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Article
#6
Interchangeable Letters
What could be more
American than the AMBER waves of grain? Yet our Dictionaries
acknowledge that AMBER comes from Arabic aNbar (ambergris), a
slight change of nose-made sounds (nasals) from N to M. In Hebrew
we can even see the shape of the nose in the letter Nun. In the
graphic for letter Mem we can see the lip and mouthful of
required air behind the nose (nun) to make the Mem sound. There
are many unacknowledged Nun words that gave us English M words,
including the elM tree from the ilaN (shade tree), or the moron
from the NaR (youth). Just as Greek moros (foolish) developed
from moro (child), a foolish adult in Yiddish is accused of
NaR(ishkeit).
Now let's look at Mem words that gave us
English N words. While most mommy words of the world are forms of
IMAH (mother), the Eskimo, Hungarian and Turkish moms are N
words... just like those substitute moms, the NANNY and NUN.
Similarly, a kerNel (seed or grain) is devolved from Hebrew
carMel (a corn, grain or wheat term). Hebrew carMel is even
translated "kernel" in Leviticus 2:14.
The last
group of interchangeable sounds from the same part of the mouth
are the are the throaty gutturals. Notice how the Hebrew Kuf is
just an elongated Hey, or how the Khet or Het is merely a closed
off Hey. The graphics are showing us comparitive air flow in
these throaty sounds that are as hard for American Jews to
pronounce as for Brits and Germans. My favorite example of an
Ashkenazic and Sephardic accent for the nations involves the Ayin
(a guttural that Ashkenazim soften to a vowel). The raven,
Ayin-Resh-Bet in Hebrew, is rendered a soft Hraefn in Old
English, but a Latin raven is the harder Corvus. Derivatives like
French Corbeau (raven) or English Crow may be seen to come from
the Sephardic, Mediterranean side of the family.
Not
using their head, linguists don't link Head with Hat, even though
both are derived from harsher gutteral K etymons.Both should be
traced from Hebrew Kuph-Dalet, as Kod[koad]means the crown of the
head. Have you noticed that the English C and K look like a Khuph
and Gimmel reversed in a mirror? We all know that Camel, Greek
Kamalos, is from Semitic Gamal, but we don't acknowledge that the
Knave is a Ganav (thief). You have just learned about Nun to M
and Kuf to H changes from Edenic to English. In an earlier column
you saw how P and B interchange. You are now ready for a triple
threat word that requires all three root letters changing, and
you don't have to be high on marijuana to see that HeMP and
CaNNaBis are cognates. Where are both of these long lost cousins
from? From Semitic terms like Arabic qunnab.
Are you
ready for an even more challenging review of the letter changes
we have learned? How about JuNGLe? We know it comes to English
from Hindi (India), since there are no jungles in Europe or the
Middle East. The closest we get in Hebrew is Ya'AR (forest)
that's Yod, Ayin, Resh. Well, we saw the Yod turn to J in many
names from John to Judith (Yohannan to Yehudit). The Ayin
properly hardened to G in Gaza/Aza (source of the Gauze pad). And
the Resh could always be rendered like an L, the other liquid,
and we've already seen the N that crept into YaNkle from Yaacov
(Jacob). Don't worry, JUNGLE is my most complex derivative. Every
other human word flows from Edenic using only one or two of these
conservative and universally accepted rules of sound shifting.
Percentage-wise and vocabulary-wise, English is more obviously a
dialect of Hebrew than of Latin, Greek or French. These languages
are ancestors, but we are talking patriarch, the grandaddy of 'em
all.
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