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As I dip my tentative Anglo-Indian toes into Hindi, I am often left laughing at the occurrence of words like kamiiz and kamraa (pardon the transliterations), for "room" and "shirt". My question is this: Are these, and others like them, simply coincidences, or are they, as they appear to be, PIE-cousins of their more familiar (to me) European counterparts?
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I'll let other folks handle this one Max. Up until recently, I though pie was only that round pastry you bake up in an oven with blueberry or apple in it. Pie in you kamra = tart in your photo-taking apparatus. Aye, but I am learning though. I look forward to seeing what folks have to say. 
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zok, Bel. I'm still trying to figure out what European words for room and shirt sound like kamiiz and kamra... 
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Well, I found "camera" very disconcerting in Italy, since it never meant a machine of photography, but rather a room.
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ah! so, you had them reversed? kamiiz, like camisole? and camera, like... uh, room. huh. I'll keep thinking...
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I'm pretty sure that kamiz is from the same root (possibly via Protuguese) as Spanish camisa is ultimately from Late Latin camisia 'shirt'. Camera, whence German Zimmer, as well as our chamber via French, means room in Latin.
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Well camisole means undershirt in French. Are the words reversed Max? Or are we just grasping at straws?
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Thanks, jheem. That's what I was wondering - whether these words were Hindi "natives" displaying a similarity with European words because of a shared PIE heritage, or were simply borrowed, as you are suggesting happened with kameez (to use the transliteration from yet another of my Hindi books)
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I am completely at a loss on this one. I think I shall do the wise thing and sit back and watch what egress's from all of this. Learning a thing or two along the way.
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I found "camera" very disconcerting in Italy, since it never meant a machine of photography, but rather a room.
yes, very early on, the roman discovered the camera obscura.. the process of having a small opening in the wall of an other wise dark room, would created a faint, (and upside down) image on the wall opposite the the opening.
we call camera's (the machines) because they are the mechanical evolution of the camera obscura.
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Are the words reversed Max?
It's just a chiasmus.
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If by chiasmus you mean, "utterly typical synaptic malfunction", then, yes, absolutely.
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No, more like a rhetorical device where two parallel constructions are reversed: like A and B, both B and A. Or some such. I.e., "Never let a fool kiss you, or a kiss fool you. &c.
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>No, more like a rhetorical device where two parallel constructions are reversed: like A and B, both B and A.
Yep, that's what a chiasmus is. I, however, simply stuffed up, confusing etaoin by listing the English equivalents of the Hindi words in the wrong order. Since I didn't then even know what a chiasmus was, I must plead incompetence rather than ingenuity.
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I found this on the net. I do not know whether it adds anything to the discussion. Thanks.
"Tadbhav words come from Sanskrit but through some regional language like Pali or Prakrit. They have changed along the way. Examples are bhai, behan, naak and kaan. Deshaj words come from languages other than Sanskrit, e.g. garhbarh and jagmag. Videshi words are words taken from foreign languages like Arabic, Persian, French and English. For instance, allah, namaz, kameez, aspataal and rail."
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kameez is defitnitely Urdu and probably derives from Arabic.
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confusing etaoinnot a difficult task, most days... camera=chamber made me think of unicameral, which starts to make sense!
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the process of having a small opening in the wall of an other wise dark room, would created a faint, (and upside down) image on the wall opposite the the opening.
Wow, really of Troy? I've never heard of that before. Is this just a memory statement or do you have a site I can go to, to read up about it. It sounds very interesting and I'd love to know the reason behind it.
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I visited an optometrist once, whose waiting room was a camera obscura (literally 'dark room'). It was fun watching the activities of the parking lot upside down on the wall opposite the small opening.
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Another hint of (usually Persian) loanwords is the presence of a {z}, {f}, etc. Written with devanagri letters {j} and {ph} with dots to modify their pronunciation. One of the first signs I saw on my arrival to India written in devanagri read neshiNal baink National Bank ... (transcription from memory, may be wrong) ...
As for the Hindi terms, they're all tadbhava, i.e., Sanskrit words.
tadbhava tad 'that' + bhava 'being, becoming'; also tajja < tad (before a {j}) + ja 'born' ... A Sanskrit loanword (into a Prakrit language).
deshaja 'country-born, native': < desha 'place, region' cf. Bangladesh 'land of the Bengals', Anglo-Indian desi 'native of India'.
videshi 'snother country, foreign, abroad' < vi- 'apart, asunder' + desha.
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Raju, thanks for starting this thread. If you have a look at the etymology of chemise. http://www.bartleby.com/61/12/C0271200.htmlYou'll see that camisole, chemise, Spanish camisa, are all from Latin, though the Latin, or Greek, word may have been from Semitic. I think it'd be safe to say that it may have made its way into Urdu via Persian, but it could have made it into Hindi or another language via Portugese or French. Persian could've borrowed it from Arabic which in turn could've borrowed it from a Romance language in the Mediterranean. BTW, for the others in the thread who may not know: Urdu and Hindi are the same language (basically) written in different characters: devanagri for Hindi and Arabic letters for Urdu. They are mutually intelligible when spoken for most speakers of either. Sort of like the language formerly known as Serbo-Croatian, but now Serbian and Croatian.
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Wow, really of Troy? I've never heard of that before. Is this just a memory statement or do you have a site I can go to, to read up about it. It sounds very interesting and I'd love to know the reason behind it.
well, its a memory statement.. and is there a site? might be one somewhere..
you can make a simple camera obscura, (a large box, lined with black cloth, (or matte black paper) and a small hole. opposite the hole, a sheet of white paper. you put your head in the box, with the pin hole over the back of your head, and the paper in front of your eyes.
then with an adult's help, you can put your back to the sun, and safely watch a solar eclipse.
the cloth helps seal out stray light round your neck (the bottom of the box can be sort of cut to fit).
there have been several solar eclipses in north america (NYC area) that i have seen using a camera obscura.
you look stupid (from the outside) but who cares? you get to see the eclipse, with out going blind!
as for why it works, the pinhole asks as lens (just as we sometimes squint to see better!) and it focuses the light.
One other reason for the cloth (in box camera obscura's) was you could open the box (we used "paper" -the kind that hold ten reams) boxes, with removeable lids.. the heavy cloth allowed you to move the lid (away) to get a better focus.
old black denim was a good choice, (or other semi heavy twill) it doesn't really have to be black, just heavy and dark (to keep the light out)
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>Thanks for starting this thread.
Well, unfortunately I'm not raju, but I hope you won't mind if I accept the thanks offered anyway.
As to the Hindi/Urdu similarities, my Dad enjoyed a trip down memory lane while perusing one of my Hindi textbooks. Urdu was compulsory at his boarding school, in what is now Pakistan, and the phrases he remembered from nearly 60 years ago were indeed aurally indistinguishable from their Hindi equivalents.
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THe aquarium in a city near here used to have a camera obscura which, conveniently enough, enabled those in it to check that their cars were safe in the carpark.
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I'm sorry I missed this thread. Everything I was gonna say got said already! Fascinating read.
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There is a fine - and old - camera obscura in the Royal Mile in Edinburgh which, on a sunny day, gives you a most unusual view of the city.
If any of you ever visit that fine place, you must seek it out - it's well worth the climb up the stairs!
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Sorry, Max. Thank you! And welcome aboard, raju, and thanks for the input on this and the Sun names' thread.
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jheem, I wouldn't say that they are almost the same. The colloquial versions of both have borrowed extensively from the other and are therefore rather similar. Same process of interweaving colloquial versions of Hindi and Marathi, has led to an altogether unique tongue - Bombay's lingua franca, 'Bambayya'! Shanks will certianly know more. Urdu has a lot of Farsi in it and Hindi a lot of Sanskrit. I speak Hindi with some difficulty, but can comprehend it very well. I was listening the other day to a CD of ghazals (Urdu poetry set to music) of a famous poet, Mirza Ghalib and I can quite confidently say, I understood nary a thing! 
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In medicine, a chiasma is an intersection, usually with some exchange. The optic chiasmus for e.g., is a broadish structure in which nerve fibres cross from the right to the left and vice-versa, in an X pattern. Chiasma comes from cross shaped and is therefore used for intersections.
Pie: Has anyone heard the usage - You will not get another pie from me. Pie used to signify a small monetary amount - I now am thinking it is short for paise? I think it is a Hindi word that has been absorbed into English or maybe I am suffering from a surfeit of Rushdie and RK Narayan....
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re chiasmus, both from the shape and name of the Greek letter chi.
re pie: I hadn't heard it, but there:
http://www.bartleby.com/61/24/P0292400.html
pie < Hindi pai < Sanskrit padika 'quarter'. Similar origin for paisa < padamsha 'quarter part'.
thnaks, maahey
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Well, I'll just have to bow out, since I only took a semester of Hindi and have forgotten most of it. And I haven't studied Urdu (aka Hindoostani) at all. As far as I know, the Farsi / Sanskrit infiltration is mainly lexical. The grammar (case, conjugation) is pretty much the same. "You say kitab and I say grantha. Let's just call it a book."
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All right, I'm going to have to build a protable one, because I'm just not getting it. It doesn't seem to make sense to me.
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Maahey et al
I once had the pleasure of playing a rather minor role in a made for TV film by Aparna Sen. We shot on location near Jamshedpur and I had the opportunity to associate for a fortnight with some reasonably well-known names of Indian cinema - Shabana Azmi, Farooque Shaikh, Dr Sreeram Lagu and the like.
Shabana had recently married the film-writer Salim (of Salim-Javed fame), and sometimes expounded to us on all that she was learning from him of Urdu/Hindustani culture.
One of the things she pointed out was that ghazals today, because of the crossover between Hindi and Urdu, share a vocabulary of both Sanskrit and Persian words, and interestingly, there are ghazals performed by Pakistani singers, that contain only words of Sanskrit origin. Equally, there are lines in 'Hindi' movies that contain naught but Urdu words. Having said which, the Sanskrit and Persian origins of words in Hindi/Urdu tend to interact slightly like the Germanic/Norman-French words in English. There are a number of synonyms, and the invading language words tend to be used frequently for 'upper class' touches.
Ghalib, of course, wrote some time ago, and its posisble his poems were un'tainted' by Sanskrit words.
Bambayya Hindi, of course, is a cheap and nasty bastard language, and the only one I know, having grown up with it. I got into all sorts of trouble in school for using Marathi words in Hindi essays. I reached my nadir when I achieved a mark of 0.5 out of a possible 25 in an essay in which, amongst other solecisms, I substituted the Marathi 'Kholi' for the Hindi 'kamra' (thereby leading us back to the origin of this thread).
Anyway, apologies for any boredom these reminiscences may have caused.
cheer
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