Balashon, which investigates Hebrew etymology, has a particularly interesting post called persimmon and afarsemon:
I was listening to an episode of The History of English Podcast, and I was surprised to hear “persimmon” included in a list of words originally from the Native American Algonquin language. I really enjoy eating the fruit persimmon, which goes by the name אֲפַרְסְמוֹן – afarsemon in Hebrew. Those two words are obviously connected, and I know that the word afarsemon appears in the Talmud. So how could persimmon be an Algonquin word?
Well, I decided to check my facts. First I confirmed that persimmon is a New World word:
the North American date-plum, a tree common in the U.S. South, 1610s, from Powhatan (Algonquian) pasimenan “fruit dried artificially,” from pasimeneu “he dries fruit,” containing Proto-Algonquian */-min-/ “fruit, berry.”
And I was also right about afarsemon. However, in the Talmud it doesn’t refer to a sweet, fleshy, orange fruit. Rather, it was a fragrant plant whose oil produced very valuable perfume. As noted here, the “afarsimon was considered so valuable that at one point it was literally worth its weight in gold.”
Many scholars, such as the botanist Yehuda Feliks, identify the afarsemon with the shrub Commiphora opobalsamum. (Others say it was Commiphora gileadensis). It went by many different names (or may have been associated with various similar plants.) Many of them are listed in the Wikipedia entry “Balm of Gilead.”
Included in this list is the biblical term בֹּשֶׂם bosem, which appears 29 times in the Bible, or the variant בְּשָׂמִי (my basam) that appears once in Shir HaShirim 5:1 . We actually discussed bosem many years ago, when we noted that it eventually gave the English words “balsam” and “balm” – so it shouldn’t be surprising that the term “Balm of Gilead” is related. (The variant basam may have been the one borrowed into Greek.)
According to Klein (quoting Loew), bosem and afarsemon may be related as well. Here is his entry for afarsemon:
balsam tree; balm. [According to Löw a blend of Gk. balsamon (see בָּשָׂם) and Aram. אֲפוּרְסְמָא Syr. אֲפוּרְסֶמָא (= balsam tree, balm), which is a loan word from Armenian aprsam.]
Feliks, in his book Plant World of the Bible (Hebrew), in the entry for bosem, writes that while in Biblical times bosem referred specifically to Commiphora opobalsamum, in Talmudic times bosem took on the general sense of “scent, fragrance” leaving more specific words, like afarsemon, to refer to the expensive balm. (He also mentions the Talmudic terms אפורסמא, בלסמון and אפובלסמון).
So when and how did the confusion between afarsemon and persimmon begin? I couldn’t find an exact date or a specific person who started calling the persimmon as afarsemon in Hebrew. But it seems to have happened in the mid-20th century, and the general consensus is the reasonable conclusion that it was due to the similarity between the two words. Feliks notes (in 1968) that in Israel there is no remnant of the original afarsemon orchards that grew in Jericho and Ein Gedi. So although afarsemon had a rich cultural heritage, it was available for public use by that time.
I have a theory that may give an additional reason. While the word “persimmon” is Native American, related species grew elsewhere in the world, particularly in East Asia. In Japanese the word for persimmon is kaki, and that is the adopted word used in many European languages, like French, Spanish, and German. But that word couldn’t be adopted in Israel, since in Yiddish, kaki means “poop” (related to farkakte – lousy, literally “full of crap.”) It has the same meaning in Modern Hebrew. (I’ve seen European speakers here refer to an afarsemon as kaki, and believe me, that raises some eyebrows.) So there was no way that would be the word used in Israel. So why not adopt the available, and similar, afarsemon? […]
I just thought of one other reason why modern Hebrew may have been comfortable with adopting afarsemon for persimmon. They already had a fruit that began with a similar sound: afarsek אפרסק – “peach.” So for speakers of Hebrew, who never witnessed afarsemon as a perfume, may have easily begun using it for a fruit based on the similarity to afarsek.
Makes sense to me! I’ve reproduced a few of his links; the rest are at the original post, along with his thoughts on the Israeli hybrid of the American and Japanese persimmons, which have “no seeds, no core, and even more importantly, no bitter taste even when unripe. […] I wouldn’t trade it for any perfume.”
The earliest afarsemon in the sense of ‘persimmon’ I could find is in a newspaper ad for a nursery in a kibbutz, from 1937. Often new words would have the more familiar foreign term added in parentheses for a few years, but not in this case, so it’s plausible that the name had already been current for a little while.
I’ve seen persimmon sold in Ireland as kaki and “sharon fruit” with lowercase S (or allcaps).
“[According to Löw a blend of Gk. balsamon (see בָּשָׂם) and Aram. אֲפוּרְסְמָא Syr. אֲפוּרְסֶמָא (= balsam tree, balm), which is a loan word from Armenian aprsam.]”
here Mauro Maggi is defending a theory of Persian (and juniper’s) contribution…
According to this frightful etymological chart, Old Armenian ապրսամ aprsam is a borrowing from the Proto-Iranian *hampr̥sā (which is plausible). I’m however skeptical that Hebrew bāśām is an Iranian borrowing (Hebrew *ɬ > Greek ls, sure; Iranian r̥s > Hebrew *ɬ, not so much).
It turns out I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a persimmon; maybe the Japanese name 柿 kaki is why.
Verily frightful.
The afarsek connection makes sense to me, as I had always (until looking it up a few years ago and finding the Algonquin connection) folk-etymologized afarsemon as a blend of afarsek and rimon “pomegranate”, on the model of afarshezif “nectarine” < afarsek + shezif “plum”.
(I’m sorry for you, David: hachiya persimmons are my favorite fruit*, and every fall I grieve anew at the fact that they only seem to be in season for about twenty minutes.)
*Second to the very best (but unobtainable in these latitudes) persimmon variety, black sapote.
In Japanese the word for persimmon is kaki, and that is the adopted word used in many European languages, like French, Spanish, and German.
Don’t think I’ve ever seen that. I’m pretty sure it would have sounded very much like “caca” in French, Spanish, and German too…
Russian has хурма, which is apparently borrowed via Ottoman from a Persian word for date fruits (according to the linked comment, anyway).
Once two [Russian] friends of mine went to Egypt to practice classical tourisim: hotel, swimming in the pool, eating, swimming in the pool, eating,… The did not even swim in the sea (it was a see resort) which is a feat for Muscovites.
What they brought me fromt there was a large violet-brown ball and a photo form the shop where it was bough. The tag read in Russian: это не верблюжьи какашки, это финиковый чай.
I ate (some of) a persimmon for the first time last October and considered it a fairly wretched experience, which did, however, lead me to check it in other languages and discover that Czech and Slovak (apparently uniquely) have (in addition to the more familiar names) ‘tomel’. I searched in vain for a good scholarly etymology, but found only a couple of mentions saying it derives from the Algonquian, but if that really is the case, it’s not obvious how that works or what languages could have provided intermediary stages to explain this weird form.
Wait. Is it just хурма? The very same хурма that I’m eating right now?
Unexpected.
considered it a fairly wretched experience
I quite dislike the Western way of eating persimmon, which is to wait until it has become a gluggy mess before eating it.
In Japan, on the other hand, the persimmon is a firm, almost crunchy fruit. It has a mild and very pleasant flavour.
They are just different. You can’t eat Hachiya persimmons before they become half-liquid. The ones sold in the US as Fuyu are as you describe them and won’t make your mouth pucker when unripe.
I’ve definitely seen kaki labels in France, and I second the afarshezif correlate that TR mentioned — I didn’t use to folk-autoetymologize afarsemon as a blend with pomegranate but I definitely presumed a relation to peaches and the afarS “morpheme”, entertaining the most probable (to me) hypothesis of treating -mon as a diminutive, or a fruit-likely suffix (add melon, limon ‘lemon’, and armon ‘chestnut’ to rimon).
Kaki is the normal word in France (in this part of France, anyway), and in Chile.
Oh, one of my favorite fruits! In the soft variety, to be eaten with a spoon when it is super-ripe (but forbiddingly astringent when unripe); I dislike the ones with a firm, crunchy texture.
cachi is the normal word in Italian, too, with a lovely backformed singular caco (theoretically incorrect, but very common). The homonymie with the ‘poop’ word was evidently not gênante enough. Other (regional?) designations include loto and diòspiro or diòspero, from the scientific name Diospyrus kaki (Διὸς πυρός ‘Zeus’ wheat’ [?]).
Somewhat confusingly, I think that I have seen persimmon used specifically for the crunchier variety, also known here as caco mela (because it is apple-like in shape and texture).
Italy used to be the biggest European exporter of kaki, although Wikipedia says it has been recently overtaken by Spain. See also Elio e le Storie Tese’s 1996 satyrical gem La terra dei cachi.
Thanks so much for sharing the post, and the fantastic comments. The “afarshezif” (nectarine) completely skipped my mind, so I added an update at the end of the post to discuss it.
In Germany, it’s also sold as Kaki, despite this sounding similar to Kacke. WP tells me that it’s also known as Kakipflaume “kaki plum” or Chinesische Quitte “Chinese quince”, but I don’t remember ever seeing those expressions in the wild.
I first encountered them in Central Asia in the 90s, but never got a liking for eating them as a fruit, although I’m fine with them being used as an ingredient. Back in the 90s, they were rarely sold in Germany, but now you can find them regularly in the grocery departments of German supermarkets.
Earliest quote in Danish (according to the newer dictionary), from 1997:
Sharon seems to be the name of the commercial variety that can be eaten before it turns to mush. (Less tannic acid, maybe). Daddelblomme/dadelblomme = ‘date plum’ seems to be a Danish invention — if you ask me it doesn’t taste much like either, but if you squint your taste buds there might be hints of date and the size and shape are not totally dissimilar to a plum, if plums were a bit bigger and bright orange. (And if I had to choose between apples, pears, oranges and plums to compare to, I’d probably pick the plum as well).
I think the secret cabal of Danish fruit importers has an employee with a well nourished imagination, also letting them come up with ananaskirsebær = ‘pineapple cherry’ for the fruit of Physalis peruviana (groundcherries).
“I quite dislike the Western way of eating….”
But that – even if it is sounds as if directed at the strong (Homo Sapiens var. Westerner) – means disliking the weak fruit itself when it is in this vulnerable condition. And I just like it.
Also this fruit explains what is вяжущий вкуc (lit. “stringent taste”). How do you learn astringent taste? You try it, and what you feel is “astringent taste”.
And weirdly, the name (in its literal meaning) suits it, but I don’t understand why.
What about “khaki,” which seems to have been said without embarrassment all my life? In British English it sounds like ( non-rhotic) “car key,” but I have the impression that Americans say it just like “kaki.”
I have the impression that Americans say it just like “kaki.”
Americans have by and large never used “kaki” (it’s not in M-W, and I’d never heard of it outside of Japanese until reading the Balashon post), but if they decided to take it up I’m pretty sure the homophony with “khaki” wouldn’t bother anyone.
In Austria, Kacke isn’t used, but the baby word is Gacki (with the nickname suffix)…
Day saved.
Looking at old Hebrew newspapers I saw the word קושט koshet, which I’d forgotten. It was attempted for a short period as the Hebrew word for pineapple (and supposedly even used in Shlonsky’s translation of Onegin), before אננס ananas took over. Mishnaic קשֶׁט qošeṭ is another perfumy plant, costus. The idea of attaching the name of a perfume to an exotic fruit seems the same as with the persimmon; one took, the other didn’t.
Y: They are just different.
You are right. I dashed that comment off in great haste in response to Andy, who (I assumed) found the liquid type distasteful. I still find the Japanese firm-fleshed type a very pleasant-eating fruit, which is not how I (perhaps unfairly) feel about the liquid type.
Athel Cornish-Bowden: Americans say it just like “kaki”.
I was under the impression (perhaps wrongly — for some strange reason “khaki” is not a word I associate with Americans) that they say something like “cacky”. “Cacky-coloured” sounds like a pretty repulsive colour, unlike /ka:ki:/, which has a vaguely colonial military feel.
In Paris it’s sold as kaki. I recognized it as the fruit I know as 감 gam, but was pleasantly surprised to see that it was a variety that was mostly seedless and not astringent even when it was still firm.
I had only seen the word persimmon in writing and stressed the first syllable in my head until much later in life I heard it stressed in the second syllable.
You can’t eat Hachiya persimmons before they become half-liquid.
These must be the ones in Li-young Lee’s wonderful poem:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43011/persimmons
Rather interestingly, Green’s dictionary of slang has this entry for “cacky”:
1. covered in excrement.
1904 [Aus] Sydney Sportsman (Surry Hills, NSW) 27 Apr. 3/7: Why are modern british soldiers like dirty little boys of three? […] Because they wear kharki pants.
2. in fig. use, disgusting, second-rate.
1938 [US] H.M. Anderson Strip Tease 41: [of a ‘dirty joke’] Jake can tell dirty jokes without offense […] he’s gotten away with ‘cacky’ scenes by making them cute instead of dirty.
1972 [US] B. Rodgers Queens’ Vernacular 40: cacky (fr kaka = shit, reinforced by tacky) repulsive, ugly.
1998 [UK] Guardian Sport 25 Sept. 16: A lemonade top on this cacky red wine what’s been ordered in.
(The entry also cross-references “cacky-handed”, meaning “left-handed”.)
I’m not sure what to make of the first citation referring to “kharki pants”. The spelling suggests the pronunciation /ka:ki:/, which seems to me quite different from “cacky” (/kæki:/) referring to “covered in excrement”. Did Australians in 1904 use the pronunciation /ka:ki:/, or something like it, as meaning “covered in excrement”? Or did they get the joke from the Americans, for whom “khaki” and “cacky” are homophones?
I still don’t know to what extent Afrikaanse derogatory “kakie” (for British soldiers in the Anglo-Boer war) is associated with kak (not etymologically of course, just in speakers’ minds). This difference in length, is it a minor detail, or as with cacao “nothing in common”?
if they decided to take it up I’m pretty sure the homophony with “khaki” wouldn’t bother anyone.
I interpreted ACB as asking whether the homophony of khaki and cacky was bothersome to Americans in the way that the homophony of kaki and cacky would be to Brits.
I think the answer to that would be that “cacky” is not well enough known in America. Lynneguist Lynne Murphy has touched on this. MW has cack [“dialectal”] but not cacky.
Separately, AmE kaki has PALM not TRAP so it still wouldn’t sound like cacky.
I think the answer to that would be that “cacky” is not well enough known in America.
Absolutely. If I heard it, I would assume the person was saying “khaki.”
I get both types of persimmons here in the South Carolina midlands. A colleague grows the Japanese ones and brings them in when they’re in season. The North American ones grow wild, and I used to collect a lot of them myself when I lived near the Clemson Agricultural Reservation (where I also picked blackberries and scuppernongs). When they were just ripening, I would go out every day or two to collect the tree-ripened fruits, and I wasn’t above taking intact windfall from the ground, since those fruits were almost certain to be edibly ripe. Some of them we ate fresh, but more of the persimmons were used for puddings and other dessert recipes. When they are ripe, they are so sweet that they can be stretched out quite a bit with other filler ingredients. The usual pudding recipe was like Indian pudding, with permission pulp instead of molasses, making it a lot like a persimmon cornbread.
I used cack-handed to mean “very ineptly done,” but I’m pretty sure I picked that up from British media sources within the last ten or fifteen years.
That’s just what I meant. I lust have expressed myself badly.
Athel Cornish-Bowden:
Your badly expressed lust was in using the spelling kaki. But only because that is the standard romanisation of 柿 (persimmon) in Japanese and I was tempted to read it as “cucky”…. But that’s a whole different area of pejorativity.
Czech and Slovak (apparently uniquely) have (in addition to the more familiar names) ‘tomel’. I searched in vain for a good scholarly etymology, but found only a couple of mentions saying it derives from the Algonquian
There is an etymological explanation in footnote 1 on this webpage (apparently reproducing Fr. Polívka (1908) Užitkové a pamětihodné rostliny cizích zemí):
Tomka vonná (‘fragrant tomka’) is apparently Anthoxanthum odoratum (English: sweet vernal grass; cf. Polish tomka wonna).
Was it here (p. 1010) that Jan Svatopluk Presl, Carl’s brother, introduced the name tomel into Czech? There doesn’t seem to be any direct etymological explanation in his exposition. I suppose this tomiť belongs to the family of OCS томити, Russian томить. I wasn’t able to locate anything similar in any Czech or Slovak dictionaries, but I didn’t look very hard. (I wonder if another LH reader can dig them up?) Perhaps Presl was also influenced by the belief that the intoxicating λωτός lōtos of the Odyssey, which caused Odysseus’ men to languish, was Diospyros lotus?
“Tomka vonná”
Machek:
tomka: travina Anthoxanthum. Přejal Presl 1846 z pol. tomka, což je název cizí libovonné rostliny Dipteryx odorata, něm. Tonkabohnen (u nás kdysi tunkabona). Rozemleté boby tonkové byly míchány (pro vůni) do šňupavého tabáku; jako náhražky jich se užívalo podobně vonícího kořene tomky; to byl důvod pro přenesení jména.
Ah, so Presl got it from Polish.
Jan Svatopluk Presl was a maniac who spent his life inventing names for animals and plants, using his spare time for chemical nomenclature. His coinages were often borrowings from various (mostly Slavic) languages, but some of them, such as klokan (kangaroo) or hroch (hippopotamus), were pure inventions. (Hroch was a given name in the middle ages and there is even a town called Hrochův Týnec named after some local nobleman who had owned the area long before Presl gave it the new meaning).
In contrast to most other Czech language reformers, most of Presl’s innovations survived and thrive to this day. Especially in botanical taxonomy – if you pick a random plant which has a native Czech name, it is quite safe to assume that it had been invented by Presl.
Persimmon is sold as ‘kaki’ however. I have never heard nor seen ‘tomel’ before.
Fascinating — what an unusual situation! Plenty of people invent words, but I don’t know of another language where one person had such a lasting effect.
Estonian, but I think that’s all.
One important factor in Presl’s success was undoubtedly the fact that he had not been just inventing random words, but rather creating a standardised scientific terminology. The plan in particular was to create a Czech binomial nomenclature for botany and zoology that would be functionally equivalent to the international Latin / Greek based one. Once the Czech scientific community accepted the need for that – and I guess it was not that hard to persuade them in the height of 19th century nationalist sentiments – a large field had opened before Presl, who could just take the existing Latin taxonomy and go on translating item by item. The invented names were then taken by textbooks and dictionaries, and whenever they differed from the trivial names it was Presl’s invention which was set in stone as being “scientifically correct”.
The Czech binomial nomenclature exists to this day. It is not being systematically updated to be equivalent to the internationally used nomenclature*, but it is still taught at schools and widely used in both speech and text, including dictionaries and encyclopaedias.
*) e.g. the african and asian elephant are now considered to be different genera loxodonta and elephas, but Czech genus names are identical, slon africký and slon indický; interestingly Wikipedia tells that loxodonta was differentiated from elephas already in 1827, so Presl could have known, and missed an oportunity to invent one more new name.
Loxodonta must be one of those cases where the splitters struck very early, the lumpers struck back immediately, and when the splitters returned much later, they had to use the name that already existed.
Some Belgian friends of mine living in Bulgaria that gave me homemade quince jam as a gift had labeled it “kaki” and in some Austrian shops quince and persimmons seem to be placed next to each other.
Plenty of people invent words, but I don’t know of another language where one person had such a lasting effect.
Well the usual go-to example, topically for this thread, is Eliezer Ben-Yehuda and Hebrew; but yes, the only other case I can think of offhand that’s even close is Johannes Aavik and Estonian.
Well the usual go-to example, topically for this thread, is Eliezer Ben-Yehuda and Hebrew
My (admittedly almost entirely ignorant) impression is that while Ben-Yehuda very much aspired to that position, and a number of his invented words were adopted, a larger number fell by the wayside.
and a number of his invented words were adopted, a larger number fell by the wayside
True AFAIK; and of course many other people (e.g. Lomonosov for Russian) had attempted to make up a large amount of words for their languages, and to an extent that worked, but the working part was very much the minority.
I suppose Ben-Yehuda is special (still) in that his coinages, even if it’s the minority of what he wanted to include, nevertheless form a significant fraction of the vocabulary.
I guess Prest is unusual (perhaps unique?) if legitimately most of his coinages survived. I don’t know enough about Aavik to tell whether that’s true for him.
It’s hard to find statistics. I have seen a claim that Ben-Yehuda was indeed the most prolific individual word coiner (about 300), though I can’t tell if one is counting all coinages or just established ones. Mendele, Bialik, and Shlonski also were prolific. Probably the Academy of the Hebrew Language is the most prolific coiner (even after allowing for its many duds), but that is not an individual.
I was under the impression that Lomonosov was quite successful?
Russian botanical names work in a similar fashion:
Tomel lepnatý – Хурма индийская (if Diospyros embryopteris is Diospyros malabarica)
Tomel obecný – Хурма кавказская или обыкновенная
Tomel černodřev – Хурма чернодревесная (in transliteration: černodrevesnaja)
Diospyros kaki is Хурма восточная (“Oriental”).
“Was it here (p. 1010) that Jan Svatopluk Presl…”
Apparently yes, compare Eva Hoffmannová, Jan Svatopluk Presl, Karel Bořivoj Presl (I won’t correct å to á else it loses googleability):
Rodová jména subtropických a tropických užitkových rostlin po prvé uveřejněná ve Všeobecném rostlinopisu (dnes platná)
arakača (Aracacha), ambroň (Liquiadambar), bambus (Bambusa), beluta (Mesua), blabočet (Araucaria), damaroň (Agathis), duma (Hyphaene), dvouslivák (Euphoria), galgan (Apinia), gomut (Arenga), bena (Lawsonia), hroznovec (Uvaria), chleboň (Artocarpus), jam (Dioscorea), juvie (Bertholletia), kadidlovnik (Boswellia), karambola (Averrhoa), karapa (Carapa), kardamom (Elletaria), kokosovnik (Cocos), kopáloň (Vateria), kujava (Psidium), kurura (Paullinia), ladel (Croton), ločidlo (Ferula), lontar (Borassus), mabagon (Swietenia), mangiva (Mangifera), mangostana (Garcinia), melok (Ullucus), mombin (Spondias), moukeš (Guilelma), naditec (Prosopis), nard (Nardostachys), nobolist (Podophyllum), noboplod (Podocarpus), opibled (Mimusops), ovsucha (Zizania), pálicba (Caryota), protiba (Tecoma), ravenala (Ravenala), rotan (Calamus), sågovnik (Sagus), slivouch (Flacourtia), smokvoň (Picus), sturač (Styrax), tomel (Diospyros), žlutokap (Xanthorrhoea) (48)
Z latinského jména jsou převzaty arakača, bambus, karapa, kokosovnik, nard, ravenala, ságovnik (7)
Překladem jména vědeckého vznikly blahočet, broznovec, moukeš, nobolist, noboplod, opibled, žlutokap (7)
Z němčiny jsou přeložena jména dvouslivák, chleboň, pålicha (3)
Z ruštiny je převzato jméno smokvoň (1)
Starší jméno řeckého původu kardamom (1)
Ze slovanských kmenů bylo utvořeno stukač, tomel (2)
Jména utvořená podle vlastnosti nebo užitku rostliny ambroń, kadidlovnik, kopáloň, ovsucba, protiba, slivouch (6)
Jména domorodá beluta, damaroň, duma, galgan, gomut, hena, jam, juvie, karambola, kujava, rura, ladel, lontar, mabagon, mangiva, mangostana, melok, mombin, rotan, sturač (20)
Starší české jméno ločidlo (1)
Rodová jména rostlin okrasných po prvé uveřejněná ve Všeobecném rostlinopisu (dnes platná)
bohyška (Funkie), bytel (Kochia), dosna (Canna)…
Ha, I was about to write a triumphant account of last night’s lucubrations on the etymology of ‘tomel’, but have been přeninjovaný by Xerîb, prase and drasvi’s helpful comments. I can only add that I too can’t find any reflexes of *tomiti in West Slavic, but notice the form of the infinitive on the page cited above: it’s ‘tomit”, not ‘tomiti’ (vs. ‘omamovati’). From the form alone, it could of course be an isolated Slovak or Czech dialectal word, but given we can’t find it or anything remotely similar, it suggests to me a transcription from the Russian. The only issue is that (and I only checked on wiktionary and in Vasmer) the Russian and other cognate verbs don’t seem to mean ‘to intoxicate’; but maybe Russian ‘to make languid’ is close enough? I’m not sure of the relevance here, but I also found a Polish name for the heliotrope, ‘tomiłek’ (typically, I’m having a complete mare finding the etymology, but will keep chipping away at it every now and again).
I knew ‘hroch’ was a coinage, but I think it’s a good one; it sounds extremely hippo-y. The Czech wikipedia article suggests it may have been inspired by ‘hrochot’, an obsolete word for ‘rachot’, which makes sense, given the noise that hippos make.
Talking of coinages, I have mentally started to pluralize persimmon as ‘persimma’, and I feel it’s going to become a habit.
@Andy: It just goes to show how idiosyncratic subjective impressions can be. My thought when I saw “hroch” was, more or less: Why would someone call a hippopotamus that?
Jan Svatopluk Presl was a maniac
Thank you, prase! I am living for your comments on this thread!
-tom- acquired some positive (mildly erotic) connotation in modern Russian. Namely, istoma is now used for pleasant sorts of weakness while the adjectrive tomnyj/tomnaja is applied to beauties, voices, looks and what not. Examples in wiktionary include smells, kisses, heat…
But this is a recent development.
@Andy: It just goes to show how idiosyncratic subjective impressions can be. My thought when I saw “hroch” was, more or less: Why would someone call a hippopotamus that?
I think it helps if you speak a Slavic language where there are words starting with gro- /hro- denoting loudness and mass (e.g. Russian grokhot “rumbling”, gromada “colossus”, grom “thunder”).
@hans
The thing is that creak, croak, crack, etc. are not roaring sounds, neither is grumble, grouch, gripe. Only grrr, which is a sound effect, not a word😊.
I know that the association doesn’t work in English; I just wanted to point out that it works in many Slavic languages.
@PP, Brett, note though that Czech h- is voiced.
So it is closer to growl-grunt-grumble words.
@PP, do gr- words (grumble etc.) also sound no-louder-than-cracking to you ?
If yes, I am surprised, even though I know what grumble came to mean.
And is voiced h- better than g-?
@drasvi: My English h is also normally voiced when it appears syllable initially, so that doesn’t really help. (I say “normally,” because there is no contrasting unvoiced phoneme; so it is not uncommon to weaken or eliminate the voicing in certain environments, such as when whispering.)
I suspected it (and a schwa…) but I don’t understand how neutralisation of contrasts works:( Aniway, Czech voiced h doesn’t sound so to my Russian ear (while Arabic /h/ sometimes sounds very voiced), so maybe it doesn’t matter.
I think growl and grumble are low-pitched and also (by default) low volume. You can make them loud with an adjective or adverb, e.g., loud/loudly. For me to make them high-pitched, I have to use a different word, like “whine”.
My English h is also normally voiced when it appears syllable initially, so that doesn’t really help.
Can there be a syllable final h in English, apart from learned pronunciation of Malay or Arabic loans?
Czech voiced h doesn’t sound so to my Russian ear
It is very definitely voiced and Czech speakers cannot normally produce the unvoiced h – attempts to do so normally lead to /x/ such as in Alláh /ala:x/ (nom.) vs. Alláha /ala:ɦa/ (gen.). It does not usually go the same way in the reverse direction: in the rare examples when /x/ undergoes voicing assimilation, it produces /ɣ/ rather than /ɦ/.
I’ve heard [ɦ] for h in Czech; but I’ve also heard [ɣ̊], i.e. a pure lenis-fortis contrast to ch [x], even between vowels. These seem to be different accents that different people use.
For what it’s worth, I’ve found a possible WS connection to ‘tomiti’ in the Polish name ‘Tomisław’, but not guaranteed. ‘Tomislav’ in the southern languages; perhaps even borrowed from them into Polish? ‘Tomiłek’ (a name for the heliotrope) is presumably a diminutive of the seemingly rather rare name ‘Tomił’, about which I could find nothing more. Either way, clearly not relevant to ‘tomel’.
In Dutch, it is usually called kaki but I have heard the name sharonfruit too. I like the Afrikaans name, which translates to tree tomato.
Simon Stevin propagated the use of Dutch terms in science, some of which he invented himself. It’s because of him that we speak about wiskunde and natuurkunde instead of mathematica and fysica.
@prase, DM, I meant (and was not clear about it) word- (or utterance-?) initial h
https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=Category:Czech_terms_with_audio_links&from=H
But… I tried other accents on forvo, and it seems accent-specific… (and I did not mean that it is not voiced – just that I would not notice it)
Actually I have never realised that there may be accent differences in Czech initial h voicing, but that’s hardly surprising, as there is no phonemic contrast between [h] and [ɦ] and my ears are not trained to hear the difference. Once I even believed that [ɦ] is the voiced counterpart to [x], not knowing that [h] and [ɣ] even exist.
Edit: I tried to listen to some of the Wiktionary entries and agree that the h in there sounds pretty much unvoiced. The voice is saying [hat] rather than [ɦat] for “had” and it sounds kinda unnatural. Now of course I am not sure if I would get the same impression if were not primed by this discussion.
Can there be a syllable final h in English?
Irish placenames can have a lax vowel followed by /h/, e.g.
Aghada,
Kilbeheny,
Kilmihil,
Drogheda.
Whether this means the lax vowel is unchecked or the /h/ is syllable final / ambisyllabic is I guess a matter of phonological theory.
The feature extends to a few items of general vocabulary: most famously, “vehicle” is often pronounced like “vesicle” (with /s/ replaced by /h/ obvs.). This pronunciation is associated with the stereotypical traffic cop, a big bluff rural lad; also reflected by the Gaelicisation, which is feithicil rather than, say, fíthicil.
[all above links have sound files]
Ambisyllabicity is only required in theories that try to postulate a single sound system for all of Standard (!) German. In other words, it’s just another case of mistaking diachrony for synchrony.