Читать книгу Etymology of meanings. Brief etymological dictionary of planetary toponyms. At the origins of civilization - Alexander Tokiy - Страница 3

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Gentle reader!

We tried to translate this book from Russian into English, so as not to lose the semantic subtleties of the content. The book is written in Russian, but it could also be written in any other language, because all the languages of the planet grew out of one, common language, which is most clearly visible in the naming of the area or in toponyms.

Thousands years ago, distant ancestors marked their places of stay with sounds that accompanied their existence and evoked certain associations.

For example, when they drank from reservoirs, the sound “ms” appeared. In their minds this sound corresponded to the ability to quench the thirst, so the places where it could be done began named with this sound. So there were a large number of names of reservoirs or places close to the water that include this protoroot: the Moscow River, the Miass River, the Mississippi River, the Thames River, Mesopotamia, Lake Michigan, the city of Mosul, the Mezima River and hundreds of others.

Gradually, the sound “m” (the sound of food), which appears when mammals feed, disappeared from some names; only the sound “s” remained, the sound of flowing water, which retains its meaning “water” in different languages and included in the names of many other reservoirs\toponyms: Sudan, the Sura river, lake Issyk-Kul, the Seine river, the Seym river, the Svir river, the Siya river, the Sista river and others.

In some peoples, the sound “s” eventually “hissed”, so the names with hissing sounds appeared: the Chagra river, the Chaya river, lake Michigan, the Shari river, the Shaiga river, the Zhekan river and the ancient sickle became shekel.

Even more obviously protoroots are visible in the names of the mountains. If a person raises his head and pronounces some sounds simultaneously, the vowels – first of all the sound “a” – come out unhindered. But as soon as the trachea is bent, cutting off the air, there is the sound of “y” (“i”). From this movement of the head, two ancient protoroots were formed: “ay” is the movement up and “ya” is the movement down. Or simply: “ay” is at the top, “ya” is from top to bottom. So the sound “ay” entered the names of a large number of mountain peaks: Ay-Petri, Ay-Foka, Ay-Vita, Aykuayvenchorr, Aino, Aizu, Nantai, Ayoava, Sinai, Ohio, Altai and hundreds of others. The water frozen on the mountain tops became known as “ice” and the whiteness of the mountain slopes is “white” colour.

In turn, in the name of mountains that have both ascents and descents, you can find both protoroots at the same time: Sayan, Aya, Yokohama and others. Clearly protoroots can be seen and heard in the Japanese hieroglyph (山), which has the meaning “mountain” but which is pronounced as “Yama”, where we can not only hear, but also see the well – known protoroots “ay” and “ya” – up and down. The familiar words also speak about the downward movement: “yakor” (anchor) “yasno” (clear), “yama” (hole\pit), “Yaga” (a witch in Russian Folklore), “yagnyonok” (lamb), “yabeda” (sneak). In the vast majority of cases, the meaning of protoroots fully corresponds to the features of the landscape and keeps these secrets for many centuries.

I hope that you will be interested in learning the secret of the origin of not only ancient place names: Troy, Dardanelles, Caledonia, Baikal, London, Paris, Rome, Moscow, Washington and hundreds of others but also the meaning of the simplest words: ogon’ (fire), otets (father), Russkiy (Russian), pravda (truth), igemon (hegemon), man`yak (maniac) and others.

Enjoy this book.

Sincerely Yours,

Alexander Tokiy