> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Âàäèì Ïîíàðÿäîâ" <ponaryad@...>
wrote:
>> >>>Does anyone have a word for "Nature" (as
>> >> > in "natural order", or a "law of nature", or "what is natural
for
>> >> > man") from any language that was not influenced by Greek?
>> Turkish <tabiat> (borrowed from Arabic).
> Isn't that far too late to be free of Greek (intellectual) influence?
> Richard.
Unfortunately I do not know what the "internal shape" of this word in Arabic
is. (Does its primary root mean something like "to grow" or "to be born"?)
But it seems very probable to me that the "nature" as a concept is a product
of the Greek civilization, and thus the Greek influence that you are
speaking about do exist always in the words of such meaning, even if their
"internal shape" is radically different.
As some more examples, I can cite Russian <priroda>, made of the root <rod->
"to bear" (= Lat. parere, generare) (cf. rodit', roz^dat' "id", rod "family,
tribe", roditel' "parent", rodnoj "relative", priroz^dat' "to make to
increase"). Here, of course, Greek (or Latin) influence must be supposed.
(By the way, when has the word <priroda> appeared in Russian? I don't know
exactly, but suppose that it was either a 1000 years ago when Greek
philosophical concepts entered Russian along with the Christian terminology,
or in XVII-XVIII centuries when a great influence of Western Europe began.
At least, Russian poets of XVIII c. use it widely, and for the earlier
epoches I'm not aware of this.)
And I'll also cite the <vör-va> from the Komi-Zyryan language of Finno-Ugric
family. Etymologically it is a compound "forest-water", and so the "internal
shape" is not the same as in Russian or in Greek or in Latin. Nevertheless,
as this Komi word is a neologism appeared in 1920's, there is no doubt that
inspite of its internal "unlikeness", the intellectual consept itself was
nothing but a Russian borrowing (and in Russian, as I've already said, it
had been borrowed either). And the "unlikeness", found in Komi, is a result
of puristic tendentions, and nothing else.
==========
Vadim Ponaryadov