Ottoman-Turkish Loanwords in Egyptian and Syro-Lebanese-Palestinian Arabic – Part 4

Studia Linguistica Universitatis Iagellonicae Cracoviensis, 2022

Although the earliest Turkisms that entered Arabic go back to the 9th century-when the Arabs began establishing regular contact with speakers of Turkic languages-a significant number of Turkish loans in both written and spoken Arabic only date from the time of the Ottoman Empire, which in the course of its expansion conquered and for centuries ruled a large part of the Arab world. This paper aims to examine the words of Turkish origin found in the dialects spoken in Egypt and parts of the Middle East (Syria, Lebanon, Palestine), i.e. the Arabophone regions that have been most exposed to Turkish influence for historical and cultural reasons. It has also been endeavoured to provide information about the etymology of the Ottoman-Turkish words (interestingly, as some of these come from Arabic, the Egyptian, Syrian, etc. words borrowed actually prove to be backborrowings).

Abstract: Arabic (and Persian) loan-words in Ottoman Turkish are, despite their great number and significance, far from being adequately examined, even if numerous studies on this topic have been published in various journals. If an Arabic etymon of an Ottoman Turkish word is exactly determined one can safely use it for establishing phonological processes leading to its perfect adaptation in Turkish. In addition, this knowledge helps to chronologically arrange and explain sound changes affecting the indigenous vocabulary of Ottoman Turkish. However, two conditions should be met that determine the sense and the eventual success of such an investigation. One of these conditions is that the Arabic etymon should be established with due regard to chronology and dialectology, the other being that the Ottoman Turkish record has been correctly read. The latter condition is more or less assured if one uses so called transcription texts, i.e. those written in non-Arabic scripts, as is the case with an Ottoman Turkish dictionary compiled by Arcangelo Carradori in 1650.

Asian and African Studies, vol. 31, No. 1`, 2022

The paper contains 63 common Berber zoonyms denoting domesticated and wild animals and their cognates in various branches of the Afrasian (Afro-Asiatic, Afroasiatic, Semito-Hamitic) macro-family including reconstructed proto-forms for each branch and the macro-family. The research is based on the classical comparative and historical method relying on the established sound correspondences between the languages of every taxon.

The purpose of this study was to examine the Turkish loanwords in English language whether they are common or archaic. Loanwords (can also be spelled loan words or loan-words) are words adobted by the speakers of one language from a different language. Borrowing is a consequence of cultural contact between two language communities. Loanwords can go in both directions between the two languages in contact, but often there is an asymmetry, that more words go from one side to the other. English language has gone through many periods in which large numbers of words from a particular language were borrowed. These periods coincide with times of major cultural contact between English speakers and those speaking other languages. The waves of borrowing during periods of especially strong cultural contacts are not sharply delimited, and can overlap. For example, the Norse influence on English began already in the 8th century and continued strongly well after the Norman Conquest. This study extendedly lists of Turkish loanwords which are used in English language.

Asian and African Studies

The paper contains 63 common Berber zoonyms denoting domesticated and wild animals and their cognates in various branches of the Afrasian (Afro-Asiatic, Afroasiatic, Semito-Hamitic) macro-family including reconstructed proto-forms for each branch and the macro-family. The research is based on the classical comparative and historical method relying on the established sound correspondences between the languages of every taxon.

Journal of Historical Linguistics, 2023

Wanderwords are a very common phenomenon among the languages of the world, but they are rarely discussed in detail. Their paths of spreading are often considered hardly reconstructible and their origins beyond reach, and being non-inherited, they are often ignored by the linguists working on the history of the languages involved. The present article questions both these tendencies, as it aims at exploring, as far as possible, the origins and interconnections of a series of related words referring to "apples", "plums", and other fruits attested in various languages and language families of the Near East. The article has two goals. First, to try to reconstruct the borrowing chains and general spread of these terms, thus going as close as possible to their putative origin. Second, to provide a test case and an illustration of a general methodological framework that can be used to study the history of such wanderwords.

2017

This contribution deals with the etymology of some Arabic nouns and verbs that have been central to the main fields of academic specialisation of the researcher honoured by this Festschrift: language, speaking, and translation. It tries to follow words like lisān, luġaẗ, or lahǧaẗ as far back in semantic history as possible, often reaching a Semitic dimension and sometimes even advancing into deeper and older layers. In the course of ‘digging,’ questions like the relation (or non-relation?) between ‘to interpret’ (taRǦaMa), ‘to stone’ (but also ‘to curse,’ RaǦaMa), and ‘meteorites’ (RuǦuM), between KaLM ‘wound, cut, slash,’ and KaLiMaẗ ‘word, speech,’ or between the Arabs (ʕaRaB), a ‘swift river’ (but also ‘carriage, coach,’ ʕaRaBaẗ), a ‘godfather, sponsor’ (ʕaRRāB) and the ‘desinential inflection’ (ʔiʕRāB) will also be discussed. The present contribution tries to bring together the interest of my dear colleague Gunvor Mejdell in Arabic linguistics and translatology with what I have...

The majority of the Berber languages of Libya and Egypt lack a state distinction, that is present in most of the other Berber languages. Moreover, many of these languages lose or reduce their prefix in certain phonetic environments. This article studies the conditioning of these prefix allomorphs and examines the history of these prefixes in light of the other Berber languages.

2021

In this paper, further Turkic borrowings into the Samoyed languages are described in phonological and semantic terms. This line of research continues the system outlined in the first part of this paper series. In addition to Turkic borrowings, some Tungusic borrowings into Proto-Samoyed are also outlined. The following are borrowed from Turkic sources: Proto-Samoyed *tok- ‘to hit’, *kat- ‘to bind, sew’, *jäpɜrkɜ ‘soft’, *seŋ ~ *siŋ ‘rear part of a tent’, *so- ‘to scoop’, *pər ‘blister’, *ar- ‘to carry water’ and the following from Tungusic sources: Proto-Samoyed *kuŋkǝ ‘bend, bow’, *pujå ‘tinder’, *t’ǝpǝ ‘dirt’. These borrowings add to the previously known corpus of the near forty other Turkic borrowings into PS, and provide us with some additional insights into Tungusic borrowings made into Siberian languages.

2021

A copy of the whole very productive discussion session on the draft paper version of "Turkic lexical borrowings in Samoyed, pt. 2" (v1) totaling a full 76 pages with 129 participants. This was an impressive gathering - and special thanks go to the participants sharing their expertise on various subjects related to the materials and to tangential fields of study. As usual, the input will be used to improve the manuscript to hopefully publishable standards. Enjoy the discussion!