Okay, here's my pokey attempt to revitalise things a little with the forum... as usual with my madness for benzi!
I recall in one of the previous forum threads, the topic regarding the 本字 for 'tam' (wet) was brought up. I recall Hong mentioning it was 澹 (or was it 沈? I cannot recall).
However, I don't think we got down to discussing the 本字 for its counterpart - 'ta' (dry). I have two books that give contradicting answers. 廈門方言誌 gives it as 焦, whereas 閩語研究 (by 陳章太 and 李如龍) gives it as 燋. Both have the pronunciation 'qiao' in Mandarin, which leads me to believe that it cannot be the 本字. More likely, it is the 本字 for the "ch'iao" in "ch'iao bue ta" (burnt/charred/over-cooked)!
Any ideas?
Another thing... 閩語研究 states that 'ka' (and/with) is 共!
I would like to share with you some European words on ‘wet’ and ‘dry’ which may show interesting relationship to Taiwanese/Hokkien tâm ‘wet’ and ta ‘dry’.
The English word damp is related to wet because wet is defined as ‘containing moisture, made moist or damp’ (Ref. 1). Damp is a word of Germanic origin, meaning ‘vapor, steam, mist, or humidity’. Modern German Dampf also means ‘steam, vapor’. A number of German words are derived from Dampf, for examples, Dampfbad ‘steam bath or Turkish bath’, Dampfmaschine ‘steam engine’, and Dampfschiff ‘steamship’. There is one thing I like very much in Germany: Dampfnudel ‘steam bum’ 饅頭 which you can find in supermarkets (in the refrigerated section). For a midnight snack to dampen your hunger pangs, you can quickly microwave a Dampfnudel, cut open the steaming hot bum, spread some fruit jam, and put in Feldsalat (a kind of fresh vegetable sprouts), smoked salmon, and some cold-cut meats. And wash it down with German beer. Hmm good!
So it is quite likely that Taiwanese/Hokkien (Tw/Hk) tâm is related to English damp and German Dampf. Due to the lack of the [d] sound in Tw/Hk phonology, the [d] in European languages is corresponded by [t], [l], or [dz] (which is ch- in LMJ spelling) in Tw/Hk. So English damp corresponds to Tw/Hk tâm.
How about ta ‘dry’? This word appears to trace back to its Indo-European (IE) origin. The reconstructed IE word for ‘dry’ is *tars- and *ters- (Refs. 2 – 5). The Avestan (ancient Iranian) word for ‘dry’ is taršu-. The Gothic word is þaursus (thaursus). Related to this word is the Greek word ταρσός (tarsós), which is a device used for drying food such as cheeses. Another related word is the name of the Roman free city Tarsus from which Apostle Paul hailed his origin. The Old High German darra is ‘a place for drying fruit’, and the New High German darre is ‘a wooden structure to dry hops on’. Thus the Tw/Hk ta appears to be related to IE *tars- ‘dry’. According to Campbell’s dictionary, ta is vernacular, i.e., there is no Hanji for it. I call it a Group-1 word.
The Taiwanese word ta-sò also means ‘dry, thirsty’. The sò may trace its origin to IE *saus- and *sus-, meaning ‘dry, be dry’. Lithuanian has sausas ‘dry’ to which is related the Tw/Hk word chiau 焦 whose usual meaning is ‘burned’. From IE *sus- is derived the Middle Low German word sōr ‘dry’. Correlated with this is Tw/Hk sò 燥 . According to Campbell’s dictionary, 燥 is pronounced sò.
Finally, the Greek word κάγκανος (kágkanos) means ‘dry, fit for burning’. In Greek the combined consonants -gk- between the first and second syllables gives rise to a nasal sound, so the first syllable sounds like kan-. Corresponding to this is Tw/Hk kan 乾 . According to Campbell’s dictionary, kan 乾 means ‘ta-sò’. QED.
Peter Heather, who teaches at Worcester College, University of Oxford, is a leading authority on the late Roman Empire and on the barbarians. In his most recent work (Ref. 6), he says, “Understanding the past is always a detective story.” I cannot agree more. It has been great fun doing the detective work tracing the origins of Taiwanese/Hokkien words. The greatest reward of all is that now I can start to understand the past history of the language I learned as a child at my mother’s knee.
References:
1. C. T. Onions (1966). The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Clarendon Press, Oxford. p. 1000.
2. A. Vaniček (1877). Griechisch-Lateinisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, B.G. Teubner, Leipzig. Vol. 1, pp. 309-311.
3. H. Frisk (1970). Griechisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, Heidelberg. pp. 857-858; 882.
4. W. P. Lehmann (1986). A Gothic Etymological Dictionary, E. J. Brill, Leiden. p. 358.
5. C. D. Buck (1949). A Dictionary of Selected Synonyms in the Principal Indo-European Languages, University of Chicago Press. p. 1076.
6. P. Heather (2006). The Fall of the Roman Empire, Oxford University Press. p. xv.
