Re: Of Tenderness and Henna
Posted by Babaganooj on May 12, 2000 at 22:58:15:
In Reply to: Re: Of Tenderness and Henna posted by Kenzi on May 12, 2000 at 21:15:40:
In fact, first, I'd like to express my happiness that
I found that you study Arabic, and would relieve me
of the feeling of saying things that might be a bit technical
or discouraging to people who find grammar a bit boring, or
linguistics a bit dry. I'm not saying everybody is, but I came
across people who have no patience when it comes to language.
What you are saying about the name Hanna is really tempting
to go ahead and see it in the light of the root (HNN) However,
a deeper look at this word, yields a different explanation.
Hanna really is a short word for Yohanna ( a Hebrew name) which
in English would be best represented as John. So this etymological
aspect yields a better explanation than say the temptation to
derive it from HNN. A crossover, if you will, from Hebrew,
which, albeit Semitic, has its unique system of derivation, but
preserves the principle of the Consonant (meaning) vowel
(derivation) found in its sister languages.
In a nutshell, cosonants in Hebrew and the way they
reflect semantics, might not correspond 100% with
Arabic. But bothe still use the same principle of
assigning meaning to consonants, and grammatical functio
to vowels.
Hope that was of help, and wish you the best in your
studies. Let me know if I can be of help.
: Well, I can't speak for Catherine....I only speak for myself when I
: say "coooooool". I am student of Arabic and have always been
: fascinated by linquistics and etymology of words, especially the
: crossover from one language to another. One of the reasons that i
: find Arabic so fascinating and satisfying is this concept of the
: three root letters and the words that grow from this root. And
then
: to find that the root of henna is "tenderness"...very, very
: interesting.
: And then to cross over into english, I would assume that the
english
: name "Hannah" probably has Semitic roots, specifically HNN.
: Thank you so much for sharing your particular insight on this. And
: keep it coming.
