Talk:هل

What is the purpose of ====Translations==== section on this FL entry? --Ivan Štambuk 15:20, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

I believe it was put here and on other pages that have the particle because there isn’t an English equivalent for this where the words could be entered. —Stephen 15:32, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Probably better to use the header See also for this purpose. —Stephen 15:45, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Beside here, I see the translations also duplicated at Mongolian юү, both added by Hippitrail. How about relocating this to the translation table of (deprecated template usage) do, first etymology, verbal sense, meaning #6 "A syntactic marker in questions." ? --Ivan Štambuk 16:33, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

I don’t think do is a good match for these. Even though do has an interrogative function, it is different from these particles, and it would be just as appropriate to associate them with is, am, are, was, can, etc. (is it good?, are you here?, was it too loud?, can I have one?). In English, it really isn’t the verb do or is, it’s a construction. Sometimes the translation of the interrogative do may include one of these particles, but do is more about grammatical construction than particles. Besides these particles, interrogative do has much closer equivalents in some languages such as German, but even with German, it is too technical and complex to describe in a word or two in a translation section. —Stephen 17:28, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, it would be maintenance nightmare to duplicate same translations at 8+ articles. Also, given that listed languages belong to totally divergent language families, I have serious doubts that the translations among them would be in any case more precise.

As you probably know, in Slavic there is this *da, also coming from verb *dati (< PIE *deh₃, the very same one that gave English do ^_^) that is usually classified as particle/adverb/conjunction depending on it's grammatical function. I am beginning to wonder whether it's the same case here for English do, which is usually translated without modal/auxilliary verb in constructions such as "Do you <infinitive>" (as opposed to other verbs such as can/may..). That sort of (deprecated template usage) do looks to me less of a verb, and more of a conjunction. --Ivan Štambuk 17:47, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

There are some small differences among them, but they are pretty close. The most divergent would be between the Arabic/Persian/Urdu/Hindi/Mongolian on the one hand (initial, with limited or optional use), and Chinese/Japanese/Khmer/Thai on the other (final, broad use), but all of them are particles and have the same meaning. I don’t think there will be a nightmare with these. They’ve been around for quite a while now, with only the minor changes that I’ve recently made to them.

But I am certain that interrogative do is a true verb, not a conjunction. It has to do with a class of auxiliary verbs called operators, fundamental to English grammar but not found in most other languages. Operators take do in the interrogative or negative constructions, while regular auxiliaries do not: I did not get run over by a bus. Did I get run over by a bus? (get is an operator). BUT NOT...*I did not be run over by a bus; NOR: *Did I be run over by a bus? (be is an auxiliary verb) —Stephen 18:12, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Conversely, with auxiliaries we can say: I wasn't run over by a bus; Was I run over by a bus? (was is an auxiliary); BUT NOT...*I gotn’t run over by a bus; *got I run over by a bus? (got is an operator). —Stephen 18:24, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Arabic, Persian and Sanskrit “cardamom”

So, since you say, @Profes.I., the Arabic هَيْل (hayl) is from the root ه ي ل (h-y-l), is Sanskrit एला (elā) a false cognate? I would not be surprised if the Arabic is from Sanskrit considering that cardamom is a particularly important spice in India. And the whole root ه ي ل (h-y-l) derives from the spice name? Coherence between the Sanskrit, Persian, and Arabic page needs to be achieved. Fay Freak (talk) 15:01, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

@Fay Freak, Victar, do we know for sure that the Arabic word was borrowed via Sanskrit? Sanskrit एला itself comes from Proto-Dravidian and Cardamom is native to the Western Ghats in South India especially Tamil, Malayalam and Kannada speaking regions. There are a lot of records of ancient trade links over sea between the region comprising what's modern Kerala and Tamil Nadu and the rest of the world. A number of words have been borrowed as a consequence. There're Tamil loanwords in Old Hebrew, for instance. Can someone let me know if there's any support for the word being borrowed into Arabic from Sanskrit and not directly? -- Sundar (talk) 10:15, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

@Profes.I., Fay Freak: How this this a false cognate? Persian loves adding prothetic-h to words. --{{victar|talk}} 19:10, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

@Victar You replied to an obsolete question. I asked that when the Arabic page looked as though the Arabic word were native then I noticed the Sanskrit. Fay Freak (talk) 21:19, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

I'm certainly no expert on Arabic, but it's true that the plant isn't native to anywhere near Arabic-speaking regions, and the early Arabs would only have gotten it (directly or indirectly) from India. Perhaps the explanation is something like phono-semantic matching in Chinese, where a native word that's similar, phonetically and semantically, is used instead of the original loan word. Of course, the main driver of that in Chinese is the need to have a character to spell it with, but the priniple isn't completely alien to other cases. Chuck Entz (talk) 14:05, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

Ultimate source

@Victar, thanks for the explanation in your edit summary in your revert of my edit. However, I want to know if there's any significance to stop at Sanskrit for the source or is it arbitrary? I think it's useful to show the original proto-dravidian source, especially because Cardamom is native to the Western Ghats of South India. -- Sundar (talk)

@Sundar: Generally, we don't follow through on the whole etymology of a word if a link to the parent entry exists. This especially goes for non-English works. That said, I don't mind it in this case and have added it back, but take note of the formatting I used. --{{victar|talk}} 19:07, 29 July 2019 (UTC)

@Victar: Thanks for the explanation and adding it back. Also the tip on formatting. -- Sundar (talk) 11:18, 31 July 2019 (UTC)