Talk:زرودية

@Fenakhay: I'll trust that you're more likely to be knowledgeable about this, but the Wortatlas mentions neither of our ideas, so I'm wondering what your source is. Having found zrudga in a Kabyle dictionary, and seeing that this word is limited to Algeria and immediate environs, I thought the Berber origin made more sense than a transferred Ottoman word somehow absent from the rest of the Arab world. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 00:41, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

@Fenakhay is overly skeptical about Berber origins of Moroccan Arabic words, and the Ottoman Turkish derivation does not work in this form because of the word being probably more Ottoman than Turkish, i.e. presumably a learned word restricted to poetry and the like; unused enough among the populace that there is no trace of it in Modern Turkish. That Turkic languages have given this word is possible but questionable, since the Persian زردک (zardak, “carrot”) is found remotely; the carrot is called in Qašqay Azerbaijani зәдәк, зәрдәк, зардәк. regional Kyrgyz зардек (zardek), Siberian Tatar сәртәк, Fergana Valley Uyghur зәдәк (zedek) (Sadvakasov Язык уйгуров Ферганской долины II p. 62), and apparently also rarely in Ottoman Turkish زردك (zerdek) (rarely, because it is not used in the Persian regiolect Ottoman Turkish used to draw its vocabulary from; there is not more mention of it than of the words in such exotic Turkic languages). The Kabyle is however formally closer. @Metaknowledge should mind that Arabic dialects frequently borrow between each other, and maybe there are more possibly former Arabic dialect terms to uncover; and we often miss to find a word in the needed Berber languages; also Berber loans in Arabic can be of great age, whilst some Berber languages have died and words might have gone extinct before any European has recorded them, but the timeframe is that the Western carrot is a cultivar that spread only about the seventeenth century in Europe from the Netherlands, see Latvian burkāns, History of Carrots, so it is only to be sought earlier if it meant something different, e. g. the Eastern carrot, but I don’t see that something similar to the carrot was well-known to the more western Arabs; the carrot has received its character by the Europeans, like the tulip. It might be worth to collect names given to the carrot for future disputes I note. Fay Freak (talk) 03:18, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

The word follows the same pattern as خضورية (ḵḍūriyya, “greenness”), حمورية (ḥmūriyya, “redness”), صفورية (ṣfūriyya, “yellowness”). So putting زرد (zard, “yellow”) into the pattern فعولية (fʕūliyya) will generate the word زرودية (zrūdiyya, “yellowness”), hence carrot. Fenakhay ❯❯❯ Talk 03:38, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

@Fenakhay: But "yellowness" > "carrot" is a bit of a jump, whereas "carrot" > "carrot" is not. Moreover, you haven't responded to the historical considerations here, and the rareness of the word in Ottoman. Do you question the Berber item I found? —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 04:49, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

@Fenakhay: The difference though is that the former three are from notorious Arabic words and mean colourings instead of plants. This pattern may well have been applied, hardly however on either Ottoman word; it is not improbable that this word came via Berber and was reshaped, as خيزو (ḵizzu) is also from Berber.

Continuing the wanderwort studies about the carrot, the Andalusi Ibn Al-Bayṭār did treat the جَزَر (jazar), and he also knew the term إصْطَفْلِين (ʔiṣṭaflīn) (στᾰφῠλῖνος (staphulînos)) as the according to him Syrian term for it, though there was an Andalusi صَفَنَّارْيَة (ṣafannārya), سَفَنَّارْيَة (safannārya) (whence Spanish zanahoria, Leonese / Asturian cenahoria Catalan safanòria, Portuguese cenoura), and today Libyan Arabic سفنّاريّة (sfənnāriyya) is a dialectal reflex of the same source (but the prothetic (Classical) “Arabic” **إِسْفَنَارِيَّة (**ʔisfanāriyya) on these pages seems a fancied ghost word to me, at best it is a form in Libyan or Tunisian dialect) – was this the term used in Moroccan and Algerian Arabic in the Middle Ages? This is pointed by the registration of سرفانية (sfrānīya) for Erfoud as “obsolete” in the Wortatlas. So it appears that the Algerian and borderzone Moroccan word is relatively recent while the Graecism is the old term. It is written about the Armenian reflex: “There is no earlier word for carrot in Armenian, and one may assume that it was not a significant part of their diet, nor used significantly in Armenian medicine.” The Eastern lexicographers already mention the word جَزَر (jazar) in the 10th century, unsurprisingly at first Iranians, mentioning it as a rural phenomenon. The Egyptian Arabic resources know no other word for the carrot than جَزَر (jazar) and everything south and east of Egypt is coloured like Egypt in the Wortatlas, for exclusively using جَزَر (jazar). The Wortatlas however mentions two etymologies for زرودية (zrūdiyya) as for all terms, as I make explicit those we have not written hither: Apart from a strange one that derives from the second word in Ancient Greek σταφυλίνη ἀγρία (staphulínē agría) as the Iberian terms derive from the first it is connected to the Tunisian place Wādī Zrūd, though in Tunisia one thoroughly uses the Libyan word and the connection is not explained. Fay Freak (talk) 18:36, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

@Fay Freak: I agree with your explanation and it seems logical. Though, I'll edit the Moroccan Arabic etymo. There's no thing as borrowing from Algerian Arabic since that whole region is a dialectal continuum. As there's no one "Moroccan Arabic" or "Algerian Arabic". One more thing, the سفنارية is still used in some regions of Morocco as well (Fez-Meknès region) though its use is rare nowadays. the Fenakhay ❯❯❯ Talk 09:47, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

Right, there's no thing as borrowing from Algerian Arabic since that whole region is a dialectal continuum, because the most western Algerian dialects are not a different languages as compared to the most eastern Moroccan dialects and the passage of words is no more borrowing than inside Algerian Arabic. Also after writing the previous message I found that Paul Wexler observed already the same displacement of a Graecism, and from him I now took note that the displacement has been staggering for a millennium, which makes Ottoman derivation impossible and Persian derivation also less likely, and Berber immediate (since there would be much more Berbers back then after but four centuries of Arabic conquest) and ultimate origin most likely. Fay Freak (talk) 15:07, 28 February 2020 (UTC)