# Hebrew אחד, Arabic واحد



## mrsonic

hello

1.is there a relationship between "echad" and arabic "ahad" ? 

2. does the word SIMPLY mean one ?


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## Intercalaris

אֶחָד means one. It can have a lot of different nuances in its meaning, just like in English, but it still means one.


And yes, it's related to the Arabic word.

Though in Arabic I don't think it is used in the same way. To say "one" (as in the number) they would say wahhid (واحد) most of the time, and to say "one" (in the sense of "a person") they would use ahhad (أَحَد), I believe.
(I know very little Arabic, so you should wait for an Arabic speaker to comment).


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## ystab

The word أحد in arabic is used for stating "one of", for example: one of the boys is أحد الأولاد.

In general, the root of the semantic field of "one" and "unity" in Hebrew is א־ח־ד, and the equivalent root in Arabic is و.ح.د (transcript: ו־ח־ד). That's close enough.


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## mrsonic

"It can have a lot of different nuances in its meaning, just like in English, but it still means one."

are you saying nothing within the word "Echad" is plural , but when one says "one family" it is not the "echad" which is changing, but the word "family" ?


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## origumi

There are  feminine & masculine, singular & plural forms for "echad". But the plural is used only in some specific contexts.


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## mrsonic

in arabic there is wa ha da
and the ifta3ala form for this verb is 

ittahada

is this ittahada idea found in echad?


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## mrsonic

" But the plural is used only in some specific contexts."

examples please


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## mrsonic

i'll just ask a direct question

is _echad after "our God" 

1 or "compound unity" ? _


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## origumi

mrsonic said:


> is echad after "our God"
> _
> 1 or "compound unity" ? _


The simple answer is: one, as opposed to a pantheon or any other form of god plurality.
I guess there are other explanations but they take us to theology rather than language.


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## mrsonic

so in language terms it is simply one ?


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## origumi

echad = one
achdut = unity
ichud = union


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## mrsonic

thank you


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## origumi

One more comment: from etymological point of view, the "ch" we wrote here in Hebrew "echad" אחד, and the "h" in Arabic "ahad" أحد, are the same letter, even if its realizations in Hebrew and Arabic are slightly different.


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## fdb

The Jewish creed (Deut. 6,4): שְׁמַע, יִשְׂרָאֵל:  יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ, יְהוָה אֶחָד
“Hear oh Israel: YHWH our ELOHIM is one YHWH“

The Muslim creed (Qur’an 112,1): قُلۡ هُوَ ٱللَّهُ أَحَدٌ
“Say: HUWA ALLĀHU is one”.

ʼeḥāḏ = ʼaḥad = one


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## Drink

ystab said:


> The word أحد in arabic is used for stating "one of", for example: one of the boys is أحد الأولاد.
> 
> In general, the root of the semantic field of "one" and "unity" in Hebrew is א־ח־ד, and the equivalent root in Arabic is و.ح.د (transcript: ו־ח־ד). That's close enough.



Actually the Hebrew root is actually י־ח־ד, which is the expected equivalent of Arabic و.ح.د (tr: ו־ח־ד). This is seen in words like יחד and יחיד and מיוחד. In both Hebrew and Arabic, the initial consonant became a glottal stop in the form of the word discussed in this thread (Hebrew אחד/אחת, and Arabic أحد). Only much later was the root א־ח־ד taken from אחד and used to form new words, such as מאוחד.


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## Drink

fdb said:


> The Jewish creed (Deut. 6,4): שְׁמַע, יִשְׂרָאֵל:  יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ, יְהוָה אֶחָד
> “Hear oh Israel: YHWH our ELOHIM is one YHWH“
> 
> The Muslim creed (Qur’an 112,1): قُلۡ هُوَ ٱللَّهُ أَحَدٌ
> “Say: HUWA ALLĀHU is one”.
> 
> ʼeḥāḏ = ʼaḥad = one



I'll just note that there are many different interpretations of both of these verses, so your translations are just one of many possibilities.


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## origumi

Drink said:


> Actually the Hebrew root is actually י־ח־ד, which is the expected equivalent of Arabic و.ح.د (tr: ו־ח־ד). This is seen in words like יחד and יחיד and מיוחד. In both Hebrew and Arabic, the initial consonant became a glottal stop in the form of the word discussed in this thread (Hebrew אחד/אחת, and Arabic أحد). Only much later was the root א־ח־ד taken from אחד and used to form new words, such as מאוחד.


אחד (or similar) as a noun is attested in several languages: Phoenician, Sabean, Arabic, Ethiopic, Aramaic (חד), Assyrian (אדו).
As a verb is appears in Ezekiel 21:21.


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## Drink

origumi said:


> אחד (or similar) as a noun is attested in several languages: Phoenician, Sabean, Arabic, Ethiopic, Aramaic (חד), Assyrian (אדו).
> As a verb is appears in Ezekiel 21:16.



Yes, because this same process happened in all these languages (probably in Proto-Semitic itself), but the original root was still w-H-d (which in Northwest Semitic became y-H-d). I didn't know that the א־ח־ד root was attested as early as Ezekiel (it is Ezekiel 21:*21*, by the way), but that is still "much later" than Proto-Semitic.


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## origumi

According to the Starling Semitic Database both אחד and וחד existed in Proto-Semitic.

If I understand the Proto-Semitic issue in this article correctly (pp. 61-61), Dolgopolsky (1995) and Dombrowski (1991) also regard אחד (in its Proto-Semitic form) as the/an ancient root. According to the info in this article, it seems that there could be two different PS words for "one" and "unique", of which אחד and וחד/יחד evolved, respectively.

What's the reasoning for regarding וחד as the origin of אחד?


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## Drink

origumi said:


> According to the Starling Semitic Database both אחד and וחד existed in Proto-Semitic.
> 
> If I understand it correctly (pp. 61-61), Dolgopolsky (1995) and Dombrowski (1991) also regard אחד (in its Proto-Semitic form) as the/an ancient root.
> 
> What's the reasoning for regarding וחד as the origin of אחד?



Because אחד (and its other gender/number forms אחת, אחדים, אחדות) is the only form of the root with א, all other ones have י/ו (until much later), and this is true of both Hebrew and Arabic and I presume the other languages you listed as well. Arabic has only أَحَد, but has وَاحِد, وَحِيد, وَحْدَة, وَحْد, and various verb forms regularly derived from the root و.ح.د.


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## origumi

Assuming both roots had existed in PS, the number of derived forms attested in later periods does not necessarily indicate which form, if any, is older.


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## Drink

origumi said:


> Assuming both roots had existed in PS, the number of derived forms attested in later periods does not necessarily indicate which form, if any, is older.



Both "roots" did not exist in PS, since all these words are from the same root and only the one word אחד/أحد did not have w/y, which is not enough to call it a root. And it is not even particularly unusual for initial w/y to have become a glottal stop in a very common word. The direct object preposition אֶת was originally waat (compare Aramaic יָת and לְוָת). And אִם (if) is possibly derived from the word יוֹם (for semantic similarity, compare כי ביום אכלך ממנו מות תמות, from Genesis 2:17).


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## rushalaim

The root is *חוד* ? (like אחוד) The _Aramaic_ חד is correct for _Hebrew_ אחד ?


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## origumi

rushalaim said:


> The root is *חוד* ? (like אחוד) The _Aramaic_ חד is correct for _Hebrew_ אחד ?



חוד probably not,  I saw the idea that חדד is related to (but not *the* root of) אחד/יחד (unless you're talking about Ere-Proto-Semitic, with hypothetical bi-consonantal roots like חד).

Aramaic חד = one (see a reference in #17).


Back to the "original root" issue:

Quote: Both "roots" did not exist in PS, since all these words are from the same root and only the one word אחד/أحد did not have w/y, which is not enough to call it a root. - this is what we're questioning, therefore requires reinforcement thus doesn't help when appearing just like that.

Quote: And it is not even particularly unusual for initial w/y to have become a glottal stop in a very common word. The direct object preposition אֶת was originally waat (compare Aramaic יָת and לְוָת). - this could have happened in Canaanite or Proto-Aramaic-Canaanite (North-Western Semitic) while we are discussing Proto-Semitic things.

Quote: And אִם (if) is possibly derived from the word יוֹם (for semantic similarity, compare כי ביום אכלך ממנו מות תמות, from Genesis 2:17). - this is far-fetched and therefore doesn't seem to help.

I have no personal opinion which of them is "the original" or maybe they coexisted too long to tell. Nevertheless, up in this thread several resources were mentioned that regard אחד as a class-A citizen of Proto-Semitic, I'd be happy to read opposing claims by Semitists.


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## Drink

rushalaim said:


> The root is *חוד* ? (like אחוד) The _Aramaic_ חד is correct for _Hebrew_ אחד ?



No, Aramaic חד is a contraction of earlier אחד. I thought that אחד was attested in Old Aramaic, but looking back at the CAL entry, I guess it was not (but it is attested later in Samaritan and Judean texts under influence of Hebrew).



origumi said:


> Quote: And it is not even particularly unusual for initial w/y to have become a glottal stop in a very common word. The direct object preposition אֶת was originally waat (compare Aramaic יָת and לְוָת). - this could have happened in Canaanite or Proto-Aramaic-Canaanite (North-Western Semitic) while we are discussing Proto-Semitic things.
> 
> Quote: And אִם (if) is possibly derived from the word יוֹם (for semantic similarity, compare כי ביום אכלך ממנו מות תמות, from Genesis 2:17). - this is far-fetched and therefore doesn't seem to help.



I only mentioned those to show that it is not entirely unusual for w- or y- to become a glottal stop. It doesn't really matter when these changes took place, if they did. Looking again at the case of את vs ית, it may have actually happened the other way around, since אית is attested in Imperial Aramaic (see CAL).



origumi said:


> I have no personal opinion which of them is "the original" or maybe they coexisted too long to tell. Nevertheless, up in this thread several resources were mentioned that regard אחד as a class-A citizen of Proto-Semitic, I'd be happy to read opposing claims by Semitists.



Again, I'm not questioning the existence of a class-A _word_ אחד in Proto-Semitic, just that there was no _root_ א־ח־ד. For it to have been a _root_, there have to be other mishkalim with this root that can be traced back to Proto-Semitic.


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## origumi

Drink said:


> Again, I'm not questioning the existence of a class-A _word_ אחד in Proto-Semitic, just that there was no _root_ א־ח־ד. For it to have been a _root_, there have to be other mishkalim with this root that can be traced back to Proto-Semitic.


But then a secondary-root וחד could have prevailed and eclipsed all of peer-root or primary-root אחד's domain, except of the numeral 1.
This issue seems to me too complex to work only by intuition.


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## Drink

origumi said:


> But then a secondary-root וחד could have prevailed and eclipsed all of peer-root or primary-root אחד's domain, except of the numeral 1.
> This issue seems to me too complex to work only by intuition.



You're right that that could have happened, but probability-wise, I think my explanation is simpler and thus more likely.


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## origumi

We need to take into account the tendency of numerals 1-10 to be archaic, which may support אחד as ancient... well, in its Hebrew form, IDK about PS 1 (although comparison to other Semitic and Afro-Asiatic languages may show inconsistency about 1, while some other numeral are more stable thus maybe more archaic).


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## Drink

origumi said:


> We need to take into account the tendency of numerals 1-10 to be archaic, which may support אחד... well, in Hebrew, IDK about PS (although comparison to other Semitic and Afro-Asiatic languages may show inconsistency about 1, while some other numeral are more stable thus maybe more archaic).



I don't see what you mean by the numerals being more archaic. Can you give a specific example?


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## origumi

See this article (that was mentioned earlier): numeral 2, 6, 7, 9 in Berber languages (another branch of the Afro-Asiatic family) are recognizably similar to Semitic. Unless a loan, this may mean they hadn't changed much since the split of Semitic from Berber.


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## Drink

origumi said:


> See this article (that was mentioned earlier): numeral 2, 6, 7, 9 in Berber languages (another branch of the Afro-Asiatic family) are recognizably similar to Semitic. Unless a loan, this can mean that they hadn't changed much since the split of Semitic from Berber.



They haven't changed _much_, but they have indeed changed:

2: In Hebrew, the feminine changed irregularly from the expected _*šitt-_ to _šət-_.
5: In Berber, the first consonant is _s_, unlike Semitic _ḫ_ (not sure if this is regular).
6: In Semitic languages, the consonants assimilated irregularly from _*šidš-_ to Arabac _sitt-_ and Aramaic _šitt-_ vs. Hebrew _šišš-_. Arabic still retains the root s-d-s in words like سَادِس (_sādis_).
7: In Berber, the _-b-_ seems to have disappeared entirely (not sure if this is regular).
8: In Berber, the _-n-_ disappeared, although it seems to have been retained in a few of the dialects (maybe under the influence of Arabic?).
9: I guess this one is relatively unchanged.

Thus, a change like _*waḥad_ to _*ʾaḥad_ does not seem very unusual.

Furthermore, since you brought up extra-Semitic evidence, Ancient Egyptian has (with reconstructed vowels) _*wiꜥyaw_ (masc.) and _*wiꜥyat_ (fem.) for the numeral 1, which could easily be related to the Semitic _*ʾaḥad_ if the first consonant was originally _w_.


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## rushalaim

origumi said:


> We need to take into account the tendency of numerals 1-10 to be archaic, which may support אחד as ancient... well, in its Hebrew form, IDK about PS 1 (although comparison to other Semitic and Afro-Asiatic languages may show inconsistency about 1, while some other numeral are more stable thus maybe more archaic).


The number _"10"_ doesn't belong to the group _"1-9"_. The _"9"_ is the last in the group of _"1-9"_


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## origumi

rushalaim said:


> The number _"10"_ doesn't belong to the group _"1-9"_.


I guess you're right, my bad.


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