# Etymology of Persian دروغ/doruq (lie, deceit)



## PersoLatin

What is the etymology of Persian دروغ/doruq please?

MacKenzie Pahlavi dictionary lists a verb _druxtan, drōz_, meaning to lie, deceive but دروغ/doruq itself is shown as _drō_.


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## Derakhshan

IIRC دروغ is a loanword from Parthian _drōγ._


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## Treaty

Can't it just be a continuation of OP _drauga_?


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## PersoLatin

My question is about the missing ending in MP _drō_, so where did the /g/ of OP _drauga_ go and where did غ of the NP دروغ come from?


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## Treaty

ɣ/g and w/v are changed to each other in some Iranian dialects (e.g. _bāɣ _vs _bāw, murɣ _vs _murw_, _marv _vs _margiana_, etc.). I wonder if this is another example. Roots ending with Ir. j* (>NP z) sometimes have a version ending with ɣ/g (e.g. دوغ from *_dauj _and یوغ from *_i̯auj_, دروغ is from *_drauj _< probably PIE *_dhreugh_). I don't know whether this is related to the structure of those words or particular to some dialects (i.e. NE or NW) then borrowed in Persian.

* I can't paste the specific character here. It is a caron ̌ over j.


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## fdb

Old Persian /g/ after vowels normally becomes /w/ in Middle Persian. MP drō comes from OP drauga- (via *drauw or the like). NP durōɣ is a non-SW form, probably from Parthian, as others have mentioned.


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## PersoLatin

Derakhshan said:


> IIRC دروغ is a loanword from Parthian _drōγ._


Presumably Parthian _drōγ _shared the same root as OP _drauga_, then would that be classed as wholesale 'borrowing'? When only _γ_, or the sound change of the last letter, was borrowed.


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## Derakhshan

Well in a lot of these Parthian borrowings it's a 1-2 letter difference.

MMP _drw_ is usually transcribed _drōw_. So it's the _ɣ_/_w _NW-SW difference which fdb mentioned.

Another example of this difference is *_bāga_ > SW _bāw_, NW _bāɣ. _Again here NP has the NW form, probably from Parthian.

There are more examples like _damistān_/_zamistān_ (NP _zemestân_), _bišehk_/_bizišk_ (NP _pezešk_)...

Edit: In case anyone is confused, this _γ_ is a Greek gamma symbol, not _y, _and represents a voiced velar fricative (like غ). I should probably use the symbol _ɣ_ so as not to cause confusion.


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## PersoLatin

Derakhshan said:


> Well in a lot of these Parthian borrowings it's a 1-2 letter difference.
> 
> MMP _drw_ is usually transcribed _drōw_. So it's the _γ_/_w _NW-SW difference which fdb mentioned.
> 
> Another example of this difference is *_bāga_ > SW _bāw_, NW _bāγ. _Again here NP has the NW form, probably from Parthian.
> 
> There are more examples like _damistān_/_zamistān_ (NP _zemestân_), _bišehk_/_bizišk_ (NP _pezešk_)...


Thank you.

I guess I can not convinced myself that _γ_ in Parthian _drōγ, /w/_ in MP _drō_ and /ga/ in OP /drauga/ were pronounced that differently from one another, where do I need to look for evidence that those letters sounded they way we now believe they do?

I have the same issue with /p/ and /b/ in this: _bišehk_/_bizišk_ (NP _pezešk_) and other letters in other words.


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## Derakhshan

For /p/ and /b/, I'm not sure what the issue is, both Pahlavi and Manichaean scripts differentiated between them. So if it had a /p/, it would have been spelled as such. Although_, _Manichaean generally corresponded more closely to pronunciation than Pahlavi and had less historical spellings and Aramaeograms.


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## fdb

The authentic words for “doctor” and “medicine” have b-, not p-, in old and middle Iranian languages (and in Sanskrit). Early New Persian had bizišk, but this died out in the spoken language. It is recorded in the Indo-Persian dictionaries, but wrongly pointed with p-. This is one of the fake antique words that were “revived” as part of the re-Aryanisation of the language at the time of Reza Shah.


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## Treaty

PersoLatin said:


> _γ_ in Parthian _drōγ, _and /ga/ in OP /drauga/


I think the main languages around (Greek, Aramaic and Elamite) did not distinguish between _γ _and velar g. If this is correct, the exact nature of the OP g is difficult to guess.


PersoLatin said:


> _ /w/_ in MP _drō_ and /ga/ in OP /drauga/


That's a bit different. There are examples (I know of  Marv < Margiana and mōbed< magupati, and possibly _babr_ < _vagr_?_ < _In._ viaghra_) which certainly had an original [g] in OIr/OP. We can add this the general disappearance of [g] in MP and later (e.g. nagan > naan, dagr > diir, etc.) which point that there was something going on with [g] not just a matter of orthography.


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## PersoLatin

Treaty said:


> I think the main languages around (Greek, Aramaic and Elamite) did not distinguish between _γ _and velar g. If this is correct, the exact nature of the OP g is difficult to guess.


While we are here, do we know where the final /a/ in _drauga_ comes from, is it etymological/is it assumed it was pronounced?


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## fdb

Treaty said:


> We can add this the general disappearance of [g] in MP and later (e.g. nagan > naan, dagr > diir, etc.) which point that there was something going on with [g] not just a matter of orthography.



In darga- > dagr > dēr the /g/ does not simply disappear; it mutates the preceding vowel.


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## Treaty

PersoLatin said:


> While we are here, do we know where the final /a/ in _drauga_ comes from, is it etymological/is it assumed it was pronounced?


The root was *_draug _(or *_drauj_) but this root was genderless, case-less, numberless, etc. There might not be a realistic situation that such a root was used in spoken OP. On the other hand, _drauga _is the nominative singular masculine form, which we define as the base (and probably they did too). This _-a_ nominative ending was common in Old IIr. languages, including the roughly contemporary Sanskrit and Young Avestan. Therefore, *certainly*, there was a time that Persian also had this _-a _in _drauga _and there was a later time which it didn't. I think because OP grammar is more similar to YAv. and Skt. than to MP, we assumed that it still had the _-a_ ending (at least in the formal dialect on which the inscriptions are based)***. It makes sense to consider that such endings disappeared only when their importance faded. This will be when the speakers began abandoning such case-based declensions (i.e. the shift from OP to MP).

*** there may be other evidence like the loanwords in Greek and Elamite.


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## fdb

Not quite right. draug- (in ablaut with drug-) is a root, an abstract entity. The noun drauga- is a thematic stem; -a- is the thematic vowel. The case endings come after it. Middle Iranian drōɣ and drō are from the accusative singular draug-a-m (root + thematic vowel + case ending).

The ending (thematic vowel + case ending) for the nominative singular of masculine thematic nouns is *-as in proto-Indo-Iranian, -aḥ (with sandhi variants) in Sanskrit, -ō in Avestan, -ah > a in Old Persian.


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## Treaty

Thanks for the correction.


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## PersoLatin

fdb said:


> The noun drauga- is a thematic stem; -a- is the thematic vowel.


Can you please explain what a 'thematic vowel' is? 

I found the following but I still don''t get it.

"In Indo-European studies, a *thematic vowel* or *theme vowel* is the *vowel* *e or *o from ablaut placed before the ending of a Proto-Indo-European (PIE) word. ... Used more generally, a *thematic vowel* is any *vowel* found at the end of the stem of a word."


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