Talk:روضة

Iranian origin
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Jeffrey suggests an Iranian origin, citing Avestan raoδah-, Middle/New Persian rōδ ‘river’. The eminent iranist Eilers (1962: 205) postulated a Middle Persian ka-formation *rōδaγ ‘riverlet, flood plain’ from which Arabic has supposedly borrowed. Even if we overlook the assumed, rather complicated semantic shifts from ‘riverlet, little canal’ > *‘irrigated field’ in order to arrive at ‘well watered meadow’ for Arabic rawḍa, it also raises two major phonological problems.

In the first place, the long ō would have become ū in Arabic, rather than diphthong aw, cf. Arabic būstān < Persian bōstān ‘garden’, while fricative δ would rather correspond to the Arabic dental fricative {ذﺫ}. Rawḍah ‘well-watered place/meadow’ may have risen as a secondary formation from the postulated preform *rūδ in Arabic, i.e. according to the derivational pattern of rūḥ m. ‘breath’ / rawḥ m. ‘refreshment’, rawḥah f. ‘journey / errand in the evening’ or sū’ m. ‘evil’ / saw’ah ‘disgraceful act, atrocity’.

It is not easy to imagine how the relatively uncomplicated, Persian dental fricative sound should have given rise to this so-called “emphatic”, voiced -ḍ- {ضﺽ} in Arabic. Although the modern standard realization of this ḍ- is a voiced pharyngealized dental stop or fricative, the historical pronunciation may be different. According to the normative description of the famous grammarian Sībawayh (8th century CE), this sound was “between the front part of the side edge of the tongue and the molars next to it”10 (transl. al-Nassir 1993: 44). This would suggest some sort of a lateral fricative, perhaps [ð̴l], “a lateral or lateralized velarized voiced interdental fricative” (Versteegh 2006: 544a). For a possible explanation of ḍ in rawḍah, see 2.2. Jafroni (talk) 21:46, 11 July 2024 (UTC)