This morning, Jacob had his usual snack. This snack consists often of a yoghurt, some fruit (tangerines are a favorite at the moment), and whatever else the fridge contains that day. He's a very good eater.
Our nanny speaks Armenian with Jacob (and a mixture of Armenian, Russian and English to the others). I usually don't pay much attention, although I have this strange gift of understanding the meaning of languages even though I don't speak them. I can't for the life of me reproduce what I hear, nor tell what the individual words mean. It also doesn't make learning a language any easier. But it's unusual enough that I often get baffled reactions like "but you understand, so you speak Armenian!" No, I don't. But I can decipher according to situation, references and non-verbal cues really, really well. Anyway.
This morning, I overheard Karine asking Jacob whether he wanted some "zeytun". And that word I recognized instantly. I turned around, and against better knowledge, said delightedly, "Oh, but that's a Turkish word!"
I do that, again and again, even though I know it annoys the hell out of her. As she put it one day, it makes her heart rip. I'm really sorry for that, but having grown up in Turkey, it's a real treat for me to hear Turkish words. To my ear, they just sound so beautiful. And it is the exact same word in Turkish. Zeytun. Olive.
Karine protested, of course, that it was an Armenian word, and that the Turks must have stolen it. I was dubious about that – not because I normally defend the Turks in every which way (only sometimes) but my inner linguist didn't think it sounded Armenian at all. Not really Turkish either. I said to her, placating, that it must be an Arabic word. She was somewhat mollified. Arabs aren't nearly as bad as Turks.
So, of course I had to go and look it up:
Olive is a loan from Latin oliva "olive; olive tree", which itself was loaned from Greek (eláa or elaía, from older elaíva "olive; olive tree"; furthermore élaion "olive oil"). The word's ultimate origin is probably an Eastern Mediterranean language not known today.
In the languages of the Iberic peninsula, the Latin name was superseded by an Arabic loan: Spanish aceituna and Portuguese azeitona both come from Arabic al-zeytun "the olive"; in Spanisch, oliva refers to the tree, not to the fruit. See also capers for more examples of Arabic loans in Iberic languages.
The Arabic term is cognate to Hebrew zayith "olive" and might derive from a Common Semitic root signifying "to be prominent".
Due to the enormous importance of olives for both the Greek and the Roman cultures, their name entered nearly every European language via Latin oleum "oil" as generic word for liquid fats.
Cool.
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