E 0979         WAROD

The Old English word " warod " is of Germanic origin .

H 1062            ד ר י                     

Concept of root : going down

 Hebrew word

pronunciation

English meanings

ד ר י

yarad

do go down

Related English words

Old English warod

Comparison between European words and Hebrew

Languages

Words

Pronunciation

English meanings

Similarity in roots

Hebrew

ד ר י

yarad

to go down , *to be down

y . r . d <

*w . r . d

Old English

warod

beach

w . r . d

Middle High German

werder, wert

wérder, wért

low lands near water

w . r d ;

w . r t

German

werd

wérd

coastland

w . r d

Dutch

waard

waard

low land along river

w . r d

 

 

Proto-Semitic *YARAD < *WARAD --- *WĀRD Proto-Germanic

 

 

The Jordan river, " ה י ר ד ן , hayarden " = "the Jordan ", is a very beautiful river, but far from large or impressive . It has its name from the fact that it flows through a low valley . "Yarad" is the root that indicates "going down". Indeed the Jordan flows down to the lowest sheet of water of the surface of the earth, where the Dead Sea lies at 369 meters below sea level. It is useful to know that in Syriac " י ר ד א , yarda = river".

 

The root " Y . R . D " has come from older "*W : R : D , warad " and we find nearly the same root in Dutch to indicate the low grounds alongside rivers : "waard".

 

In Holland "waarden" ran the risk of being flooded by their rivers, as Tacitus has written . The Dutch have spent milennia to protect themselves against the floods, especially with their dykes. Not always they succeeded. This risk of flooding as by big rivers must have been very limited with the small romantic Jordan .

 

Note:
  • Hebrew. From the name of the Jordan river one sees that also the root " Y R D " in Hebrew combines "to be" and "to become". In this case "to become down low" and "to be down low" , more simply expressed by respectively " to go down " and " to be down ".

 

Note:
  • Proto-Semitic is seen as having had the root "* ו ר ד , W R D ", from which Hebrew " י ר ד , Y R D " was developed. This is obvious , as the " W R D " has continued into Ethiopian and Arabic "warada = he descended, went down" . Ugaritic had the same "Y R D" we see in Hebrew . This means that the newer root may have begun to appear already in Proto-Semitic: "* י ר ד , Y R D". A special case is , as is seen more times but not always, in Akkadian, that has neither " W " nor " Y " , but just "arādu". Does this mean that an older root without the neutral prefix "W" has existed ? Or that Akkadian in some way abolished an existing prefix? If the " W " was a prefix, expressing for example "to be, to become", it must have been added before Semitic and Germanic went their separate ways. This is possible.

 

Note:
  • German. In Middle High German the low lands near water could be a low bank, a peninsula, a dry stretch in a swamp etcetera.

 

Note:
  • Proto-Germanic. Old English, Dutch and Middle Dutch have a long vowel "A", but in Middle Dutch we also find "weert" and "wert" with the same meaning. This kind of variation is typical for Middle Dutch. And as we see in Old High German both "warid" and "werid", the "A" probably was the original vowel, and as such present in Proto-Germanic: "*W Ā R D-"

 

Note:
  • Indo-European. Indications for cognates in other branches of Indo-European are not available. The comparison remains between Semitic and Germanic, a rather common occurrence.

 

 

 

 

 
Created: Tuesday 6 November 2007 at 22.30.54 Updated: 17/12/2012 at 17.34.55