# Iraqi Arabic: تمن rice



## paieye

I understand that a word for "rice" sometimes used in Iraq is not ارز, but a word of Akkadian origin, transliterated as "timmin" (or similar).

What is the correct spelling in Arabic, please ?


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## AndyRoo

It's تمن pronounced timman.

This is the usual word for rice in Iraq.


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## paieye

Many thanks !


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## fdb

Does timman actually mean "rice" (the grain), or is it the name of a rice dish?

What Akkadian word is it supposed to come from?

As far as I know, rice was unknown in Mesopotamia until the Achaemenid period, when it was introduced from Persia.


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## AndyRoo

It means the grain itself.

I don't know the origin of the word, but this page suggests it is Chinese.


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## paieye

I am afraid that my only source for the reference to Akkadian comes from an entry in Wikipaedia.  Go to this link, and scroll down to "Rice dishes:" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_cuisine.


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## Ihsiin

Sorry to drag up this old thread, but I was thinking about the etymology of this word today. I find an Akkadian origin to rather unlikely. Wehr lists the word (transcribed _tumman_) but I can't find it in any other dictionaries. Is anyone aware of any pre-modern attestations of the word?


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## I.K.S.

The word _''tumman'' _rings a bell with me,...الثمام which is the classical term of what we call today الدخن (cf.Panicgrass).


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## Mahaodeh

Ihsiin said:


> I find an Akkadian origin to rather unlikely.



I find that unlikely too. However, it could be borrowed by Akkadian and them borrowed again into Aramaic or some Aramaic dialect until it reached Arabic. During that time, it could have become quite distorted in Arabic, and in the original language it could have developed and thus it becomes hard to find the origin. Of course, I'm just guessing here.

Does anyone know what the Persian or Turkish word for rice is? Could it be Turkish or Persian?



Ihsiin said:


> Is anyone aware of any pre-modern attestations of the word?



How old is pre-modern? Are we talking 150 years ago or 500 years ago? If it's 150 years then I assure you it was used.



إتحادية قبائل الشاوية said:


> The word _''tumman'' _rings a bell with me,...الثمام which is the classical term of what we call today الدخن



Interesting. The question now becomes: this ثمام أو دخن is it cooked and eaten the same way that grains such as rice, freeka, or burgle are cooked and eaten or is it served differently? I mean, if it is served in the same way that rice is (as opposed to say, lintels or flour) then naming the rice after it become understandable and it could be considered as a possible etymology.


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## I.K.S.

Mahaodeh said:


> The question now becomes: this ثمام أو دخن is it cooked and eaten the same way that grains such as rice, freeka, or burgle are cooked and eaten or is it served differently?


I can only talk about the Moroccan cuisine, after being harvested, It gives edible grains similar to maize, In the past the women used to make flour with it for bread, or cooked as soup or boiled as rice.


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## analeeh

Mahaodeh said:


> I find that unlikely too. However, it could be borrowed by Akkadian and them borrowed again into Aramaic or some Aramaic dialect until it reached Arabic. During that time, it could have become quite distorted in Arabic, and in the original language it could have developed and thus it becomes hard to find the origin. Of course, I'm just guessing here.
> 
> Does anyone know what the Persian or Turkish word for rice is? Could it be Turkish or Persian?



No, both Turkish and Persian have words from the same root: _pirinç/berench. _And I haven't been able to find any related-seeming words in either.


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## Mejeed

((منقول))
العراق هو البلد الوحيد الذي يطلق شعبه كلمة (تمن) على الرز ، والسبب يعود الى ايام الحرب العالمية الأولى عندما رفض اهل البصرة الوطنيون أن يمولوا قطعات الجيش البريطاني في البصرة بكميات من الرز تكفي لسد حاجة الجنود ، عندها كتب المارشال البريطاني الى وزارة الدفاع في انكلترا ان يزودوهم بالرز . تم ارسال كميات كبيرة من الرز الفاخر المسمى (بسمتي) معبأ في اكياس يتوسطها خط احمر مرسوم عليه شكل كارتوني لعشرة رجال يمسك احدهم بيد الاخر وكتب تحت الرسم : Ten Men  كان الجندي الانكليزي يقول للحمالين عندما يريد منهم تفريغ الحمولة من الباخرة :
Come on bring Ten Men  
وكانت لغة الجندي الانكليزي مدمجة فتقع بأذن العراقي (تم من) فظن العراقي ان هذه الكلمة معناها (رز) ومنذ ذلك اليوم بدأ العراقيين يطلقون اسم (تمن) على الرز .


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## fdb

Mahaodeh said:


> it could be borrowed by Akkadian



This is impossible for a simple historical reason. See no. 4.


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## Mahaodeh

إتحادية قبائل الشاوية said:


> or boiled as rice.



Hmm, this gives us a possibility. I'd like it to have an Arabic origin, but we have to admit that it could also be of Chinese or Sanskrit origin.



Mejeed said:


> العراق هو البلد الوحيد الذي يطلق شعبه كلمة (تمن) على الرز ، والسبب يعود الى ايام الحرب العالمية الأولى عندما رفض اهل البصرة الوطنيون أن يمولوا قطعات الجيش البريطاني في البصرة بكميات من الرز تكفي لسد حاجة الجنود ، عندها كتب المارشال البريطاني الى وزارة الدفاع في انكلترا ان يزودوهم بالرز . تم ارسال كميات كبيرة من الرز الفاخر المسمى (بسمتي) معبأ في اكياس يتوسطها خط احمر مرسوم عليه شكل كارتوني لعشرة رجال يمسك احدهم بيد الاخر وكتب تحت الرسم : Ten Men كان الجندي الانكليزي يقول للحمالين عندما يريد منهم تفريغ الحمولة من الباخرة :
> Come on bring Ten Men
> وكانت لغة الجندي الانكليزي مدمجة فتقع بأذن العراقي (تم من) فظن العراقي ان هذه الكلمة معناها (رز) ومنذ ذلك اليوم بدأ العراقيين يطلقون اسم (تمن) على الرز



Yeah, I bet my life that someone made this up. The use of the word precedes the British occupation in 1917. Just think of it this way: the well known Iraqi family بيت أبو التمن is definitely older than 4 generations.



fdb said:


> This is impossible for a simple historical reason. See no. 4.



It's still a possibility because the Akkadian language remained widely spoken until the 7th century BC - around the same time the Persians moved to current day eastern Iran although before Cyrus the Great. The Akkadian language didn't become extinct until the 1st century AD, long after the Achaemenid period was over.

In all cases I was just making a wild guess. I'm not claiming anything I'm just saying it's more plausible than a pure Akkadian origin.


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## Ihsiin

Mahaodeh said:


> How old is pre-modern? Are we talking 150 years ago or 500 years ago? If it's 150 years then I assure you it was used.



I would mean before the modern Iraqi dialect emerged, certainly more than 150 years ago. A nice ballpark figure would be something like 400 years ago. I'm just wondering where Wehr got _tumman_ from. Is the word found in classical sources?



Mejeed said:


> ((منقول))
> العراق هو البلد الوحيد الذي يطلق شعبه كلمة (تمن) على الرز ، والسبب يعود الى ايام الحرب العالمية الأولى عندما رفض اهل البصرة الوطنيون أن يمولوا قطعات الجيش البريطاني في البصرة بكميات من الرز تكفي لسد حاجة الجنود ، عندها كتب المارشال البريطاني الى وزارة الدفاع في انكلترا ان يزودوهم بالرز . تم ارسال كميات كبيرة من الرز الفاخر المسمى (بسمتي) معبأ في اكياس يتوسطها خط احمر مرسوم عليه شكل كارتوني لعشرة رجال يمسك احدهم بيد الاخر وكتب تحت الرسم : Ten Men  كان الجندي الانكليزي يقول للحمالين عندما يريد منهم تفريغ الحمولة من الباخرة :
> Come on bring Ten Men
> وكانت لغة الجندي الانكليزي مدمجة فتقع بأذن العراقي (تم من) فظن العراقي ان هذه الكلمة معناها (رز) ومنذ ذلك اليوم بدأ العراقيين يطلقون اسم (تمن) على الرز .



Yeah, I've heard that before, it's clearly made up.


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## Mahaodeh

Ihsiin said:


> I would mean before the modern Iraqi dialect emerged, certainly more than 150 years ago. A nice ballpark figure would be something like 400 years ago.



To figure that out, you need some research which is not what we do in this forum - we basically look up research already done. So, I can give a very very rough estimate. A famous Iraqi politician, Jafar Abu Al Timman, was born in 1881. When he was born his family, Abu Al Timman, was already established by that name and quite renowned as merchants. Now assuming, that you need 6 to 8 generations for a family name to be established based on a person's name, then we can say that 150 years earlier some merchant was known as "abu al timman" (= the one who sells rice). Which means that the word timman was already established as the name for rice in Iraq by then. Assuming the introduction of a new name for a product requires about 40 to 50 years for it to be established in the language, we could say that around 1681 the word timman for rice can be traced in Iraq. 

I repeat, this is a very rough estimate, but I think that we can safely say that the word timman has been in use in Iraq for at least 337 years. Not your nice rounded 400 years, but relatively close.



Ihsiin said:


> Is the word found in classical sources?



No, I couldn't find it. This may imply that it's newer than classical dictionaries, but it could also mean that it's very local (limited to Iraq) and not considered fus7a that's why they didn't include it. As an example, the contraction أيش (أي شيء) was already in use by the time Lisaan Al Arab was written but Ibn Manthour did not include it in his dictionary as an entry although he used it as a word when quoting other people! It means he was aware of it's use and meaning, but didn't find it worthy of being added as an entry.


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## Ghabi

There's an annotated English translation of the 10th-century Baghdadi cookbook _Kitaab al-Tabiikh_ (كتاب الطبيخ), in which, according to the translator, the word tumman is used in a gastronomic poem attributed to Ibrahim ibn al-Mahdi, half-brother of Harun al-Rashid:


> "Rice is called _tumman_ here, a word still used in the modern Iraqi vernacular (pronounced _timman_). Anywhere else in this book, as well as other medieval sources, it is generally referred as _ruzz_ or _aruzz_." (Nawal Nasrallah, _Annals of the Caliphs' Kitchens_, Brill, 2007, p. 314, footnote 15).


If so, the word has been known in Iraq for more than a millennium.


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## Mahaodeh

Interesting information. Thank you Ghabi. It seems that the writer here also thought that the proper word to use in his book was ruzz or aruzz even though the poet found it acceptable to use Tumman in a poem.


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## Ihsiin

Very interesting Ghabi, and also interesting point Maha. It would appear that word was considered dialectal even then, or at least non-standard.


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## Sindabad

Mejeed said:


> ((منقول))
> العراق هو البلد الوحيد الذي يطلق شعبه كلمة (تمن) على الرز ، والسبب يعود الى ايام الحرب العالمية الأولى عندما رفض اهل البصرة الوطنيون أن يمولوا قطعات الجيش البريطاني في البصرة بكميات من الرز تكفي لسد حاجة الجنود ، عندها كتب المارشال البريطاني الى وزارة الدفاع في انكلترا ان يزودوهم بالرز . تم ارسال كميات كبيرة من الرز الفاخر المسمى (بسمتي) معبأ في اكياس يتوسطها خط احمر مرسوم عليه شكل كارتوني لعشرة رجال يمسك احدهم بيد الاخر وكتب تحت الرسم : Ten Men  كان الجندي الانكليزي يقول للحمالين عندما يريد منهم تفريغ الحمولة من الباخرة :
> Come on bring Ten Men
> وكانت لغة الجندي الانكليزي مدمجة فتقع بأذن العراقي (تم من) فظن العراقي ان هذه الكلمة معناها (رز) ومنذ ذلك اليوم بدأ العراقيين يطلقون اسم (تمن) على الرز .


This article is correct this is where the word for rice in iraqi Arabic comes from.
My grandad worked for the British during their occupation of iraq and this was a well known fact then and still is.

Ten men  evolved to timmen or تمن


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## Mahaodeh

Sindabad said:


> This article is correct this is where the word for rice in iraqi Arabic comes from.
> My grandad worked for the British during their occupation of iraq and this was a well known fact then and still is.


Then how do you explain the existence of the word over 1000 years ago? At a time when Modern English didn’t exist, even Middle English hadn’t evolved yet, the language spoken in England at the time was Old English.
——-
On another note, I found this site. I don’t know the site or the author but up until now he gives the most plausible explanation although I frankly don’t know how accurate it is.

He says that it’s probably from a Chinese dialect/language that he does not give the name of.


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## kalid_omer

At the time of the First World War and during Britain’s occupation of Basra, the people of Basra refused to supply the British army with rice, so the commander of the British forces asked the British government to provide the army with rice, so the British government sent ten men rice.  From Basra to the trucks they used to say to the workers: Bring rice ten men, so the Arabs took it in the name of Timen


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