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Qanat

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Re: Qanat

#31

Post by ithinkso »

zem wrote: post #23
freshyill wrote: post #5

As a sometimes Scrabble player, I was familiar with the word and I knew it was some kind of aqueduct. It's nice to know more. Amazing that ancient people not only knew to make them, but that they could pull it off. This must have been no small engineering feat.

the arabic word for them, FALAJ (and its plural AFLAJ) are also useful scrabble words (lowish probability, but very useful when you do have them playable)

Quite interesting how plural form is an simple anagram of singular form. Is it common in arabic or just a lucky coincidence?

Re: Qanat

#32

Post by ricksplat »

ptaipale wrote: post #24
schoen wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a great list of these at https://web.archive.org/web/20070227031854/http://members.ao...

This one btw doesn't include the one that is strangest to me: that Chinese for mom or momma is 妈妈 "mama" and pop , pappa is 爸爸 "baba".

I always presumed these were universal because they are the easiest sounds for infants to make.

Re: Qanat

#34

Post by mootothemax »

ithinkso wrote: post #31
zem wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the arabic word for them, FALAJ (and its plural AFLAJ) are also useful scrabble words (lowish probability, but very useful when you do have them playable)

Quite interesting how plural form is an simple anagram of singular form. Is it common in arabic or just a lucky coincidence?

I know absolutely nothing about Arabic, and stumbled across this page about Broken Plurals on wiki:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_plural

Look a few rows into the patterns table, and you start seeing fun rearrangements for patterns such as CaCaC -> ʼaCCāC, the example being sabab -> ʼasbāb.

Pretty fascinating stuff!

Re: Qanat

#35

Post by mootothemax »

karlb wrote: post #10
colanderman wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't answer the GP's question of whether there's an etymological link. That is, are the two words derived from the same root in some ancient language? It is a reasonable question since they are phonologically similar, but from different language families.

And just because two words sound similar doesn't mean they have similar roots. The word for “dog” in the Australian Aboriginal language Mbabaram happens to be “dog,” not because they have the same root but by coincidence. https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=UtFqXQosVP0C&pg=PT283&lp...

Just to add to the fun, the etymology of the word "dog" itself is completely unknown.

There's a single documented mention of the Old English "docga" - and then nothing.

How this word took over pretty much well entirely from "hound" is a mystery.

If that's not enough, the Polish word for dog - "pies" - has exactly the same issue!

(and I believe, but can't say with any certainty, that other Slavic languages may have the same issue.)

Edit: Oxford English's page on "dog" is paywalled off but still available in via Google's cache, a fascinating read if you have a spare 15 minutes:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:jNMSJSG...

Re: Qanat

#36

Post by masklinn »

ntumlin wrote: post #6
baghali wrote: post #3

There is also this video about Qanats in Iran: https://www.facebook.com/32848633159/videos/1015351116587816... Sorry for the fb link, could not find it in YouTube

The section of the wikipedia article on qanat's in Iran is huge (3700 words) in general, and especially compared to the sections about qanats in other countries. Between that and this video on qanats in Iran; what makes them so much more important/studied/etc.? Is it just that they were invented there?

> Is it just that they were invented there?

Well probably not just, but Qanats are persian tech and spread from there, even today the majority of qanats (both historical and extant) is in Iran, with still-active qanats more than 2000 years old. So it makes sense that this is where they have the largest cultural presence, and understanding.

Re: Qanat

#37

Post by aedron »

ithinkso wrote: post #31
zem wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the arabic word for them, FALAJ (and its plural AFLAJ) are also useful scrabble words (lowish probability, but very useful when you do have them playable)

Quite interesting how plural form is an simple anagram of singular form. Is it common in arabic or just a lucky coincidence?

It is one of the common plural forms. (In Arabic writing the words look even more similar, since it is only the three consonants, with diacritical marks above and below to represent the vowels.)

Re: Qanat

#39

Post by aedron »

igravious wrote: post #30
siscia wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not an expert by any means, so we should wait the opinion of someone more competent than me, however. I will say that there are not any link. Most words in English come from two different roots, the German one and the Latin one. It actually happens than in Latin "canal" is "canalis", so I can believe that the English word "canal" comes from Latin. Usually Latin and Greek are the two roots and you don't explore d…

> Most words in English come from two different roots, the German one and the Latin one. Not quite? What I'm going to say is not exact but as a first approximation it should be okay[1]. English is a Germanic language[2]. Most (all?) common words in Modern English share a common ancestor with their counterparts in Modern German/Dutch/Swedish/Danish/Swiss/Norwegian -- I've left out a bunch, sorry! So lexically and stru…

You left out the Arabic influence, which is considerable for a huge amount of words in the sciences, math, chemistry, astrology, geology, botany and so on.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_of_Arabi...

Re: Qanat

#40

Post by torrent-of-ions »

505 wrote: post #26

I first encountered this word reading Frank Herbert's Dune, so it was a bit odd when I encountered it in other literature. Later I realised one of the great things about Herbert's SF - he uses many real-world cultures as sources for his world building

Yep. I've remembered it because it would be quite useful in Scrabble (it's in the OED), but so far I haven't had the opportunity to use it.
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