# Proto-Germanic *mudra "mud" and Semitic root m-d-r "mud"



## CyrusSH

We have Syriac _medra_, Dutch _modder_, Arabic _madar_, Low German _mudder_, ... with the meaning of "mud", do these words relate to each other?


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## Treaty

Something tells me there is a reason that you forgot to cite Etymonline or Wikitionary, like you always did .


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## CyrusSH

They have actually nothing to say about this word, Etymonline says it is cognate with the Sanskrit word for urine!! and Wiktionary says it is a loanword from a Uralic language!


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## Treaty

CyrusSH said:


> actually nothing


"Actually nothing"?
Etymonline: _from PIE *(s)meu-/*mu-_
Wikitionary: _from __Proto-Indo-European_ _*mū-__, __*mew-__ (“moist”) ... _[or] ... from Proto-Uralic _*muďa_.​
I don't say they are necessarily correct, but far more than "nothing", esp. comparing to your suggestion. By the way, if *_mutaz_ is from Uralic, it is likely not to be the source of *_muþraz _(both roots seem to be limited to West Grm. though)_, _making the latter likelier to be from the said PIE root, structurally akin to Indo-Iranian _mūtra._


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## CyrusSH

Treaty said:


> "Actually nothing"?
> Etymonline: _from PIE *(s)meu-/*mu-_
> Wikitionary: _from __Proto-Indo-European_ _*mū-__, __*mew-__ (“moist”) ... _[or] ... from Proto-Uralic _*muďa_.​
> I don't say they are necessarily correct, but far more than "nothing", esp. comparing to your suggestion. By the way, if *_mutaz_ is from Uralic, it is likely not to be the source of *_muþraz _(both roots seem to be limited to West Grm. though)_, _making the latter likelier to be from the said PIE root, structurally akin to Indo-Iranian _mūtra._



I don't know why all things are considered possible but the relation between Germanic and Semitic is impossible, do you really think that all of these similar words with similar meanings are pure coincidence?! Or is it forbidden to think about it?


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## Treaty

Because 1) Germanic is an IE language (so it is probable that its vocabulary has IE etymology), 2) Germanic/IE and Sameyodic people were in contact for thousands of years, making a loan between them probable. 

Anyway, coincidence is a statistical term. You can roughly calculate it. If there are around 3800 PG roots*** (I guessed by considering 8 roots per page in Orel's 475 pages) with a semantic similarity (range of 5) and with 16 consonants and without considering vowels, it is normal (with p<.01) to have up to 33 matches. If we consider a looser similarity (e.g., as you did here with _d_ ~ _þ, _not _t_), up to *110 *coincidental matches would be normal, theoretically. If we reduce the semantic range to 2 (that is almost the exact meanings of both PS and PG words, which is not the case here), still around 25 matches are normal. 

* I assumed all of them can be expressed in three letters as many Semitic roots.


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## CyrusSH

Treaty said:


> Because 1) Germanic is an IE language (so it is probable that its vocabulary has IE etymology)



Urine is a liquid like water, cloud is made of water vapor and mud is a mixture of soil and water, so the words for "urine", "cloud" and "mud" have the same PIE origin, what about "Coca-Cola"?! by this logic, I can can prove all similar IE words have the same origin!


> 2) Germanic/IE and Sameyodic people were in contact for thousands of years, making a loan between them probable.



You will be right, if you mention some other Sameyodic words in Germanic/IE language.


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## Treaty

CyrusSH said:


> by this logic, I can can prove all similar IE words have the same origin!


*Yes*, of course. Have you forgotten you were connecting whatever Semitic word you could find ("to bathe", "to wash", "red", "dye", etc.) to "soap"? 

However, the first difference is that there are *more than two* IE branches to compare. In the calculation above, if I had compared 3 languages, instead of 2, the number of expected coincidental matches would have been less than 20, and if 4 languages, almost none expected match (this is why we should be cautious about PIE roots attested in only two IE branches - like those proposed for _saipo/sebum_).

The second difference is that you disregard or consider sound laws whenever you please. In another thread, you connected _k-r-y_ with _hire _or _sabu_ and _saipo_, following Grimm's _k>x_ and _b>p_ shifts; however, you also connected _sapu_ and _saipo_ (_p~p_), _gaitz_ with _gaid_- (with _g~g _but _d>t_) or here, _m-d-r_ with _muþraz _(_d > þ_). This is like actively inviting coincidence into your theories, or if you like, marinating them in Coke .


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## CyrusSH

Treaty said:


> *Yes*, of course. Have you forgotten you were connecting whatever Semitic word you could find ("to bathe", "to wash", "red", "dye", etc.) to "soap"?



I wonder why you think that I'm connecting these words, for example look at this book, about the word _sapindus_: "CRC World Dictionary of Medicinal and Poisonous Plants: Common Names, Scientific Names, Eponyms, Synonyms, and Etymology", CRC Press, Apr 19, 2016: CRC World Dictionary of Medicinal and Poisonous Plants

It is not my fault that there are some scholars who research out of your limited scope of thinking.



Treaty said:


> However, the first difference is that there are *more than two* IE branches to compare. In the calculation above, if I had compared 3 languages, instead of 2, the number of expected coincidental matches would have been less than 20, and if 4 languages, almost none expected match (this is why we should be cautious about PIE roots attested in only two IE branches - like those proposed for _saipo/sebum_).



It is clear that there are two different PIE roots for [Greek _mydos_ "moisture" & Old Irish _muad_ "cloud"] and [Sanskrit _mutra-_ "urine" / Avestan _muthra-_ "excrement"], the first one refers to vapour and the second one refers to body waste, none of them can be related to mud. What we read in etymonline is what we call قیاس مع الفارق.



Treaty said:


> The second difference is that you disregard or consider sound laws whenever you please. In another thread, you connected _k-r-y_ with _hire _or _sabu_ and _saipo_, following Grimm's _k>x_ and _b>p_ shifts; however, you also connected _sapu_ and _saipo_ (_p~p_), _gaitz_ with _gaid_- (with _g~g _but _d>t_) or here, _m-d-r_ with _muþraz _(_d > þ_). This is like actively inviting coincidence into your theories, or if you like, marinating them in Coke .



If we want to focus on sound changes, we should search for the oldest forms of the words in the Semitic languages, as I read, Old Akakdian didn't have voiced stops (b,d,g) but over time it had developed aspirated stops (bʰ,dʰ,gʰ) and then voiced stops, so Akkadian root _m-dʰ-r_ could be changed to Germanic _mudder_.

As I explained about Akkadian _gadu_ "young goat, kid", the Germanic word for "goat" could be from *_gʰaido_ and the Germanic word for "kid" from *_gaidʰo_.


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## Treaty

CyrusSH said:


> If we want to focus on sound changes, we should search for the oldest forms of the words in the Semitic languages, as I read, Old Akakdian didn't have voiced stops (b,d,g) but over time it had developed aspirated stops (bʰ,dʰ,gʰ) and then voiced stops, so Akkadian root _m-dʰ-r_ could be changed to Germanic _mudder_.


I think you have mistaken Sumerian with Akkadian (Semitic has always had voiced stops). By the way, there seems to be no Akkadian _m-d-r_ (can you show me?). Even if there was, it would have been corresponded with _t_ not _þ _in Germanic *_muþraz_ (and if you consider _dh_, then it would be _d_, not even _t_) . Besides, there is no "Germanic" _mudder_, it is Low German, apparently.


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## berndf

Treaty said:


> Besides, there is no "Germanic" _mudder_, it is Low German, apparently.


Exactly. And, actually, it isn't _mudder_ but _modder_.


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## CyrusSH

Treaty said:


> I think you have mistaken Sumerian with Akkadian (Semitic has always had voiced stops). By the way, there seems to be no Akkadian _m-d-r_ (can you show me?). Even if there was, it would have been corresponded with _t_ not _þ _in Germanic *_muþraz_ (and if you consider _dh_, then it would be _d_, not even _t_) . Besides, there is no "Germanic" _mudder_, it is Low German, apparently.



Akkadian is an extinct language, if we can't find _m-d-r_ in the Akkadian texts which have been discovered so far, it won't mean that this word didn't exist in this language.

You say "Semitic has always had voiced stops." but you yourself know that there is no _g_ sound in Arabic, the fact is that in the earliest Akkadian texts there were no signs for representing voiced stops (b,d,g) but just voiceless stops (p,t,k), of course there could be different reasons for it, one of them could be what I said.

I don't know what you mean by _muþraz_ but the earliest Akkadian word should be read as _m-t-r_ (if it existed), then _m-dʰ-r _ and finally _m-d-r_, like the Arabic word.


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## berndf

CyrusSH said:


> You say "Semitic has always had voiced stops."


Indeed.


CyrusSH said:


> the fact is that in the earliest Akkadian texts there were no signs for representing voiced stops (b,d,g) but just voiceless stops (p,t,k)


Sumerian.


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## Ihsiin

CyrusSH said:


> there is no _g_ sound in Arabic



There is


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## CyrusSH

berndf said:


> Sumerian.



Not just Sumerian but Old Akkadian too, for example 
	

	
	
		
		

		
			





=ka, 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




=pu, 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




=ta, 
	

	
	
		
		

		
		
	


	




=ti, but there is no sign for _ga_ or _bu_, ... in fact Akkadian and Sumerian had almost the same phonology, unlike all other Semitic languages, Akkadian had only one non-sibilant fricative: _x_ which existed in Sumerian too, some linguists consider Old Akkadian as Sumero-Akkadian language.


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## berndf

CyrusSH said:


> Akkadian and Sumerian had almost the same phonology


No. The Akkadian was written with Sumerian script. It took a while until they developed it into a script that suited Akkadian phonology.


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## djara

CyrusSH said:


> Arabic _madar_


The actual meaning of this disused word is 'pieces of dry clay' (Kitaab al-'ayn)
المَدَرُ: قِطَعُ طينٍ يابِسٍ، الواحدة مَدَرة.
الخليل بن أحمد، كتاب العين


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## CyrusSH

berndf said:


> No. The Akkadian was written with Sumerian script. It took a while until they developed it into a script that suited Akkadian phonology.



If voiced stops existed in Old Akkadian then what would be the reason of _b>p_, _d>t/ţ_, _g>k/q_ sound changes in Akkadian loanwords from Sumerian? like Akkadian ţuppu from Sumerian _dub_ and kiru from Sumerian _gir_.


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## berndf

Sumerian had in all likelihood no voiced stops. The spelling _dub_ is nothing but a learned convention to avoid having to distinguish_ t _and _th_ and _p_ an _ph_, like in modern Chinese pinyin. Sumerian had two slates of stops, Semitic has three.


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## CyrusSH

berndf said:


> Sumerian had in all likelihood no voiced stops. The spelling _dub_ is nothing but a learned convention to avoid having to distinguish_ t _and _th_ and _p_ an _ph_, like in modern Chinese pinyin. Sumerian had two slates of stops, Semitic has three.



So you believe Sumerian _gir_ was originally _kʰir_? Why the Akkadian word is not _xiru_ but _kiru_? and why we see _gir_ in all other Semitic languages? About _dub_, we also see that Old Persian and Arabic words begin with _d_, not _t_, does it mean there were _p>b_, _t>d_, _k>g_ sound changes?


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## Delvo

Final "-r" that sometimes appears in Germanic nouns is not part of the root. It's from a suffix, which had previously been "-z", which came from "-s" in PIE. So there's no way it can connect with an ancient Semitic "-r" because the Germanic "-r" didn't exist yet at the time. This is the same kind of thing that happens every single time I analyze the Indo-European side of your claims: it always turns out that the phonetics just plain don't work and obviously can't possibly work.

And none of the Arabic or Hebrew words I get for "mud", "dirt", or "earth" at Google Translate are anywhere near any version of that, with or without the final "-r". Of course, it's possible that some obscure word like that existed ages ago and not in those languages' modern forms, or is still present and found in some dictionaries but obscure enough to be left out of others, but it's suspicious that that's the same result I get every single time I try looking up the Semitic words in your claims: you never turn out to be using a Semitic word that's sufficiently standard & well-established to find any indications of it anywhere other than in your posts.

Just give it up. This constant desperate floundering for a connection that's just not there has gotten absurd.


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## eamp

Germanic certainly had "r" suffixes so you can't generalize like that. A form like *_mudra_- is plausible for the Dutch/Low German word and could be analyzed as *_mu_-_dra_- or *_mud_-_ra_-. The latter might be suggested by the existence of forms without "r" like _modde_, _mudde _in Middle Dutch and Low German with pretty much the same meaning. 
Thing is though that these words all seem to crop up only in the late Middle Ages in a variety of dialectal forms with meanings such as "mud; bog" or "rot, decay". It's possible they go back to an old Germanic root that was only preserved in a very restricted area and later resurfaced again and spread more widely. However we could also simply be dealing with a more recent invention. Not sure anything much more definitive can be said about the prehistory of this word given the available evidence...


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## CyrusSH

Delvo said:


> Final "-r" that sometimes appears in Germanic nouns is not part of the root.



So it can't be related to Sanskrit _mutra_ and Avestan _muthra_? The same thing can be said about several other Germanic words, for example proto-Germanic *_nadra_ "serpent" didn't relate to Celtic _natra_ and Latin _natrix_, proto-Germanic  *sindra "cinder" didn't relate to Slavic  _sę̄dra_,  proto-Germanic  *wedra "weather" didn't relate to Slavic  _vedro_, proto-Germanic _akra_ "acre" didn't relate to Sanskrit ájra and Greek agró, ...


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## Delvo

CyrusSH said:


> The same thing can be said about several other Germanic words, for example proto-Germanic *_nadra_ "serpent"... *sindra "cinder"...  *wedra "weather"... _*akra_ "acre"...


Complete with the suffix, those are *nadraz, *sindraz, *wedraz, and *akraz, from PIE *neHtros, *sendʰros, *wedʰros, and *h₂eǵros. (And the latter two didn't even mean what you just said they did.) Notice that the R comes before the Z/S with a vowel between them because the R and the Z/S are two separate things in those cases: R in the root, Z/S suffix. And even without that suffix, the R isn't final; a vowel is. The R that you just tried to depict as equivalent to the suffix I was talking about is not.

For "mud", the Germanic root is *mud. There's no R. Forms like *mudr or *mudra exist, but only by tacking on a suffix. That's why German and Dutch "Mudder" and "modder" also had the forms "Mudde" and "modde"; the R was disposable because it was just a suffix, not part of the root (and several millennia too late to have anything to do with any word in Proto-Semitic or Akkadian anyway even if the resemblance were there as you claim). Your cherry-picking of only the versions that happen to have it in order to try to depict it as if it were built in all along is not just uninformed or illogical but dishonest.


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## berndf

Delvo said:


> Complete with the suffix, those are *nadraz, *sindraz, *wedraz, and *akraz


To be pedantic, _-az_ is a nominative _ending_, not a _suffix_.


Delvo said:


> For "mud", the Germanic root is *mud.


Like @eamp, I am not so sure about that.



CyrusSH said:


> So it can't be related to Sanskrit _mutra_ and Avestan _muthra_?


They might well be connected: DWDS              –                Moder


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## CyrusSH

Delvo said:


> Complete with the suffix, those are *nadraz, *sindraz, *wedraz, and *akraz, from PIE *neHtros, *sendʰros, *wedʰros, and *h₂eǵros. (And the latter two didn't even mean what you just said they did.) Notice that the R comes before the Z/S with a vowel between them because the R and the Z/S are two separate things in those cases: R in the root, Z/S suffix. And even without that suffix, the R isn't final; a vowel is. The R that you just tried to depict as equivalent to the suffix I was talking about is not.
> 
> For "mud", the Germanic root is *mud. There's no R. Forms like *mudr or *mudra exist, but only by tacking on a suffix. That's why German and Dutch "Mudder" and "modder" also had the forms "Mudde" and "modde"; the R was disposable because it was just a suffix, not part of the root (and several millennia too late to have anything to do with any word in Proto-Semitic or Akkadian anyway even if the resemblance were there as you claim). Your cherry-picking of only the versions that happen to have it in order to try to depict it as if it were built in all along is not just uninformed or illogical but dishonest.



What do you think about the English word _east_? Dutch _oost_, German _ost_ but Swedish _oster_, Icelandic _austur_, is it from Germanic *_austra_? Cognate with Balto-Slavic *_auštra_, Albanian *_ausra_, Italic *_austeros_, ...?

Isn't it more possible that _ra_ has been lost gradually in some Germanic words than a useless suffix was added and then removed?


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## CyrusSH

berndf said:


> They might well be connected: DWDS              –                Moder



According to your link: modder, mudder, mōder ‘Schlamm, Kot’, What does it mean by _Kot_? German kot means both "mud" and "feces".

It is interesting to know in Persian _kut/kud_ means "feces, dung, manure, fertilizer" and in Arabic _moder_ means "excessive urine, diuretic" and _madar_ means "mud, fertile soil, loam".


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## berndf

CyrusSH said:


> What does it mean by _Kot_?


Feces.



CyrusSH said:


> It is interesting to know in Persian _kut/kud_ means "feces, dung, manure, fertilizer" and in Arabic _moder_ means "excessive urine, diuretic" and _madar_ means "mud, fertile soil, loam".


No, it isn't interesting in the context of this thread. The roots are completely unrelated.


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## CyrusSH

berndf said:


> No, it isn't interesting in the context of this thread. The roots are completely unrelated.



You are right about Arabic _moder_, it is from the root _d-r-r_ "to cause to flow", Persian _idrar_ "urine" is a loanword from an Arabic word with the same root, I don't know it could be possible that Sanskrit _mutra_ "urine" and Avestan _muthra_ "excrement" were early loanwords from a similar Semitic word or not.


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## berndf

If we look at the semantic range in the Semitic words, Judeo-Aramaic, Syriac and Arabic, the core meaning seems to be _clay_. The meaning _mud_ occurs only in Syriac. If we now assume, which it just a hypothetical assumption, that the Germanic words connect to Sanskrit and Avestan, the core meaning seems to be something _rotten_ or _rotting_. The semantic link is very loose and not at all compelling.

On the other hand, if Delvo is right and the _-r-_ is a Germanic suffix (and not a IE one) and the Germanic root is _mud-_ then the connection to Sanskrit and Avestan looks very shaky and we have a Germanic and a Semitic word that aren't too similar and that can't be traced back more than some 2000 years.

Either way, difficult to find a connection and there is no identifiable Semitic root_ m-d-r_ with any connection to any of these words.


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## CyrusSH

I found the Akkadian word, that is *miṭru* from this Semitic root:


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## berndf

That's getting silly.


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## momai

CyrusSH said:


> You are right about Arabic _moder_, it is from the root _d-r-r_ "to cause to flow", Persian _idrar_ "urine" is a loanword from an Arabic word with the same root, I don't know it could be possible that Sanskrit _mutra_ "urine" and Avestan _muthra_ "excrement" were early loanwords from a similar Semitic word or not.


Idraar in Arabic indicates an excessive production of,amongst other things, liquids. In classical dictinaries it's mostly (only?) used for milk while in modern Arabic it is used for urine, too.


CyrusSH said:


> I found the Akkadian word, that is *miṭru* from this Semitic root:


I guess, this is somehow a cognate of the Arabic word for rain, namely مطر, which as you can see is completely another root.


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## CyrusSH

berndf said:


> That's getting silly.



Why?!!



momai said:


> Idraar in Arabic indicates an excessive production of,amongst other things, liquids. In classical dictinaries it's mostly (only?) used for milk while in modern Arabic it is used for urine, too.



What about other Semitic languages? In Quran _medraran_ just relates to rain (11:52, 6:6, 71:11) for example: "يُرْسِلِ السَّمَاءَ عَلَيْكُمْ مِدْرَارًا"



momai said:


> I guess, this is somehow a cognate of the Arabic word for rain, namely مطر, which as you can see is completely another root.



I think these roots relate to each other, compare to Arabic roots _ṭ-w-r_ and _d-w-r_ "turn".


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## berndf

CyrusSH said:


> Why?!!


Because there is nothing more to say than this:


momai said:


> مطر, which as you can see is completely another root.


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## CyrusSH

berndf said:


> Because there is nothing more to say than this:



Akkadian root _m-ṭ-r_ relates to "watered-field", not "rain", but in almost all other Semitic languages this root just means "rain", on the other hand we can't find Semitic root _m-d-r_ in Akkadian, so I think _m-ṭ-r_ has been changed to _m-d-r_.


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## berndf

CyrusSH said:


> I think _m-ṭ-r_ has been changed to _m-d-r_.


As I said it is getting silly. With such absurd ad-hoc assumptions you can relate virtually anything to anything. Just drop it.


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## Delvo

If {*ṭ*} became {*d*} in that case, that should be one example of a general pattern of {*ṭ*} becoming {*d*}, of which there should be other examples. Collect as many example of that particular sound relationship as you can, and _then_ you will have finally at least _begun_ to form a coherent sensible case.


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## CyrusSH

Delvo said:


> If {*ṭ*} became {*d*} in that case, that should be one example of a general pattern of {*ṭ*} becoming {*d*}, of which there should be other examples. Collect as many example of that particular sound relationship as you can, and _then_ you will have finally at least _begun_ to form a coherent sensible case.


We have discussed about it in this thread, the fact is that voiced stops (b,d,g) didn't exist in the Old Akkadian texts and they were developed later from voiceless stops (p,t/ţ,k/q), an example that I mentioned was Akkadian _ţuppu_ which has been changed to _duf_ in Arabic.


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## berndf

The difference is that _m-ṭ-r _is a genuine Semitic root and not a loan from Sumerian. The transcription ambiguity therefore does not matter here.

Of course you could argue that the Akkadian word isn't really _m-ṭ-r _ but that it is a mistaken assumption in the transliteration. But here you are presupposing what you are trying to prove.


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## CyrusSH

According to this website: PSD: home page, Sumerian *mudur/mudra* means "dirt, mud".


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