Talk:برج

برج

The etymology does not make sense: there are no cognates between Germanic and Arabic. Between Farsi and Germanic possibly, but then it is said that it is an Arab loan... Jcwf 02:28, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Arabic word is an ancient borrowing from Germanic, just like Medieval Latin burgus, and has also apparently also passed into Hebrew and Aramaic. According to the Encyclopedia of Islam, Volume 2, p. 1315, entry for burdj (you can find a download link for a scanned PDF at gigapedia..): But the borrowing must be very old, for it is to be found already in Sabaean inscriptions). The PIE root which gave Germanic root is usually explained as a zero-grade of PIE *bʰerǵʰ- "high" (hence the prothetic vowel /u/ next to the syllabic sonorant - Balto-Slavic had the same behavior), and can be by regular correspondence be connected to Sanskrit बृहत् (bṛhát, “lofty , high , tall”), Armenian բարձր (barjr, “high”) and perhaps Ancient Greek πύργος (púrgos). So strictly speaking they are not really cognates, but are nevertheless deeply related. --Ivan Štambuk 08:47, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Does the Encyclopedia of Islam say anything about borrowing through Syriac būrgā, whence also Armenian բուրգն (burgn, “tower, pyramide”)? It's too big for me to download and see. --Vahagn Petrosyan 12:21, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

It only mentions that it was borrowed into Aramaic (which would presumably also include Syriac language/dialect). You may wanna ask User:334a to add the corresponding Aramaic word [1] to Wiktionary, as he's the only Aramaic contributor around here. --Ivan Štambuk 14:36, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Sadly, the Neo-Aramean User:334a isn't around anymore. Which, on the other hand, is a good thing in making me the most exotic user on WIktionary :) --Vahagn Petrosyan 06:46, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

I can believe that the Arabic word is borrowed from some Indo-European language, but Germanic is highly unlikely. Even if the modern Persian word is borrowed from Arabic, it's far more likely that the Arabic word is borrowed from some early Iranian source cognate to Sanskrit bṛhát than that it's borrowed from Germanic. Angr 15:13, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Iranian would be *br̥z-, though, wouldn't it? The sequence we have now – Arabic from Aramaic from Greek – is the most plausible IMHO. The origin of the Greek word, in view of the Pre-Greek toponyms, might be Anatolian; this would also solve the stop problem: *bʰr̥gʰ- becomes *br̥g- in Proto-Anatolian, and in later Anatolian initial voiced stops are devoiced, yielding *pr̥g-; compare Talk:πύργος. (A Germanic loanword in Homeric Greek would be highly unexpected and unique, to say the least.) --Florian Blaschke (talk) 01:39, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Plural forms

Regarding that part "برج (burj) (dual برجان (burjān), plural بروج (burūj) or ابراج (’abrāj))" in Arabic section: ابراج only means "towers", but بروج is plural form of برج with meaning of "zodiac", which means these two plural forms have different meaning. I just don't know how to include these informations in the page. --Z 20:57, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

Maybe by having two Noun entries under a single Etymology section. That's how it's done at Wort, the German word for "word": there are two different plurals, Wörter and Worte, which have different meanings. —Angr 22:05, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

RFC discussion: January 2010

The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for cleanup (permalink).

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

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برج

Dari: the definition is Meanings: See Persian section below.

Mglovesfun (talk) 08:45, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Cleaned up. —Stephen 16:17, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Striking. Mglovesfun (talk) 18:15, 13 January 2010 (UTC)