are literally yellow roots. Even a kid, whether living 5000 years ago or now, may end up calling those carrots _yellow-root_ the first time they saw them. There are fruits or roots named after their color in every language at any given time. The only conclusion is that people could see colors and knew carrot is a root.


----------



## CyrusSH

aruniyan said:


> Mulaka, comes from the south Indian word Mulangi(raddish), the _*mul*_ here is for the "*thorn*" shaped.



Greek μῶλυ (môlu) "moly", a magic herb with black root, is believed to be from the same origin. It is possible that it had a south Indian origin, black carrot is most commonly found in China and India.


----------



## aruniyan

CyrusSH said:


> Greek μῶλυ (môlu) "moly", a magic herb with black root, is believed to be from the same origin. It is possible that it had a south Indian origin, black carrot is most commonly found in China and India.


Not sure, dont know.


----------



## CyrusSH

Treaty said:


> I love your ability to mass-produce nonsense. Some carrots are literally yellow roots. Even a kid, whether living 5000 years ago or now, may end up calling those carrots _yellow-root_ the first time they saw them. There are fruits or roots named after their color in every language at any given time. The only conclusion is that people could see colors and knew carrot is a root.



You actually confirmed what I said, there is also a word with the same meaning for "carrot" in Gaelic: _curran-buidhe_, of course the word _curran_ itself means "root of the carrot or radish kind", it is similar to Ancient Greek _karôton_ but with different vowels and without _t_.


----------



## berndf

Whatever you think. Coming back to your question:
No, _carrot_ cannot be demonstrated to be the result of a _g>k_ and a _l>r_ shift.
No, _carrot_ is not derived from _gulrot._


----------



## CyrusSH

OK, thanks but it can't change this fact that a Germanic origin is possible for this word, especially because its second part _rot_.


----------



## Treaty

You have built your argument based on wrong assumption from post #1, and of course you get nonsense results. First, Akkadian _girisu_ is just an unknown tree (even if it was "cherry", it would have most like a loan from another language, even a language of pre-IE Greece because it wasn't native to Akkad; so we could've had a _k>g_ from Gk.>Akk. ). Second, Greek words borrowed from Sem. _g-m-l_ "camel" also start with _g_ (_gamma_ and _γαμάλη_). Third, not only there are many words with _g>g_ from Sem. to Gk., there is unvoiced _q>g_ as well (_sigloi_). However, you are sticking with your nonsense argument of _g>k_ based on not even one borrowing but a third , only and only to appeal to your dogmatic belief of Middle Eastern Germanic.

Then you have this paradoxical argument about _gulrot_. There was no yellow carrot in Europe according to yourself. Considering that you accept that the Germanic people were in Europe since around 500BC, there was no yellow carrot around them for 1500 years, until the Medieval times. So, there are only two possibilities:
1) they didn't care about the color of the root (so they continued to call a white or red root as "yellow"); this blows your argument around the color "yellow". Because color would have been irrelevant in naming it.
2) they invented the current _gulrot_ compounds in Medieval era after the yellow carrot was introduced in Europe. Again this blows your argument of making a PG ancestor based on existing _gulrot_ words, because you'd admit that the current _gulrot_ words are not even 1000 years old, let alone to construct a PG word out of them.

P.S. like often, you made up facts: there is no t at the end of Skt. word.


----------



## CyrusSH

Treaty said:


> You have built your argument based on wrong assumption from post #1, and of course you get nonsense results. First, Akkadian _girisu_ is just an unknown tree (even if it was "cherry", it would have most like a loan from another language, even a language of pre-IE Greece because it wasn't native to Akkad; so we could've had a _k>g_ from Gk.>Akk. ). Second, Greek words borrowed from Sem. _g-m-l_ "camel" also start with _g_ (_gamma_ and _γαμάλη_). Third, not only there are many words with _g>g_ from Sem. to Gk., there is unvoiced _q>g_ as well (_sigloi_). However, you are sticking with your nonsense argument of _g>k_ based on not even one borrowing but a third , only and only to appeal to your dogmatic belief of Middle Eastern Germanic.



I created a thread about cherry, there is also a thread about _g>k_ in Greek, I think it better that we discuss about them in their proper threads, not here.



Treaty said:


> Then you have this paradoxical argument about _gulrot_. There was no yellow carrot in Europe according to yourself. Considering that you accept that the Germanic people were in Europe since around 500BC, there was no yellow carrot around them for 1500 years, until the Medieval times. So, there are only two possibilities:
> 1) they didn't care about the color of the root (so they continued to call a white or red root as "yellow"); this blows your argument around the color "yellow". Because color would have been irrelevant in naming it.
> 2) they invented the current _gulrot_ compounds in Medieval era after the yellow carrot was introduced in Europe. Again this blows your argument of making a PG ancestor based on existing _gulrot_ words, because you'd admit that the current _gulrot_ words are not even 1000 years old, let alone to construct a PG word out of them.



The real paradoxical argument is that you say carrots had already spread into Europe by the 3rd millennium BCE but the European words for carrots date back to medieval or modern ages, or you say here that Nordic people shouldn't call carrot "yellow root" because it was not yellow in the ancient times but in modern times they still call it "yellow root", however it is certainly orange, not yellow.


----------



## Treaty

CyrusSH said:


> The real paradoxical argument is that you say carrots had already spread into Europe by the 3rd millennium BCE *but the European words for carrots date back to medieval or modern ages*


Where did I claim such a thing? We were very clear that European languages had words for carrots (e.g., PG *_murxōn_). In Medieval times, the *yellow *carrot was imported into Europe, which was far superior in taste (and color) than the wild European one. This is why some languages felt that it deserves another name (or they might not have even understood that their old carrots and the new ones are the same genus).


CyrusSH said:


> they still call it "yellow root", however it is certainly orange, not yellow


Orange was always considered a shade of yellow (note "orange" itself an imported word), and the relationship between the yellow and orange (and purple) carrot were well understood. So, it wouldn't have made much difference. But anyway, how do you know carrots were yellow even 2000 years ago? This is the core of your argument.


----------

