Arabic-Turkish Observations: Imprinting

بَصْمَة

root: ب-ص-م / noun / plural: بَصَمات / definition: imprint, impression

This will probably be the last post I write on this laptop of mine, which has been slowly spiriting away in recent times after having survived with me through the second half of the pandemic, a remote job, a master’s degree, a few falls (just the laptop, not me), the start of my PhD, and however many blog posts I’ve typed out on its keyboard—clinging on despite the hundreds of tabs I’ve kept open for years (literally…) which may or may not have contributed significantly to its demise.

So, new starts and all that. I’ve just been playing a memory game today trying to remember all the passwords I need to re-log in to all the tabs on my new device. It’s almost like I should write them down or something.

I digress.

The reason we’re all gathered here today is for another one of my Arabic-Turkish observations because I can’t keep any cool linguistic finds to myself for too long. (Which reminds me: I need to write about some Arabic-Akkadian stuff soon too…)

Imprinted in my memory is the day I was nominated to accompany my grandmother to the hospital which, if it had been recorded, would have gone viral for all the wrong reasons and gained me notoriety as the world’s most hopeless English-Turkish medical interpreter.

But it was something she said to me whilst we were in the waiting room that later sparked a connection. Half-watching the hospital TV which was broadcasting a crime program, my grandmother asked me if the investigators had found a fingerprint—using the word basma.

In Turkish:

bas-: the verb stem meaning “to press”
basmak: its verbal noun
basma: the noun form, meaning “a print” or “imprint”

Hmm.

It’s just that these words sound strangely similar to a collection of Arabic words from the root letters ب-ص-م:

بَصَمَ / يَبصُمُ (baṣama / yabṣumu): the form I verb meaning “to print, stamp” or “make an imprint”
بَصم (baṣm): its verbal noun
بَصمة (baṣma): the noun meaning “imprint” or “impression”—بصمة الأصابِع (baṣmat al-aṣābi’) can be used specifically to refer to a fingerprint

Is it not interesting how the Turkish basma and Arabic بصمة (baṣma) have the same meaning?

And what’s more interesting is that the stem that the Turkish basma is derived from (i.e. bas-) doesn’t include the m sound—the -ma suffix just indicates the word’s nominal status.

The Arabic بصمة, on the other hand, is derived from the root letters ب-ص-م (b-ṣ-m)—so the m sound is part of the stem.

What do you think? Is it just a coincidence or is there a connection there?

Let me know your thoughts!

!مع السلامة