(photo by M. A. AlAwaid)

“The Arabic Alphabet” website (written by Michael Beard, illustrated by Houman Mortazavi) – http://alifbatourguide.com/

The Arabic Alphabet: A Guided Tour – Gâf is for cow

excerpt:

The sound is the voiced counterpart of K, matched by the appearance of the letter. If we think of the sound of G as a thickened K sound, adding another spar up there to the spindly shape of Kâf, changing ک to گ, that second sarkesh above the first gives the letter a little heft. An earlier version of Gâf was a Kaf with three dots overhead, which has more or less the same result.

There was a time when the three-dotݣ was the more common way to change a K to a G. William Jones’s Grammar of the Persian Language (1809) suggests using either. In Ottoman Turkish ݣ represented the NG sound. It’s still used that way in Uighur, Kirgiz, Turkmen and probably others.

گ exists in Persian, Ottoman Turkish, Urdu, Pashto, Sorani & Kurmanji Kurdish, Uighur, Pegon, Jawi, and other scripts about which I know nothing except the fact that they exist, if that. What with the absence of a hard G sound in Arabic (with dialectical exceptions) you won’t find the letter Gâf there. Kâf alone suits them fine.

Persian speakers, though they had the sound, got along without the letter Gâf for a long time. Clearly, it was easy enough to use the naked ک / ك for two sounds. We do the same thing in English when we use C for two sounds (for a K or an S), or, for that matter, as we do with the letter G (our Gaf equivalent, whose name is pronounced Jee).

When Arabic takes in a G word as a loan, the word itself is likely to change. One possible substitute is Jim. “Google” (Persian گوگل) becomes جوجل.The Persian word گوهر, gowhar, essence, true inner nature of something, also a jewel, became in Arabic جوهر , jawhar. Later it was borrowed back into Persian, so today in Persian dictionaries you will find both jowhar and gowhar, meaning as nearly as I can determine, the same thing.

Loan words and loan names like Chicago (which has two non-Arab sounds, both G and CH) require some ingenuity: sometimes the substitute is Ghayn, thus شیکاغو, which becomes Shikaghu, different but perfectly recognizable. “Cigarette” (Persian sigâr) is sijâra, سجارة, with a Jim. Pythagoras is Fithâghûras, فيثاغورس, with a Ghayn.

Gaf word گیج, gij, is “dizzy.” Gâf is for گم, gom, “lost.” Gomnâm , گمنام, is “unknown,” “obscure.” Gardesh, گردش, is rotation, or circulation, but also an excursion or promenade, going for a walk, just wandering. The gard part is linked etymologically with gerd, “round,” thus “walking around.” Think of gardesh as the emblem for activity without a goal, something like French flânerie, to wander with no particular destination and nothing to gain. An approximate equivalent in Turkish is gezmek, “to wander,” source of gezeğen, a planet, because planets seem to wander when seen in comparison to the motions of the fixed stars. The English word “planet” of course follows the same logic (from Greek plánēs, πλάνης, wandering).

Gomrok (Turkish gümrük), “customs” (originally a term for a custom house), is the source for a word which visitors to Iran are likely to encounter early, crossing a border or getting out of the airport. The Arabic equivalent is jumruk (the 4-consonant stem, J-M-R-K, tipping us off to the possibility of a loan word, which it is). Logic says that the chain of borrowings follows Turkish, and that Turkish picked it up from Greek κομμέρκιον. Kommérkion has generated successors in the other direction (through Latin commercium). In fact, Gümrük is cognate with the English “commerce.”

Gâf word گران, gerân, means “expensive.” A geru, گرو, is a pledge, a pawn, a deposit. Ganj, گنج, means “treasure.” The Persian proverb says “Hich ganj bidun-e ranj,” ranj being “exertion,” “pains”: There’s no treasure without working for it, i.e. no gain without pain. (At one time the National Bank, Bânk-e Melli, had a slogan – if I remember correctly– ganj bidun-e ranj. Approximately “treasure without pain.”)

There is an Arabic word, kanz, meaning the same thing. It was at one time, early in the history of the language, a loan word from Persian, Old Persian, borrowed so early that the Arabic form had time to develop a proper stem, triliteral K-N-Z, meaning “to bury, to accumulate, to hoard.” It occurs in the Qur’ân (notably in Al-Kahf, “The Cave,” in that strange and beautiful parable of the treasure buried below the crumbling wall (18.82).

The Old Persian word also migrated as a loan word to Greece, where it became gáza (γáζα), treasure, royal wealth, and there too sounded so Greek it was expanded to gazofulákion (γαζοφυλáκιον), the royal treasury. It was already established by the time of the Gospel of John, where, for instance, Jesus has a debate with the Pharisees in front of the γαζοφυλáκιον (John 8.20).

New essay: “’Ayn is for Arab” on “The Arabic Alphabet” website (by Michael Beard)

New essay: “Kâf is for Karavan” on “The Arabic Alphabet” website (by Michael Beard)

New Essay: “Ṭâ Is For Talisman” on The Arabic Alphabet website

Me Talk Pretty Never: Learning Arabic, part 1