This was going to be a post about the dreaded E word (“exotic,” in case you’ve erased it from your memory) and its usage on me the other day, accompanied by excessive and unwelcome flirtation. However, recalling the incident renders me ill and sorely tempted to post the guy’s name and contact information here – bad move.
Instead, I’ll celebrate the language percolated down from my ancestors – Tamil, and its offerings to English – and linguistics in general. No, I don’t mean Tam-glish, with terms like shamachu-fy1 or “An’one see my pie?”2 but actual English words that originate in Tamil like catamaran and orange. Tamil Contributions To The English Language contains a list of terms derived from Tamil. The crux of this post is not glorifying Tamil, as the list seems to (“the great antiquity of the Tamil civilization”), but to celebrate the transmutation of language, all languages, when in contact with another. Our ancestors got around a lot more than the current understanding of history allows for and this is evident in language. While physical proof of such contact has been absent, destroyed or undiscovered, how we communicate via our vocal chords is the living evidence of cultural evolution.
For instance, the Italian word for key is chiavi, also the Tamil word for the same item (chaavi – Hindi, llave – Spanish, taste – German, tecla chave – Portuguese, clef – French, nøkkel – Norwegian, sleutel – Dutch). There is one of two possibilities for this coincidence – that the word was coined in one place and carried to another, or that the same word was invented separately in two different places to describe the same thing. Given that a significant majority of the world speaks Indo-European languages, I vote for the former theory.
Language is fascinating, as are dialect, accent and semantics. I feel honored to live in a part of the United States where so many collide. The ethnic geography of Brooklyn on the Bayou is so intricate that navigating it requires the knowledge of several Romance languages and a few African ones, too. In the end, you get used to the speak and the fact that we’re all in the same pot of gumbo no matter where we originated.
1 Shamachu-fy: To cook. I’d love to go out, but have to shamachu-fy for relatives arriving tomorrow.
2 An’one see my pie?: Has anyone seen my bag?
Mandarin derived from Mantrin. And while you are at it on zero, Quizman, you might as well give credit where it is due – The Hemachandra Sequence. The origins though go back even longer – sometime around 200 BCE.
so what’s the answer to 5?
I’ve heard cypher for zero in villages in Tamil Nadu where no one speaks any English. Other examples plumbum for the lead of a pencil. Apothecary too! What about bulpum? Yaarukkavathu theriyuma?. Chennai slang has Hindi/Urdu words too. Nastha (breakfast) and bemani(bay-iman), for example.
Rejimon, this is for you – ‘betel’ and ‘teak’ come from the Malayalam vettila and thaekku. But it’s kinda silly since who gives a shit about betel leaves (paan) outside South Asia.
FUNtastic post, Maitri and great quiz, Quizman.
Vidur in sanskrit and Widower in english is more than a mere coincidence. Man, Manav, Manushya Three, tri (tridev, trinetra)
Very nice discussion going on here.
Quizman……very nice little quiz. Its a shame I logged in so late, and so most of the answers were up. I did try to mentally answer the questions before I scrolled down though.
Since it’s related, I’ll stoop to a shameless plug for an old post I wrote on languages and loan words (connections between various Indo-European languages etc), here.
eh entschuldigung..but “taste – German” is not really what its meant to be here..”schlüssel” is the word you’re lookin for..”taste” is more used like a knob, switch or the keys on a keyboard (which incidentally is a tastatur)
Yes, I think it comes from Arabic / Persian.. It has an interesting etymology.. The word was coined during the period of crusades by the Arabs (Persians??) to denote the crusaders as foreigners (mostly Europeans of french (Frankish) origin..) It is used to denote foreigners in a derogatory sense.. Even in tamil ‘parangi’ means a foreigner.. and is used to denote the Brits.
And the name stuck to denote ‘foreigners’ in a lot of languages.. mainly due to the dominating religious / political / military / cultural influence of arabic/persian in the world of medieval times.. It is the same case with English today. A few centuries from now, you’ll see English words used and absorbed in a lot of languages..