Arabic-Akkadian Observations: talmīd, تِلميذ, and a Lost Root

مَهرَقان

root: ه-ر-ق / noun / definition: ocean, related to “spill”

Yesterday, the two writing prompts my friend messaged me triggered a flood—okay, more like a small spill—of creativity. Inspiration at last! (“This could be a line in a novel,” she said, “Save the sentence”!)

And something else, a certain Akkadian word, inspired me recently and triggered a dictionary dive. I previously wrote about some Akkadian words that are very similar to their Arabic equivalents, but this one definitely needs a deeper look.

In Akkadian, talmīd means “student”. It’s like the Arabic تِلميذ.

Let’s delve into it.

The Akkadian talmīd is derived from the root l-m-d, which is related to learning.

It follows the noun pattern taprīs (where p-r-s represent the root letters; it’s like saying تَفعيل in Arabic), and this noun pattern is associated with “D stem” Akkadian verbs.

Verb stems in Akkadian are what we refer to as verb forms when it comes to Arabic. And “D stem” Akkadian verbs are sometimes referred to using the roman numeral II.

Like form II Arabic verbs, D stem Akkadian verbs often have a causative meaning—they refer to making someone/something do something.

The D stem verb associated with talmīd means “to teach” (i.e. to make someone learn). Here’s how it conjugates in the durative (similar to the present tense):

I: ulammad
you (m): tulammad
you (f): tulammadī
he/she: ulammad
we: nulammad
you (pl): tulammadā
they (m): ulammadū
they (f): ulammadā

(You might notice that these conjugations sound very similar to the Arabic form II present tense conjugation patterns! أُفَعِّل and تُفَعِّل and يُفَعِّلون etc.)

This verb’s associated verbal noun is lummudum (where the final –um is actually the nominative Akkadian case marker).

And its participle follows the pattern muparris (like the form II active participle pattern in Arabic: مُفَعِّل). So the Akkadian mulammid means “teacher”—just like the Arabic مُعَلِّم or مُدَرِّس.

Okay, so what is my point here?

Well, the fact that the Arabic word تِلميذ exists with the same meaning as the Akkadian talmīd seems to indicate that the root ل-م-ذ once used to exist in Arabic. And that, like the Akkadian l-m-d, it was related to learning and teaching.

We can speculate—and this is really speculation—that there was a verb (and a form II one, perhaps, لَمَّذَ/يُلَمِّذُ…) that, just maybe, meant “to teach”. Maybe there was even the participle مُلَمِّذ, meaning “teacher”. Maybe.

But it seems that, if it ever existed, this root was lost long ago.

We don’t find it in dictionaries of Modern Arabic. Instead, the noun تِلميذ can be found under the root ت-ل-م-ذ in the Hans Wehr—a root which was clearly derived from the noun itself. (A bit like this.)

Huh. But if we peer into لسان العرب, it mentions that the root ل-م-ذ is a variation of ل-م-ج.

(I might be going on a wild goose chase here, but what’s the harm in joining me?)

Taking a look at the root ل-م-ج, we find that the form I verb means “to eat with the corners of one’s mouth”, referring to donkeys. (Bear with me here…)

But the form II verb from this root in Lane’s Lexicon means something like “to feed in order to satisfy”. And isn’t teaching like nourishing really? Feeding students information? And don’t we refer to educating someone as “spoonfeeding” sometimes?

Is this too much of a metaphorical connection? Ah well.

Another thing that is interesting, though, is that—if تِلميذ indeed comes from the lost root ل-م-ذ—it follows the pattern تِفعيل. I can’t think of another Arabic noun that follows this pattern.

Unless it’s a pronunciation variant of تَفعيل that stuck. And تَفعيل, as we know, is the verbal noun pattern for form II verbs. Or maybe the noun was just borrowed from Akkadian.

Well, I didn’t promise any answers at the end of this post. But isn’t the whole point of learning, really, to ask questions?

!مع السلامة