# Root of יש



## Hani_D

Shalom aleichem,

I am looking for the infinitive and the root of the verb:

יש 

Toda raba,


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## Macnas

There is none. It's not a verb, but rather an "existencial particle", and therefore has no root, infinitive, etc. It is, however, related to the Arabic negative verb laysa


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## Hani_D

I know it is related to laysa. I am trying to deduce the root to find out how was the original verb.

In Arabic, lays is a verb. There are million proofs for that, and it's considered a verb in Arabic grammar anyway. 

But it is a negated verb; I am trying to know how the affirmative verb was. 

In Arabic there are only two words derived from this root: lays and ays.

"Lays" is a combination of the word laa = לא and the mysterious verb.
"ays" is the alleged infinitive or verbal noun. 

In Hebrew it is:  לא יש  loo yesh. I may presume that the verb in Arabic was "yes" but it does not look like an Arabic or Semitic verb to me. It has only two letters and I can't derive or make anything with it. I think there was a third letter. 

Arabs claim that the root is : A Y S א י ש , I need a verification from another language.


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## tkekte

The combination לא יש doesn't exist.
The opposite of יש is אין.


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## tkekte

Also you might as well search for the roots of לא, כ, ב, ו, נ, מ, ת, ה where did those things come from? (the prepositions, the prefixes, the endings, and the word "no") They could probably be reconstructed from Proto-Semitic, but how did they appear in there? Where does any root come from? Is it just a random sequence of letters, or did the individual letters once mean something? Who knows...


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## Macnas

Hani_D said:


> I may presume that the verb in Arabic was "yes" but it does not look like an Arabic or Semitic verb to me. It has only two letters and I can't derive or make anything with it. I think there was a third letter.




It wouldn't be Arabic. The generally accepted theory is that Arabic actually got the root from Aramaic.
 


> Arabs claim that the root is : A Y S א י ש , I need a verification from another language.



If you want the original Proto-Semitic root, good luck. There's several different theories out there. Some say it's from *yθw (θ = unvoiced th), which originally meant something like "to be present", if I remember correctly. Others say it was never a verb in Proto-Semitic, and that it was formed from several demonstrative roots (ie, a *ya- emphatic plus a *š- demonstrative - compare the Ancient Egyptian *ys "behold"). However, pretty much all sources I've seen agree that Arabic got the root from Aramaic or some other Semitic language, and then turned it into a verb.



> Also you might as well search for the roots of לא, כ, ב, ו, נ, מ, ת, ה where did those things come from? (the prepositions, the prefixes, the endings, and the word "no") They could probably be reconstructed from Proto-Semitic, but how did they appear in there? Where does any root come from? Is it just a random sequence of letters, or did the individual letters once mean something? Who knows...



Actually, yes, the origins of most of those are fairly well established in Proto-Semitic and (for some of them) even earlier. In Proto-Semitic, לא was *lâ "no", כ was *ka- "truly", ב was *bi- "with", ו was *wa- "and", נ was *nV-(the vowel varied depending on the circumstances), derived from an earlier pronoun, מ was *mu- (a general nominalizer), and both the endings ת and ה were *-ât (a feminine ending coming from what was originally a marker of the "singulative").

However, the point is, not everything comes from a consonantal root. If יש does have a verbal origin, well, then it does, but if it has a demonstrative origin, then it doesn't really have a normal consonantal root.


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## Flaminius

Hani_D, you might also be interested to know that יש in older Hebrew gets nominal suffixes.  The paradigm below shows the suffixed forms according to numbers and persons.
S1. yeshni
S2. yeshkha, yeshnekh
S3. yeshno, yeshnah

P1. yeshnenu
P2. yeshkhem, yeshkhen
P3. yeshnam, yeshnan

These are largely obsolescent forms in Modern Israeli Hebrew, just in case.


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## tkekte

Those can still be heard in Israel once in a while.  Especially ישנו/ישנה, meaning "he/she/it is present". That doesn't prove anything though since both verbs and pronouns can get those suffixes (as well as nouns). יש certainly isn't a pronoun since it doesn't point to anything... it acts as the predicate, when it's present (כשהיא ישנה ).


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## Hani_D

Thank you all, 

This word takes declensions in Arabic too. Actually in Arabic it is believed that it was a verb that equals להיות, or li-kawn in Arabic. I didn't know it wasn't a verb in Hebrew when I first asked the question. 





Macnas said:


> It wouldn't be Arabic. The generally accepted theory is that Arabic actually got the root from Aramaic.
> [/font][/color]
> 
> 
> If you want the original Proto-Semitic root, good luck. There's several different theories out there. Some say it's from *yθw (θ = unvoiced th), which originally meant something like "to be present", if I remember correctly. Others say it was never a verb in Proto-Semitic, and that it was formed from several demonstrative roots (ie, a *ya- emphatic plus a *š- demonstrative - compare the Ancient Egyptian *ys "behold"). However, pretty much all sources I've seen agree that Arabic got the root from Aramaic or some other Semitic language, and then turned it into a verb.





Yes. This is exactly the kind of root I was looking for. I expected it would be Y S W because this would make it a perfectly Arabic verb: "yasaa يسا ."  Contrary to what many Arabs believed that it was "aysa." 

Are you sure about the Aramaic origin? becuase what I know is that the Aramaic version is "ait" (There is a word "lait" in Arabic too!). 

The Hebrew yesh is the closest thing I know to Lays. 

I don't think the word "lays" must be a loan from another language. You yourselves said that the combination "loo yesh" doesn't work in Hebrew. It is probably so in Aramic. It looks to me just another one of the many traces like this in Arabic.


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## CrazyArcher

How about "ישות" - "entity"? Here the root is "יש" (a logical one, at least), while "ות-" is clearly a suffix signifying a concept, similar to "התנהגות" or "בריאות". This way, I'm inclined to see "יש" as a root within itself, or in other words, the root of "יש" is "יש".


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## tFighterPilot

Flaminius said:


> Hani_D, you might also be interested to know that יש in older Hebrew gets nominal suffixes. The paradigm below shows the suffixed forms according to numbers and persons.
> S1. yeshni
> S2. yeshkha, yeshnekh
> S3. yeshno, yeshnah
> 
> P1. yeshnenu
> P2. yeshkhem, yeshkhen
> P3. yeshnam, yeshnan
> 
> These are largely obsolescent forms in Modern Israeli Hebrew, just in case.


I never heard any of that except Yeshno and Yeshna. Are you sure you didn't just make it up?


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## Flaminius

I spotted them in a Hebrew grammar book published in Japan.  Just for reference, there is at least one instance of yeshkhem in  Tanakh.


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## tFighterPilot

Biblical Hebrew is different than modern Hebrew.

BTW, I gave it some thought. Yeshnam and Yeshnan actually do exist.


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## Hani_D

I saw the word אנחנו = נחנו  in a book but I don't know if it is used. Is it?



CrazyArcher said:


> How about "ישות" - "entity"? Here the root is "יש" (a logical one, at least), while "ות-" is clearly a suffix signifying a concept, similar to "התנהגות" or "בריאות". This way, I'm inclined to see "יש" as a root within itself, or in other words, the root of "יש" is "יש".


 
Nice observation. Did you look up the official root of  ישות ? or is it also rootless?
​


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## CrazyArcher

Hani: I don't have sources to confirm if it's the official root, but any noun should have a root, and "ישות" is a noun. So... It seems logical.


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## eli-milqo

Hello everyone !! I'm on a hurry know I can't read all the thread so execuse me if some one said what I'm going to say now :
the root is very clear  in Aramaic because "eeth" meants (there is, is) and (laith= la eeth) means ( there isn't)  wor "eeth" is used in modern syriac as a verb to be also , for example if I want to say " you are not here" I might say "at laithaykh horko/harka" .
and I read once about the clame that the arabic "ays" is coming from aramaic, once an arabic man of knowledge used this "ays" depending on aramaic in the following sentence " allashai2 yahwi aysan 3an lays bi fe3l al mu2ayes" which means "the nothing becomes"yahwi" something (aysan) from nothing (lays) by the action of the creator (mu2ayes)" as we see he used an un familiar form in arabic because if you want to say it in a traditional way you may say " allashay2 yusbe7 shai2a mn 3adam be fe3l al 5aleq" that's a one example...but he used ays and lays because of an aramaic influence most likely although I haven't something similar to the sentence mentioned above in aramaic. by the way forgot to mention the man was called al kindi , and also eethutha in aramaic means existence like "yeshuth".


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## camaysar

Shalom to all,

I found the following in the "rules for vowelizing Hebrew" link in the Hebrew resources thread here:

בעברית המדוברת כיום ישנן חמש תנועות


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## Hani_D

eli-milqo,

would you write the Arabic script in Arabic charachters and the Aramaic words in Arabic or Hebrew ones? 

You didn't clearly mention the root.


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## eli-milqo

Hello Hani:
about the root , the oldest root I know for this is the Ugaritic canaanite language they used the word "eeth" to express "there is, exists". but check out akkadian ...maybe you can find the root there. I don't have good knowledge in akkadian , if you find something tell us.
about the phrases :
the first phrase in arabic 
اللاشيء يهوي ايسا عن ليس بفعل المؤيس
you can notice that al kindi used lays and ays to refer to the existence "ays" and non existence "lays".
the aramaic and hebrew word in arabic characters:

hebrew "yeshut"  يشوت
Aramaic "eethutha/eethutho" إيثوثا,إيثوثو
and in aramaic as I mentioned the word "eeth" ايث
means there is . and it is used as a verb to be also like I said above "you are/are not here" = "at eethaykh/lethaykh horko" (the word horko can be spelled harka also in another dialect" . in arabic script:
أت ايثايخ/ ليثايخ هركا
thanks .


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## maxl

tkekte said:


> The combination לא יש doesn't exist.
> The opposite of יש is אין.


Not quite. The expression does exist, not in contemporary spoken Hebrew, though.
Thus, in the Hebrew version of Kadya Molodovski's song מעשה במעיל
פעם פרץ, לא טיפש 
, בא הביתה ומעיל לא יש


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