E 0531          LESAN , LEASE

Old English "lesan " and English dialect "lease" are of Germanic origin .

H 0250            ס ל ב

Concept of root : pick out, select in search

Hebrew word

pronunciation

English meanings

ס ל ב

balas

to pick out

Related English words

English dial.: lease .Old English lesan

Comparison between European words and Hebrew

Languages

Words

Pronunciation

English meanings

Similarity in roots

Hebrew

ס ל ב

balas

to pick out, to gather

b . l . s

Old English

lesan

to pick and gather

l . s

Old Saxon

lesan

lesan

to pick and gather

l . s

Old High German

lesan

lesan

to pick and gather

l . s

Middle Dutch

lesen, utelesen

lezen,

(ui)tlezen

to search and pick

l . s

 

 

Hebrew BALAS < Proto-Semitic *LAS --- *LEG-, *LES- Indo-European

 

 

When the reader looks up the meaning of this Hebrew verb "balas" in a dictionary, he may find "to tend sycamore trees" or "to tend figs". Obviously this can not be the original meaning of a specific three consonant root as this one. Those translations refer to specialized actions, comparable to the meaning of this root in Modern Hebrew, that is "to make incisions". In fact others give the translation we have adopted as well : to search and collect". This root is found in Amos 7.14. In 17th century Dutch there is an in fact excellent translation of the Bible, the Staten Bijbel, and we see the word "lesen" used here. This entry should be seen in relation with number E 0532 (Hebrew 0552) . The basic message of this root is important, but has been so even much more in those very old times, when people lived in the age of " hunting and gathering ". Old English "lesan " said litterally " to pick and gather ". Essential in this work is the choosing what to take, the picking out of the right things . Old High German had exactly the same word.

 

 

Note:
  • Hebrew has another word that is certainly related, " ש ל ב , balash" saying "to rummage, search minutely".

     

    These two Hebrew roots begin with a consonant B that lacks in the others. In this case we have not found a specific explanation for this . Other roots beginning with L that have possibly related meanings, do not have an S-sound. The explanation of the B can be that is a prefix with a defining or action-localizing function . It may ahave been used to express the precision of the actions. The original root without B thus has gone out of use .

 

Note:
  • Proto-Semitic. We do not have much information from other languages for a hypothesis. But the presence of related three consonant roots in Hebrew, with related meanings and two different final sibilants, combinated with the three-consonant root "L Q TH" with comparable message, points to a possible older two-consonant root of " L " + " SH " : "* ל ש", "Lamed, Shin", "Lamed Sin" or even "Lamed Thet".

 

Note:
  • Gathering and reading in Latin and Germanic are served by the same basic form, respectively "LEG-" and "LES-". This is not the case in Greek and Slavic. Naturally people were gathering things right from the beginning of their existence. But reading required as precondition that there was writing. This started in all probability after the period of Indo-European. So there may have been a particular choice in Latin and Germanic, a choice to use that word for (careful) gathering for the new activity of reading. This is rather hypothetical.

 

Note:
  • Modern Dutch has changed spelling and sound somewhat, as "lesen" has become "lezen" and is used nearly only in the fixed expression "aren lezen" or "picking ears of corn". And "utelesen" has become "uitlezen", practically only used in the participle "uitgelezen" for "chosen". Meanwhile "lezen" like German "lesen" is the common verb for "to read".

 

Note:
  • Old High German "lesan" was already also used to say " to read ". The same was the case in Middle Dutch, and also in other Germanic tongues these two meanings are found for what seems to be the same word. But there is no clear semantic explanation why this would be so. Therefore one may also suppose that there were and are two roots for German "lesen" and the others. Roots that today can not be distinguished other than by their meaning, but probably have been different in origin. A comparable phenomenon is seen in Latin "legere".

 

Note:
  • Germanic Some Germanic words of this entry have also been mentioned in entry E 0532 ( Hebrew 0552). It is as well possible that these Germanic words like "lesen" we find in that entry, are not related to the Greek and Latin words "lego".

 

Note:
  • Proto-Germanic About all Germanic languages have in common a first consonant "L" , followed by a vowel "E" and a second consonant "S", that sometimes becomes "Z", be it in pronunciation ( German "lesen, lezen) or also in spelling (Dutch "lezen"). The probable Proto-Germanic form is "*L E S-.

 

Note:
  • Indo-European . Germanic, as just seen, has a final " S " instead of the " G " found in Latin and Greek. Besides this, there seems to be little or no useful information. The existing hypothesis for Indo-European of "*L Ē G-" seems right.

     

    Remains the question mark why in this case Germanic has behaved somewhat like the reverse following "satem-centum". There we cannot hide the knowledge of the similarity with Hebrew. It is possible and even quite probable that Indo-European had two nearly similar roots for the concepts of "to gather, collect". One we just mentioned, the other being "*L Ē S-", that continued into Germanic.

 

 

 
"...the town, to which was given the name Babel, because it was there that the Lord confused the language of all the world on the face of which He dispersed them. GENESIS 11,9"
 
Created: Tuesday 6 November 2007 at 22.30.54 Updated: 08/10/2012 at 15.20.07