Re: Good/Beneficient (was: More Nyenya'a)

In a message dated 10/20/01 10:08:57 AM, annis@BIOSTAT.WISC.EDU writes:

<<         Of course, sometimes quite amazing things pop up in words with
the same root in Arabic.  The most stunning realization was that
'salaam' "peace" is the same root as 'Muslim' and 'Islaam' where the
primary meaning is "submission," specifically to the will of God.
This got me thinking more carefully about the idea of "peace" so now
Vaior distinguishes "peaceful (quiet, undisturbed, calm)," "peace -
externally enforced" and "peace - mutually agreed on lack of discord"
and my favorite, "peace - enforced by the speaker or his agents,
associates or family." >>

    Well, sometimes there's no link between the different meanings, or the
connection's been utterly lost.  It was a great joke with my Arabic
professor.  After we knew all the patterns and what kinds of words they
produced he'd say, "So what does x root mean in y pattern?"  And we all guess
something logical and we'd be hopelessly wrong.  There doesn't necessarily
need to be a perceptible relation.  Here's an example:

almaaghrab  (="the west", the Arabic name of Morrocco, since it's on the west
coast of Africa)
gharab (="evening", since the sun sets in the west, so when it's over there,
it's evening)
ghurba (="the feeling of loneliness and otherness one gets in being in a
country that isn't one's own",
            you can kind of see this, since countries they invaded like Spain
and such were to the
            west...?)

gharb (="crow".  Your guess is as good as mine.)

-David