LANGUAGE IN INDIA

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Volume 14:3 March 2014
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         S. M. Ravichandran, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.
         C. Subburaman, Ph.D. (Economics)
Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A.

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The Arabic Origins of "Divine and Theological Terms" in English and European Languages:
A Lexical Root Theory Approach

Zaidan Ali Jassem

Abstract

This paper examines the Arabic cognates or origins of divine and theological words in English, German, French, Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit from a lexical root theory perspective. The data consists of 255 terms like abbey, alms, bishop, deity, Deus, divine, faith, belief, bead, creed, church, ecclesiastic, synagogue, God, Gospel, holy, Holy See, prayer, Unitarianism, catholic, oath, omen, orthodox, Methodist, Presbyterian, religion, salvation, saviour, Scripture, Testament, worship, Zeus, and so on. The results indicate that all such words have true Arabic cognates, with the same or similar forms and meanings. Their different forms, however, are all found to be due to natural and plausible causes and different courses of linguistic change. For example, English deity, divine, French and Latin Deus, Greek Zeus (theo-), and Sanskrit deva, all of which are related and mean 'light' originally, come from Arabic Dau' 'light', iDaa'a(t) 'lighting', muDee' (adj,) 'lighted, lighting' via different routes, turning /D/ into /d, th, z, & v/ according to language; English salvation and Latin salvatio derives from Arabic salaam(at) 'safety, peace' via /m/-mutation into /v/; English, German, French, and Latin Scripture (scribe) is from Arabic zaboor (dhaboor), zabar (v) 'book, write', splitting /z (dh)/ into /sk/; English and German holy (heilig) derives from Arabic Saale2 'holy', replacing /S & 2/ by /h & g (Ø)/. As a consequence, the results manifest, contrary to Comparative Method claims, that Arabic, English, and all Indo-European languages belong to the same language, let alone the same family. They, therefore, prove the adequacy of the lexical root theory according to which Arabic, English, German, French, Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit are dialects of the same language with the first being the origin because of its phonetic complexity and huge lexical variety and multiplicity.

Keywords: Divine & Theological words, Arabic, English, German, French, Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, historical linguistics, lexical root theory

1. Introduction

The lexical root theory (Jassem 2012a-f, 2013a-q, 2014a-c) derives its name from using lexical (consonantal) roots in tracing genetic relationships between words in world languages. It first arose as a rejection of the Comparative (Historical Linguistics) Method in its classification of Arabic as a member of a different language family from English, German, French, and all (Indo-)European languages in general (Bergs and Brinton 2012; Algeo 2010; Crystal 2010: 302; Campbell 2006: 190-191; Yule 2006; Crowley 1997: 22-25, 110-111; Pyles and Algeo 1993: 61-94). All the above studies (Jassem 2012a-f, 2013a-q, 2014a-c) clearly demonstrated, on the contrary, the inextricably close, genetic relationship between Arabic and such languages phonetically, morphologically, grammatically, and semantically or lexically.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Zaidan Ali Jassem
Department of English Language and Translation
Qassim University
P.O.Box 6611
Buraidah
KSA
zajassems@gmail.com
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