# Russian&Czech "soul, breath" and Turkic "birth, dead, alive"



## ancalimon

I have come upon these three words

Czech:

spirit: duch
http://translate.google.com/#auto|cs|soul

soul: duše
http://translate.google.com/#auto|en|du%C5%A1e

breath: dech
http://translate.google.com/#auto|en|dech

Turkish:

birth: doğ
alive, healthy: sağ
soul,spirit: ruh (Although Semitic, I think it's related to SUW: water)
Because it was believed among Turks that humans came to Earth within rain and lightning.

yas: death, mourning
yaşa: live
Russian "soul":  duh

My question is did "duh" enter Russian through Arabic or did "ruh" enter Arabic through Russian or did it enter both Russian and Arabic though another Turkic word (suw)?

Or did it enter Arabic from Russian through Turkic or did it enter Russian from Arabic through Turkic?


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## Ben Jamin

ancalimon said:


> I have come upon these three words
> 
> Czech:
> 
> spirit: duch
> http://translate.google.com/#auto|cs|soul
> 
> soul: duše
> http://translate.google.com/#auto|en|du%C5%A1e
> 
> breath: dech
> http://translate.google.com/#auto|en|dech
> 
> Turkish:
> 
> birth: doğ
> alive, healthy: sağ
> soul,spirit: ruh (Although Semitic, I think it's related to SUW: water)
> Because it was believed among Turks that humans came to Earth within rain and lightning.
> 
> yas: death, mourning
> yaşa: live
> Russian "soul": duh
> 
> My question is did "duh" enter Russian through Arabic or did "ruh" enter Arabic through Russian or did it enter both Russian and Arabic though another Turkic word (suw)?
> 
> Or did it enter Arabic from Russian through Turkic or did it enter Russian from Arabic through Turkic?


 
Soul in Russian is Душа (dusha). 'Duh' does not exist in Russian, as this language does not have an 'h' sound. 'Dusha' and 'Ruh' have nothing to do with each other. You are on a false track. Moreover, no foreign word imported to Russian, and beginning with an 'R' could ever possibly be transformed to a 'D'.


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## origumi

_duse_ is from PIE *dhwes- (I think)
_ruh _is Arabic load into Turkish (most likely, as Abu Rashid told you recently in another thread)


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## ancalimon

http://www.tdk.org.tr/lehceler/Default.aspx

type ruh and press enter

Turkic dialects dictionary gives me two words for soul in Russian

DUH  and  DUŞA

Actually the Ş and H sounds are supposed to be very similar.

I'm actually more interested in from which language did "ruh" enter Arabic. I know it entered Turkish from Arabic.


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## Ihsiin

Well, ultimately Proto-Semitic. Note cognates in Hebrew (רוח- ruaħ), Aramiac (*ܪܘܚܐ* - ruħa) and probably other Semitic languages which Wiktionary doesn't tell me about.


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## DarkChild

Duh (more correctly duKH) exists in Bulgarian and means spirit. Dusha means soul.


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## Ben Jamin

ancalimon said:


> http://www.tdk.org.tr/lehceler/Default.aspx
> 
> type ruh and press enter
> 
> Turkic dialects dictionary gives me two words for soul in Russian
> 
> DUH and DUŞA
> 
> Actually the Ş and H sounds are supposed to be very similar.
> 
> I'm actually more interested in from which language did "ruh" enter Arabic. I know it entered Turkish from Arabic.


 Your dictionary is not very accurate. As stated before, DUH does not exist in Russian. The word 'dukh' exists, and has many meanings, among them 'spirit', but not soul.


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## ancalimon

Ben Jamin said:


> Your dictionary is not very accurate. As stated before, DUH does not exist in Russian. The word 'dukh' exists, and has many meanings, among them 'spirit', but not soul.



Aren't they pronounced the same? (at least in Turkish)  Also soul and spirit mean the same thing in Turkish.


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## Gita-Etymology

Ben Jamin is right, Russian _дух_ is usually transcribed in English as _dukh_ or sometimes _duch_, I don't know how Russian words are transcribed in Turkey. However, Russian /х/ is a single sound, so maybe transcribing as _h_ is easier on the eye.

Would the traditional reconstruction help here?

The idea is:
Russian _духъ_ (tur. DUH) = Czech _duch_ > *duchъ 'spirit' > **dou-s-o-s
Russian _душа /duša_ (tur. DUŞA) = Czech _du_še 'soul' > *duša 'soul' > **dou-s-i-a
Russian -_дох_- = Czech _dech_ > *dъchъ 'breath' > **du-s-o-s

ъ is a kind of short _u_ or schwa, it comes from non-long _u_ or _o_ at the end of a word
The * forms are reconstructed Common Slavic, the ** forms are what came before that.

So as you can see, **dousos (Russian DUH_)_, **dousia (Russian DUŞA,) and **dusos (Russian -DOH-) are usually viewed as all derivatives of a verbal root **dou- "breathe".

There is also Slavic RUH (*ruchъ), "movement".


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## Gita-Etymology

> Aren't they pronounced the same? (at least in Turkish)


Yes, you are correct DUH and DUŞA are correct phonetic transcriptions of дух and душа using the Turkish alphabet.


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## Ben Jamin

ancalimon said:


> Aren't they pronounced the same? (at least in Turkish)  Also soul and spirit mean the same thing in Turkish.


I do not know if H and KH are pronounced alike in Turkish, and very few members of the forum knows. In phonetics, however, it is important to distinguish between H and KH sounds which in many languages are separate phonemes. Some Slavic languages (Ukrainian, Czech) have different phonemes H and KH. Also German has the two phonemes. Russian has only KH, and H from other languages is represented in Russian by a G letter and a G sound.
So, Hanover is spelled and pronounced in Russian as Ganover.

The simplifications Turkish dictionaries do are only relevant for Turkish speakers.


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## Maroseika

Ben Jamin said:


> So, Hanover is spelled and pronounced in Russian as Ganover.



Hannover is really written in Rusisan as Ганновер and pronounced as [ganover], but this is nothing more than a tradition. G and H were transcribed in Russian in different ways om different times, a typical example is Олдос Хаксли (Khaksli), the grandson of Томас Гексли (Geksli).


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## ancalimon

Ben Jamin said:


> I do not know if H and KH are pronounced alike in Turkish, and very few members of the forum knows. In phonetics, however, it is important to distinguish between H and KH sounds which in many languages are separate phonemes. Some Slavic languages (Ukrainian, Czech) have different phonemes H and KH. Also German has the two phonemes. Russian has only KH, and H from other languages is represented in Russian by a G letter and a G sound.
> So, Hanover is spelled and pronounced in Russian as Ganover.
> 
> The simplifications Turkish dictionaries do are only relevant for Turkish speakers.



In Turkish we both have the H and KH sounds but KH is always written as H.

Usually people in rural parts of Turkey (and I know it sounds weird but the more educated people get, the less they make the KH sound) use the KH sound and it sounds archaic. In big cities and Western part of Turkey, people do not pronounce the KH sound. It is regarded as vulgar, rude way of speaking although sometimes you can hear people make that sound to sound funny.

Although it is regarded as rude, the most polite person I knew was my fathers great-uncle. He always used the KH sound when speaking but he literally thanked a tree for 15 minutes in front of my eyes before collecting fruits form it.


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## Ben Jamin

ancalimon said:


> In Turkish we both have the H and KH sounds but KH is always written as H.
> 
> Usually people in rural parts of Turkey (and I know it sounds weird but the more educated people get, the less they make the KH sound) use the KH sound and it sounds archaic. In big cities and Western part of Turkey, people do not pronounce the KH sound. It is regarded as vulgar, rude way of speaking although sometimes you can hear people make that sound to sound funny.
> 
> Although it is regarded as rude, the most polite person I knew was my fathers great-uncle. He always used the KH sound when speaking but he literally thanked a tree for 15 minutes in front of my eyes before collecting fruits form it.



It means that the sounds are allophones (it does not change the meaning if you use the one or the other pronunciation). In many languages there is a phonemic difference between the two sounds, they are different phonemes, and using one or another changes the words meaning. But even if a word has no corresponding word with the other phoneme, mixing up the pronunciation will be considered a language error, as they are treated as completely different sounds.


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## ancalimon

Ben Jamin said:


> It means that the sounds are allophones (it does not change the meaning if you use the one or the other pronunciation). In many languages there is a phonemic difference between the two sounds, they are different phonemes, and using one or another changes the words meaning. But even if a word has no corresponding word with the other phoneme, mixing up the pronunciation will be considered a language error, as they are treated as completely different sounds.



In Turkish the KH sound is more like Q sound and H is more like "giving your breath out".

So "H is giving you breath out", while KH is doing the same but at the same time "close your epiglottis".  It's more like a "SH" sound made with the uvula.


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