So, for example, if you wanna say something is in arabic (for example, works with every language ofc) you say "bi arabî". In Arabic, the same sentence would be "bel arabi". Do you guys have any explanation for the similarity between "bi" and "bel" or is it a pure coincidence.
Posted Jul 28, 2023, 5:22 PM UTC
I don't know. We don't use this word among the Ezdis in Georgia, Armenia, Russia etc.
This 'bi' could be of Arabic origin..
Also,
bê = without (in Russian it is almost the same: 'bez').
And we don't use 'bi' or something for 'with'. For 'with' we use sometimes û (=and), 'tevî' and sometimes we don't use any word at all.
for 'what is/means ... in Arabic' we say: 'zmane Arabi ... chia'.
So, 'what means book in Arabic?' = 'zmane Arabi defter chia'.
But,
'bi' in your context could also be relate to Kurmanji words as:
dibîn = (we) are (being) (but: we exist = em hene**)**
bû/bûn = was/were
hebûn (/heyîn) = 'being', 'there is', 'existing' etc. ..
for 'what has happened?' we do also use 'çe bû?' (also very simmilar to Russian: 'chto bilo'/'что было?')
eng = kur = rus
'what has happened?' = 'çe bû?' = 'что было?' ('chto bilo?')
Btw, the literal translation for both Kurmanji 'çe bû?' ('che bu?') and Russian 'что было?' ('chto bilo?') is 'what was?'...
English 'has been' (from 'to be') is most likely related to Kurmanji 'bû' and Russian 'было'.
Arabic is a Semitic language. Kurdish is an Iranic language. Unlikely that they would have common roots, so it might just be a coincidence
I wasn't talking about common roots, I was talking about the possibility of it being a loanword that got into kurdish through arabic.
A coincidence. I do not know how to search for the arabic 'bel', so it's unclear why it's so similar to ours
But I can tell you of our 'bi, be' connection that is probably a given: Kurdish 'bi, be', being related to English 'by', because of similar linguistic origins
There is no similarity
It's pure coincidence. Note that plenty of Indo-European languages use words similar to "bi" as prepositions with a similar meaning. A commenter here already mentioned the English "by," so I'll just add the Polish and Russian po/по, Latvian pa, Swedish på.
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