Arabic Observations: زوج and جوز

القَلْب

root: ق-ل-ب / form I verbal noun / definition: transposition, alteration

Something in this library is producing a noise that sits halfway between the whine of a hungry mosquito and the never-ending, impalpable ring of tinnitus, in both sound and annoyingness.

I feel like it’s the fluorescent light directly above my head but let me not self-center. I’m sure everyone else here is mentally swatting away the annoyance too.

المهم… It’s been a while since our last Arabic Observations post and any while feels too long when it comes to this series. So we’re back.

And this time we’re talking about زَوج. Or جَوز. Okay, both.

(Don’t get excited, Mum. We’re talking about linguistics, not a husband on the horizon.)

زَوج, as we probably know, means “spouse” or “husband”. In some Arabic dialects, we hear جَوز instead. In Levantine dialects, the diphthong tends to a long vowel, so we get something like jōz.

The noun جوز came into being when the initial and final consonants of زوج switched positions.

But this isn’t a one-off. This linguistic phenomenon of two consonants in a word swapping positions is known in Arabic as القَلب (transposition, alteration).

قَلب also means “heart” which I guess is fitting for this post. Cute.

And not only that, if we look in the dictionary, جَوز is defined as the “heart or center”. It’s like, with this consonant switch, we’re centering the idea of a spouse in our lives. (Is this getting too mushy? I’m speaking purely as a linguist.)

Let’s not even stop there, because جَوز has a word twin: جَوف, which carries the same dictionary definitions. The difference is that جَوف also refers to “hollowness”. Maybe, in contrast, جَوز is full… of love?

So perhaps love is in the air—

—oh wait, no, that’s just that mosquito-like sound. Easy mistake.

Have you come across any other examples of consonant-switching in Arabic words?

!في أمان الله