The Etymology of Some Language- and Translation-Related Terms in Arabic

Abstract

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 increasingly devoted myself to in recent years – the etymology of Arabic. 1 I should however not start before making two disclaimers. First, a look into the etymology of some language- and translation-related terminology will not necessarily enhance a linguist’s or translatologist’s understanding of the phenomena s/he is dealing with. Etymological research does not yield ‘essential’ meanings of words but only leads us back in semantic history to the earliest knowable, often only assumable, value from which it embarked on a centuries-long journey, at the end of which this ‘traveller through the times’ may have changed both its outward appearance and its meaning quite considerably. Second, while there do exist myriad studies on individual lexical items or groups of words, vast areas of the Arabic vocabulary have remained, and probably will remain, largely obscure because etymological research finds its limits where evidence from outside Arabic is lacking. And even then, due to a lack of dateable sources, an explanation of the accessible linguistic. My study starts with some common verbs designating different kinds of speech acts, then moves on, via the organ with which speech is produced, to wordsfor ‘language,’‘dialect,’etc., and the classification of linguistic registers, to conclude with two terms for ‘translation.’