Arabic, Persian, Urdu

What is the Arabic root of the Turkish word 'makam', 'place of work, position'?
Do Persian and Urdu have a cognate, also from the Arabic root I suppose ?

The Arabic is مقام, maqaam, from the root QWM meaning to stand. The ma- prefix can be part of a form indicating "place of" (e.g. maktab = office, from KTB to write), so maqaam = place of standing, standing, status, place.

That root shows up in one of the bits of Aramaic the gospels quote Jesus as having said: Talitha kumi = maiden arise.

I don't know Persian or Urdu, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if makam were used in Persian to mean something like (Oriental) musical mode or scale, as it is also in English. The music of Urdu speakers may have ragas instead of makams; I don't know.

The form of word that has MAFAAL feature points to time or place of action or general position of action. The context then decides whether one is talking about time or place or some other positioning or both. For example the word Masjid is well known to mean place of worship but it also can point especially in Qur'anic Arabic to timing of prayer.

MAQAM as a musical term is also certainly used in Arabic and it may point to the positioning of the musical note or so.

Take care all

Hussein

Thanks all very interesting, especially the thing about the music scale!

I was originally interested in the word because the "nickname" for the city I live in, Amsterdam, is Mokum, apparently originally a Yiddish word coming from Hebrew, meaning "place" in which I recognized a cognate with the word in Turkish.

Yes, מקום, "makom" (modern Hebrew pronunciation) means place. Kumi is also modern Hebrew for "stand up" - we're talking modern here! - said to a female. (In Hebrew verbs are masculine or feminine.) A mother will say to her young daughter on the bus: "Kumi... let this elderly gentleman sit down."

I didn't know masjid for prayer time, or about that form referring to time. Thanks, Hussein.

And thanks, shuffaluff. That's cool.

Should I (attempt to) explain what hlatif means by the MAFAAL form?

Here goes.

Arabic, and I think Semitic languages generally, form words by putting a root, usually of three consonants, into a particular pattern or form. So from KTB you might have kataba, he wrote; kaatib, writer, scribe; and maktab; place of writing, office. From QTL you might then have qatala, he killed, qaatil, killer, and maqtal (although I don't know if that word exists), place of killing.

When Arabic grammarians want to refer to these forms, they use the root F3L (3 = ayin, a guttural consonant lacking in English) = to do, to make. They would talk about the fa3ala form (third person singular masculine perfect); the faa3il form (spent participle masculine) etc. The maf3al or, as hlatif wrote it, MAFAAL form, denotes place or time of. Makaam is that form for the root QWM; w's and y's cause odd but predictable things to happen compared to other consonants.

Yes, same in Hebrew.

I remember some years ago reading a newspaper article about workers in a מתפרה. I didn't know the word, but the root תפר T-F-R shone through. The first letter and the last letter in the word are just frills and extras, indicating "a place where T-F-R is done". תפר T-F-R means "sew" (what you do with needle and thread), so it is a place where sewing is done, MATPERA. Therefore these workers were in a clothing factory.

As the starter of the thread, I did know about the MAFAAL form. I learnt about it when wondering how a word as short as matar could denote something as modern as an airport.
The explanation may be useful for someone else, though

But I did not think of the implication...
So, interestingly, both Hebrew and Arabic have a MAFAAL form, where an initial m- denotes a space!?

Edited by: kalpea_tuli

Looks like it. Arabic can add the feminine suffix to it as apparently can Hebrew, Maktaba = library. Madrasa = school (DRS = study).

Matar, as you might guess, is from a word with a Y (I think; it might be a W and I'm away from my dictionaries) in the middle. TYR = fly.

It's not just the initial m that Indicates "place or time of x-ing". The whole form is MaF3aL, where F, 3, and L indicate the first, second, and third consonants of the root. There are other forms with initial m and even initial ma. MaF3uuL is the past participle, e.g. Mahmoud = praised.

Edited by: Sibawaihi

Madrasa = school; Hebrew midrasha (although that's specifically a type of religious school, but it is of course the same basic idea from the same root).

The root פעל (F/P - ayin - L) in Hebrew has the basic meaning of working. (F and P are interchangeable, depending among other things on where they are in the word.) And that's where the idea of MAFAAL comes from. So פועל po'el is a workman; מפעל mif'al is a factory; פעולה pe'ula is an activity; הפעלה haf'ala is causing something to work, such as plugging an electrical appliance in.

Just going back to the issue of time and space. In Arabic time and space are very interrelated and not really that separate in a sense and many times things that point to time can point to space or to both of them. I believe that this is shared with other languages in one extent or another.

Hussein

Yes, English, French, and Turkish and other European languages use the word "long" or its translation to refer either to space or to time.
Not all languages do, of course:
Russian and Persian for example make a distinction for "long" whether referring to time or space, though...

In Malay, "makam" means tomb.

great thanks orangutan!

Are there other examples except "makom"/"maqaam" and "madrasa"/"madrisha" of words that are grammatically formed the same way in Arabic and in Hebrew while also being based on similar roots? That is, words that sound THAT similar? What is the Hebrew for airport for example?

And is the correct grammatical term in Hebrew also MAFAAL? Or is there another term?

And does anyone have an idea what root "makom" is based on in classical Hebrew? "to stand", "to stop" maybe?

Edited by: kalpea_tuli

I'm pretty sure it would be with a P rather than an F, just from seeing the names of Hebrew forms here and there. But I don't know how they would write this particular form.

Edit: Looking around, the Hebrew grammarians might call it map'al (using ' for the ayin.)

(Arabic has no P. I think Hebrew has a letter that goes from P to F depending on environment or something.)

Edited by: Wilhelm Gesenius

#14-- I don't know if you mean words in the maf3al/map'al form specifically. If so I can't help you. But a lot of the core vocabulary of Hebrew and Arabic is similar, perhaps as similar as the core vocabulary of English and German. Yad = hand in both languages; 'ayn = eye; loshen (Hebrew) lisaan (Arabic) = tongue; av/ab = father; ben/ibn = son; beth/bayt = house; shem/ism = name.

There may be any number of mistakes in my Hebrew, but the correct word will be about as close to the Arabic as my mistaken form.

Airport in Hebrew seems to be a calque on English airport (or French aéroport or German Flughafen) port of aviation, not "place of flying", and the word for flight/aviation isn't from the root TYR.

I believe that hebrew speakers can correct me but the rule for P vs F or B vs V or K vs kh in hebrew where those letters are written the same way but one would say P, B, K if the letter is preceded by No Vowel while if a vowel precedes it then it becomes a F, V, KH for example Paaal for action but it is MAFaal and so on.

Airport in Hebrew is nemal Teeoofah which translates literally as port of flying. The root Ain-W-F is present in Arabic and in classical disctionaries points to flying locust and moving around so related while not exactly the same. In Arabic the term for Airport is MATAR = place of flying.

Also in hebrew the term BEIT= house/ home/ shelter can be used to point to a place of something for example courthouse in hebrew is called Beit Deen as house of law. In Arabic Beit is used but probably less often. One big example the mosque in Mecca is called Beitullah= House of God and this applies to any mosque or so.

Hussein

Sorry other examples of mafaal in hebrew and arabic are Matbakh for kitchen in both languages which means place of cooking.

I have compiled things written here, and things other people told me elsewhere in a blog post here:
http://www.unilang.org/blog/adventrue/mokum_b-1061.html

I sometimes quoted some of you almost literally, esp. VinnyD. If you want me to take it away, tell me.

That's an interesting blog. Well done!!