Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Ishinan" <ishinan AT comcast.net>]

[VADIM CHERNY]: English sl- phonaesthetical cell may be related to Hebrew 
samech-lamed  which means "to push down".
Phonaesthesia is built into Hebrew where three-letter roots share  their 
two-letter root cell's meaning. In English, the origin of phonaesthesia are 
obscure. Might not such roots enter the Romance and Germanic languages from 
Semitic?


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[ISHINAN]: Hi Vadim, Nothing new here, what is currently known in the West 
as "Phonaesthesia" is a branch of linguistics developed a millennium earlier 
(8th c.) in both Arabic Abdjad science and Jewish Kabbalah. The latter 
directly influenced John Locke work's on phonosemantics.

For example, the cluster "qT" in Classical Arabic gives:  qTT, q T`, qTm, 
qTl and qTf -  all expressing variants of the sense of cut. Note {T= 
emphatic t}

Speaking of the devil, your proposition of English 'cluster' sl- 
phonaesthetical cell, definitely shares something in common with Classical 
Arabic.

The following examples are shared with Germanic languages:

(from root: sll) sla'l = long slices cut from a camel's hump.

(from root: slt)  slt "slit" rent, cut off.

(from root: slkh) slkh {*1} = "slough", stripped off as in snake's skin 
sloughs off.  *1 (Kh = chet)

(from root slq)  slq = hit hard, hard blow, flayed or simply "slugged" hard 
with a whip .

(from root slT {*2}  slyT-h = sharp cutting tongue, used in describing a 
clamorous woman (cf. Ar. shalaq) or a women of ill repute, loose in morality 
or simply a "slut". *2 {T= emphatic t}.


While the following examples are shared with Romance languages:

(from root sl') sla' = fat butter oily substance, salve, selp.

(from root slf ) slf = salve, oiled or greased leather water bag.

I hope this helps in answering your main question:  "Might not such roots 
enter the Romance and Germanic languages from Semitic?"



Ishinan Ishibashi