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Etymology of the Term “Tear”
Sources In Time JUAN MURUBE, MD, PHD, EDITOR
Etymology of the Term “Tear” JUAN MURUBE, MD, PHD THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGES
n the evolution of mammals, hominids appeared 25 million years ago. The earliest Australopithecus dates back to about 5 million years ago, the Homo erectus to 2 million years ago, and Homo sapiens to 200,000 years ago. The communication skills (corporal movements, sounds) developed and improved slowly from lower to higher mammals. When studies of paleoanthropic remains revealed a buccalrespiratory tract able to vocalize,1, 2 anthropologists deduced that the capacity to produce rather rich and differentiated articulated sounds appeared in the genus Homo about 200,000 years ago. Brain development probably increased commensurately with the ability to communicate at higher levels. Initially, however, early humans combined very poor language-like sounds with other modes of communication (mainly gestures with the face and hands, etc.). The real Homo“loquens,” with a relatively rich conceptual vocabulary, seems to have emerged only 30,000 years ago. They developed an exponential complexity in their vocal intercommunication skills, which was the driving force in a process of mutual cause and effect that enhanced mental concepts and brain complexity. Language appeared in three basic stages: onomatopoeic, symbolic, and associative. Onomatopoeia was the phonetic simulation of environmental sounds to represent the object or the
I
©2005 Ethis Communications, Inc. The Ocular Surface ISSN: 1542-0124. Murube J. Etymology of the term “tear.” 2005;3(4): 177-181.
phenomenon that produced this noise (e.g., “grrr,” “sss”). Later, these phonetic noises evolved to mean other objects, phenomena, or abstractions that, in some way bore some relation with the onomatopoeic sound that the phenomenon represented (e.g., “growl,” “hiss”). Finally, in the associative step, several symbolic phonemes were joined to express more complex associations, resulting little by little in the immense vocabulary we have today. Despite its size, our vocabulary today still has limitations in describing the myriad concepts with which the human mind works. DISCOVERY OF THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGES
Table 1. Percent divergence between two languages according to time of separation of populations. Number of years without relationship between populations
Divergence between languages (%)
100 200 400 700 1000 1700 2300 3000 4000 6000 10000 15000 25000
1 5 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 95 99
Modified from Crystall D. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, 2nd edition. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000.4
The several thousand languages and dialects identified today seems to have very few different origins. They developed from one or only a few seeds spoken by our ancestors 20 to 30 millennia ago.3 These languages have been grouped according to deduced associated origins in African (Niger-Congo, Nilo-Saharan, Khoisan, etc.), Sino-Tibetan (Mandarin, Cantonese, Tibetan, Burmese, etc.), Austronesian (Melanesians, Tagalog/ Pilipino, Chamorro, Tahitian, Madagascan, etc.), Australian (Tiwi, Aranda, Warlpiri, etc.), Indo-Pacific (Papuan, Andamanese, extinct Tasmanian, etc.), Amerindian (Penutian, Mayan, Zuñi, Andean, etc.), and Nostratic. A small number of languages seem to be isolated (Basque, Iberian, Etruscan,
Sumerian, Nahali, Het, etc.).3,4 Nostratic5 is the name given to a possible linguistic common trunk that may have existed about 15,000 years ago in the Middle East,4,7 from which the Afro-Asiatic (Semitic, Old Egyptian, Bereber), Eskimo-Aleut (Yupik, Greenlandic Eskimo, etc.), Altaic (Turkish, Mongolian, Japanese, Korean), Uralian (Finnish, Hungarian, Samoyed), Indo-European, and a few other small groups of languages may derive.7, 8 The Proto-Indo-European language, coming or not from the Nostratic, is where we must look for the origin of the word tear, because it is assumed that the equivalent to tear in other languages appeared independently after their separation from a common trunk with ProtoIndo-European.
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177
SOURCES IN TIME THE RETROSPECTIVE JOURNEY TO DISCOVER THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGES
The first historical explanation of the diversity of languages was a divine punishment for the human arrogance displayed during the construction of the Tower of Babel, a Sumerian myth recounted in the Hebrew Bible.9 There was no concept of a slow evolution in these languages. Until recently, people did not notice that they spoke somewhat differently from their parents and even more differently from their grand parents, a trend that has always existed and over time has produced major changes and a variety of languages. For thousands of years, languages were considered to be immutable, despite the evidence that, although neighboring people spoke different languages, the languages had many similarities. A common origin was not suspected. When educated people of ancient times realized that differences existed between their speech and the written words of previous epochs of their respective countries, they considered it to be due to educational differences, not evolution. The concept of the evolution of languages emerged weakly during the Renaissance. Jaeger (1686)10 suggested that there was an ancient language in the Caucasus, from which Greek, Latin, Slave, Germanic and Scytho-Persian languages were derived. Thus, the idea of a Proto-IndoEuropean language was born. Schlegel (1808)11 hypothesized an origin in India. The term Indo-European is found for the first time cited by the British physician, optic researcher, polyglot, and Egyptologist Thomas Young (1813).12 When philologists began to compare related language families, seeking the evolution of phonetic rules that were repeated in many words, they started a return journey through history from the present to earliest times, discovering the genodendron of languages. Today, hypotheses of linguistic families are more and more realistic. The rate of linguistic divergence in meaning and form of words 178
from the same cultural group that separate into two branches is not the same for all languages, but the following is an estimation of the chronology of glottochronological changes (Table 1).
steppe north of the Black and Caspian Seas, and Lake Aral (Figure 1).15,16 About 7,000 years ago, a population of semi-nomadic and agricultural
PROTO-INDO-EUROPEAN
The Proto-Indo-European languages appeared about 8,000 years ago. Because the written word did not exist at that time, knowledge of the evolution of these languages is speculated based on the divergent differences of subsequent written languages with specific repetitive similarities for each language. Evidence of evoluFigure 1. Original location of Proto-Indo-European lantionary patterns has also guage, in horizontal lines (according to Iavanovbeen gleaned from paleonGramkrelidze), 13 in ver tical lines (according to tologic knowledge of the Renfrew),14 and in squares (according to Gimbutas).16 In dots, extension of Indo-European languages in the V geography, flora, fauna, century AD. manufactured products, and superstitions of the people people was living in the steppe region who spoke those languages. The locathat is now known as southern Rustion of the original Proto-Indo-Eurosia. There is practically no blood repean people is still not well established. lationship with the population now Some researchers think that they lived living there. Maybe people immiin East Asia Minor (Iwanovgrated from other Uralic and Altaic Gramkrelidze),13 Anatolia, (the western end of the present Asian Turlinguistic families, which had been key,)14 but the most prevalent current separated several thousand years beidea is that they were located in the fore, as they had some linguistic simi-
Figure 2. Countries in which a Indo-European language is the mother/native or co-official language (in vertical lines), and specifically English (in black).
THE OCULAR SURFACE / OCTOBER 2005, VOL. 3, NO. 4 / www.theocularsurface.com
SOURCES IN TIME
larities with these linguistic families. We do not know what they called themselves or what they were called by their neighbors, but today we call them Kurgans, a name recently given them by Gimbutas (1970), because kurgan means in Russian tumulus, and they were builders of tumuli, some of which have been recently discovered. The Kurgans were still illiterate (literacy began in the Mesopotamian and Egyptian cultures in the IV and III millennia BC). They spoke a rather poor language, which today we call Proto-Indo-European.16 The Kurgans, in successive attacks (“Kurgan waves”) between the V and III millennia BC, invaded westward to the Danube valley and the Balkans to the Aegean and Adriatic seas; southward to the Caucasus, Anatolia, Mesopotamia to the Pacific coasts; eastward penetrating South Siberia. Tocharian, now extinct, was spoken in the first millennium AD in the northern part of Chinese Turkistan, as recorded in some Buddhist documents. The study of Kurgan archaeological remains does not explain how they were able to spread over more developed neighboring populations and surround them. Maybe their power came from the invention of the bridle twitch. Until that epoch, the use of horses for transport was achieved by a man walking ahead and pulling the horse, so the horse went at the speed of man. The discovery of the bridle twitch allowed humans to ride horses and to travel at the speed of horses. This gave them a great advantage in transport, hunting, and war. The Renaissance humanist Nebrija17 wrote in 1492: “Language was always with the weapons. And in such a way followed them, that both began, grew and flourished together, and later on both fell at the same time.” Whatever the reason, the Kurgans and their language initiated an expansion. The result was that people were absorbed, fused and influenced by the Kurgans. Their successors spread and dispersed the Indo-European languages and produced the languages of many cultures and races, from the pigmented peoples of the Indo valley, to the Mediterranean
Table 2. Names for tear, eye and water derived from the Proto-Indo-European language. Tear
Eye
Water
ALBANIAN Albanian
lot
sy
ujë
ARMENIAN Armenian
artsunk
achk
djur
BALTO-SLAVIC Old Baltic Bulgarian Czech Lettish Lithuanian Macedonian Polish Russian Serbo-Croatian Slovak Slovene Ukrainian
dáœru sleza slza asara â+ara solza +za sleza suza slza solza sloza
oko oko acs akìs oko oko glaz, óko oko oko oko oko
voda voda ûdens vanduô voda woda voda voda voda voda voda
CELTIC Gaelic Old Irish Irish Scottish Manx Welsh
dueiro der deoir deur jeir dagr
súil
ulsce
súil sùil sooill llygad
uisce uisge ushtei dyfrio
GERMANIC Old Germanic Old English
zahar tæhher
ouga eage
wazar brim
tear? träne traan träne tåre traan tear tár traan ter träne, zähre tár traan tåre tåg tår traen trer
eye aauk oog aauk øje oog eye eyga oog each auge auga oog øye øga øga aug oyg
American English Austrian German Afrikaans Austrian German Danish Dutch English Faeroese Flemish Frisian German Icelandic Netherlandic Norwegian Skånska Swedish Swiss German Yiddish
THE OCULAR SURFACE / OCTOBER 2005, VOL. 3, NO. 4 / www.theocularsurface.com
wora (pronunc.) wossa water wossa vand water water vatn water wetter wasser vatna water vann vatten vatten wasser vaser continued
179
SOURCES IN TIME
Table 2. Names for tear, eye and water derived from the Proto-Indo-European language, continued.
GREEK Classic INDO-IRANIAN Bengali Farsi/Persian Hindi
Tear
Eye
Water
dákry
óphthalmós
h+dor
ashru , oshru ashk ansoo
chokh , choke chashm ankh
ansoo ansoo
akh ankh
jal, pani aab pani, wudu (for praying) pan pani, wudu
oculus oho güello güeyu ull ogu œil ollo occhio
aqua, unda agua augua agua aigua acqua eau água acqua
uèlh oeucc uolho wowo olho ochi ocru ózo occhiu ojo
aiga acqua auga awa água apã, uda abba ágwa acqua agua
okulo
akvo
Panjabi Urdu
ITALIC Latin dacruma, lacrima Andalusian lágrima Aragonese glarima Asturias Bable llágrima, llárima Catalan llàgrima Corsican lástima French larme Galician lágrima Italian lacrima, lagrima Languedoc/Occitan/ Provençal lagrema Lombard lacrima Mirandêse lágrima Papiamen lágrima Portuguese lágrima Romanian lacrimã Sardinian làrghimu Sephardi lágrima Sicilian làgrima Spanish lágrima ESPERANTO
larmo
countries, to the depigmented blond Baltics (Figure 1). Some millennia later, Indo-European languages are the most spoken in the world (Figure 2). HYPOTHESES OF THE ETYMOLOGY OF “TEAR”
An old hypothesis is that of Isidore of Seville,18 who in 636 BC wrote: “Some people say that “lacrimae” comes from a laceratione mentis, i.e., from the wound of the soul. Others say it comes from the Greek dakrya.” The basis for this hypothesis is imperfect due to the limitations of knowledge at that time. 180
According to current knowledge, the different known Indo-European languages converged to a supposed Proto-Indo-European origin in *(d)ak’ru. There are several modern hypotheses on the origin of this word. Bopp (1874)19 suggested that it derived from Sanskrit “dan´ ´ s” (to bite), and the suffix –ru. Pokorny (1959)20 hypothesized an unknown prefix dor dr- and the root *akr’ (acrid) because of the salty flavor of tears. I suggested (1981)21 that it is derived from a hypothetical *uda-r-oku (“water that runs from the eye”), formed by the association of three phonemes:
uda=water, -r, which meant running movement, and oku=eye. The root uda has produced many analogic terms, such as Greek hudor, Latin unda, udus and umidus; and the present English water and wet. The root -r- expressed the noise of movement, and has given many other words, such as Greek rheo, Latin rivus, and English run. The root oku meant eye. These roots could have given origin to the Proto-IndoEuropean *(d)ak’ru, and from there, to the Greek dakryon, Latin dacruma and lacrima, Celtic der, Germanic tagr and tahar, and Baltic and Veda dasru. The existence of a protoform *(d)ak’ru, with variants without d(testified in Indo-Iranian, Lithuanian and Tocharian), and the usual phonetic rules of each one of the derived languages do not confirm any one of these hypotheses, but at the same time do not invalidate them: Table 2 shows the names for tear, eye and water in Indo-European languages derived from the Proto-IndoEuropean. WILL THE TERM “TEAR” PERSIST?
Maybe the next evolution will be the suppression of the plural tears when speaking generically and not of several tear drops. The reason for still using the plural today for the generic term of the tear fluid is a left-over from history: The origin of the plural term tears was related to the millennial observation of the many drops that overflowed from the lids when reflex (foreign bodies, corneal wounds, conjunctivitis) or emotional (sorrow, solidarity) tearing. So, the fluid was given a plural name, tears. The existence of a basal lacrimal secretion forming the invisible preocular tear film, but no drops, was unknown until three centuries ago.23 As this finding is relatively recent, all languages still use the plural when generically referring to tears, and we usually say “osmolarity of tears” and “lactoferrin in tears.” No doubt this will gradually be substituted by a singular generic term, and we will say “osmolarity of tear” and “lactoferrin in tear,” just as we say “osmolarity of
THE OCULAR SURFACE / OCTOBER 2005, VOL. 3, NO. 4 / www.theocularsurface.com
SOURCES IN TIME
urine” and “lactoferrin in saliva.” The Kurgans and their derived civilizations with Indo-European languages usually transferred an important part of their culture and a minimum of their blood to other countries. When the Empires died, the influence of their languages stopped, and gave way to combinations of new languages. The complex interrelations of ancient peoples diversified their languages. During the century before the World War I, French and German, followed by English, were the most international cultural languages in the world. World War II brought and consolidated a new Empire, the English-speaking USA. In this way, in the second half of the twentieth century, English became the international language, during a time when the easily achieved, continuous and pervasive international interactions consolidated the expansion of English until it became accepted as the second language of many countries. The first part of the assertion by Nebrija that language always follows the empire remains true. Maybe the second part will not happen in the present epoch, and whatever the fate of the “empire” may be, English will continue in the future as the language of humans. The tower of Babel is nearing completion, at least in the scientific world. Maybe the term tear will remain for centuries. REFERENCES 1. Lieberman P, et al. The anatomy, physiology, acoustics and perception of speech: essential elements in analysis of the evolution of human speech. J Human Evolution 1992;23:565-71
2. Arsuaga JL, Martínez I. [The elected species]. Madrid, Efca, 2000, ed 19, pp 301-19. (Spanish) 3. Shevoroshkin VV, Markey T. Typology relationship and time. Ann Arbor, MI, Karoma, 1986, pp 27-50 4. Crystal D. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,1997, ed 2, p 333 5. Pedersen H. [The common Indo-European and Pre-Indo-European voices]. Copenhague, Nordisk Sprogog Kulturforlag, 1951. (German) 6. Dolgopolsky AB. A probabilistic hypothesis concerning the oldest relationships among the language families of North Eurasia, in Shevoroshkin VV, et al (eds). Typology relationship and time. Ann Arbor, MI, Karoma, 1986, pp 27-50 7. Villar F. [The Indo-Europeans and the origin of Europe]. Madrid, Gredos, 1996, p 559. (Spanish) 8. de Saussure F. [Report on the primitive system of vowels in Indo-European languages]. Leipzig, BG Teubner, 1879. (French) 9. Anonymous. Genesis, chapter XI, verses 1-9. c. 1400 bJ. (Aramaic) 10. Jaeger A. [The very old language of Europe, Scytho-Celtic and Gothic]. Wittenberg, 1686. (French) 11. von Schlegel F. [On the language and wisdom of India]. Heidelberg, Mohr & Zimmer, 1808. (German) 12. Young T. Adelung’s general history of languages. Quarterly Review, 1813, 10(19):250-92 13. Ivanov-Gramkrelidze VV. L’organisation sociale des tribus indo-européennes d’après les données linguistiques [The social organization of Indo-European languages based on the linguistic data]. Cahiers d’Histoire Mondiale 1960;5:796-9 14. Renfrew C. Archaeology and language:
15.
16.
17.
18. 19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
the puzzle of Indo-European origins. London: J. Cape, 1987 Schrader O. Prehistoric antiquities of the Aryan peoples. New York, Scribner & Welford, 1890 Gimbutas M. Proto-Indo-European culture. The Kurgan culture during the 5th to the 3rd milllennia BC. Philadelphia, Cardona et al. 1970, pp 155-98 de Nebrija EA. Prologue. In: Gramática de la lengua castellana. [Grammatic of the Castillian language], 1492. Reprinted by Madrid: Aguilar, Quilis edition, 1992, fol. 2 r.) (Spanish) Isidore of Sevilla. [Etymologies]. Liber XI, 41 . Anno 636 bJ. (Latin) Bopp F. [Comparative grammatic of Indo-European languages, including Sanskrit, Zendic, Armenian, Greek, Latin, Lithuanian, Old Slavonic, Gothic and German]. French translation of the third German edition. Paris, Impr Nationale, 1868-1886. Vol. I, p 54. (German-French) Pokorny J. Indogermanisches etymologisches Worterbuch, 1854. [Indo-Germanic Etymologic Dictionary]. Bern, Francke, 1959. (German) Murube J. [Basic dacryology]. Madrid, Soc Españ Oftalmol 1981, pp 768-70. (Spanish) Murube J, Paterson A, Murube E. Classification of artificial tears. I. Composition and properties. Adv Exp Med Biol 1998;438:693-704 Janin J. [Recollection and anatomic, physiologic, and physic observations on the eye and the diseases that affect this organ]. Lyon & Paris,1772. (French)
Juan Murube is Professor of Ophthalmology, University of Alcala-Madrid, Spain, President of the Spanish Society of Ophthalmology, and President of the International Society of Dacryology.
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181
Etymology of the Term “Tear” JUAN MURUBE, MD, PHD THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGES
n the evolution of mammals, hominids appeared 25 million years ago. The earliest Australopithecus dates back to about 5 million years ago, the Homo erectus to 2 million years ago, and Homo sapiens to 200,000 years ago. The communication skills (corporal movements, sounds) developed and improved slowly from lower to higher mammals. When studies of paleoanthropic remains revealed a buccalrespiratory tract able to vocalize,1, 2 anthropologists deduced that the capacity to produce rather rich and differentiated articulated sounds appeared in the genus Homo about 200,000 years ago. Brain development probably increased commensurately with the ability to communicate at higher levels. Initially, however, early humans combined very poor language-like sounds with other modes of communication (mainly gestures with the face and hands, etc.). The real Homo“loquens,” with a relatively rich conceptual vocabulary, seems to have emerged only 30,000 years ago. They developed an exponential complexity in their vocal intercommunication skills, which was the driving force in a process of mutual cause and effect that enhanced mental concepts and brain complexity. Language appeared in three basic stages: onomatopoeic, symbolic, and associative. Onomatopoeia was the phonetic simulation of environmental sounds to represent the object or the
I
©2005 Ethis Communications, Inc. The Ocular Surface ISSN: 1542-0124. Murube J. Etymology of the term “tear.” 2005;3(4): 177-181.
phenomenon that produced this noise (e.g., “grrr,” “sss”). Later, these phonetic noises evolved to mean other objects, phenomena, or abstractions that, in some way bore some relation with the onomatopoeic sound that the phenomenon represented (e.g., “growl,” “hiss”). Finally, in the associative step, several symbolic phonemes were joined to express more complex associations, resulting little by little in the immense vocabulary we have today. Despite its size, our vocabulary today still has limitations in describing the myriad concepts with which the human mind works. DISCOVERY OF THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGES
Table 1. Percent divergence between two languages according to time of separation of populations. Number of years without relationship between populations
Divergence between languages (%)
100 200 400 700 1000 1700 2300 3000 4000 6000 10000 15000 25000
1 5 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 95 99
Modified from Crystall D. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, 2nd edition. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000.4
The several thousand languages and dialects identified today seems to have very few different origins. They developed from one or only a few seeds spoken by our ancestors 20 to 30 millennia ago.3 These languages have been grouped according to deduced associated origins in African (Niger-Congo, Nilo-Saharan, Khoisan, etc.), Sino-Tibetan (Mandarin, Cantonese, Tibetan, Burmese, etc.), Austronesian (Melanesians, Tagalog/ Pilipino, Chamorro, Tahitian, Madagascan, etc.), Australian (Tiwi, Aranda, Warlpiri, etc.), Indo-Pacific (Papuan, Andamanese, extinct Tasmanian, etc.), Amerindian (Penutian, Mayan, Zuñi, Andean, etc.), and Nostratic. A small number of languages seem to be isolated (Basque, Iberian, Etruscan,
Sumerian, Nahali, Het, etc.).3,4 Nostratic5 is the name given to a possible linguistic common trunk that may have existed about 15,000 years ago in the Middle East,4,7 from which the Afro-Asiatic (Semitic, Old Egyptian, Bereber), Eskimo-Aleut (Yupik, Greenlandic Eskimo, etc.), Altaic (Turkish, Mongolian, Japanese, Korean), Uralian (Finnish, Hungarian, Samoyed), Indo-European, and a few other small groups of languages may derive.7, 8 The Proto-Indo-European language, coming or not from the Nostratic, is where we must look for the origin of the word tear, because it is assumed that the equivalent to tear in other languages appeared independently after their separation from a common trunk with ProtoIndo-European.
THE OCULAR SURFACE / OCTOBER 2005, VOL. 3, NO. 4 / www.theocularsurface.com
177
SOURCES IN TIME THE RETROSPECTIVE JOURNEY TO DISCOVER THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGES
The first historical explanation of the diversity of languages was a divine punishment for the human arrogance displayed during the construction of the Tower of Babel, a Sumerian myth recounted in the Hebrew Bible.9 There was no concept of a slow evolution in these languages. Until recently, people did not notice that they spoke somewhat differently from their parents and even more differently from their grand parents, a trend that has always existed and over time has produced major changes and a variety of languages. For thousands of years, languages were considered to be immutable, despite the evidence that, although neighboring people spoke different languages, the languages had many similarities. A common origin was not suspected. When educated people of ancient times realized that differences existed between their speech and the written words of previous epochs of their respective countries, they considered it to be due to educational differences, not evolution. The concept of the evolution of languages emerged weakly during the Renaissance. Jaeger (1686)10 suggested that there was an ancient language in the Caucasus, from which Greek, Latin, Slave, Germanic and Scytho-Persian languages were derived. Thus, the idea of a Proto-IndoEuropean language was born. Schlegel (1808)11 hypothesized an origin in India. The term Indo-European is found for the first time cited by the British physician, optic researcher, polyglot, and Egyptologist Thomas Young (1813).12 When philologists began to compare related language families, seeking the evolution of phonetic rules that were repeated in many words, they started a return journey through history from the present to earliest times, discovering the genodendron of languages. Today, hypotheses of linguistic families are more and more realistic. The rate of linguistic divergence in meaning and form of words 178
from the same cultural group that separate into two branches is not the same for all languages, but the following is an estimation of the chronology of glottochronological changes (Table 1).
steppe north of the Black and Caspian Seas, and Lake Aral (Figure 1).15,16 About 7,000 years ago, a population of semi-nomadic and agricultural
PROTO-INDO-EUROPEAN
The Proto-Indo-European languages appeared about 8,000 years ago. Because the written word did not exist at that time, knowledge of the evolution of these languages is speculated based on the divergent differences of subsequent written languages with specific repetitive similarities for each language. Evidence of evoluFigure 1. Original location of Proto-Indo-European lantionary patterns has also guage, in horizontal lines (according to Iavanovbeen gleaned from paleonGramkrelidze), 13 in ver tical lines (according to tologic knowledge of the Renfrew),14 and in squares (according to Gimbutas).16 In dots, extension of Indo-European languages in the V geography, flora, fauna, century AD. manufactured products, and superstitions of the people people was living in the steppe region who spoke those languages. The locathat is now known as southern Rustion of the original Proto-Indo-Eurosia. There is practically no blood repean people is still not well established. lationship with the population now Some researchers think that they lived living there. Maybe people immiin East Asia Minor (Iwanovgrated from other Uralic and Altaic Gramkrelidze),13 Anatolia, (the western end of the present Asian Turlinguistic families, which had been key,)14 but the most prevalent current separated several thousand years beidea is that they were located in the fore, as they had some linguistic simi-
Figure 2. Countries in which a Indo-European language is the mother/native or co-official language (in vertical lines), and specifically English (in black).
THE OCULAR SURFACE / OCTOBER 2005, VOL. 3, NO. 4 / www.theocularsurface.com
SOURCES IN TIME
larities with these linguistic families. We do not know what they called themselves or what they were called by their neighbors, but today we call them Kurgans, a name recently given them by Gimbutas (1970), because kurgan means in Russian tumulus, and they were builders of tumuli, some of which have been recently discovered. The Kurgans were still illiterate (literacy began in the Mesopotamian and Egyptian cultures in the IV and III millennia BC). They spoke a rather poor language, which today we call Proto-Indo-European.16 The Kurgans, in successive attacks (“Kurgan waves”) between the V and III millennia BC, invaded westward to the Danube valley and the Balkans to the Aegean and Adriatic seas; southward to the Caucasus, Anatolia, Mesopotamia to the Pacific coasts; eastward penetrating South Siberia. Tocharian, now extinct, was spoken in the first millennium AD in the northern part of Chinese Turkistan, as recorded in some Buddhist documents. The study of Kurgan archaeological remains does not explain how they were able to spread over more developed neighboring populations and surround them. Maybe their power came from the invention of the bridle twitch. Until that epoch, the use of horses for transport was achieved by a man walking ahead and pulling the horse, so the horse went at the speed of man. The discovery of the bridle twitch allowed humans to ride horses and to travel at the speed of horses. This gave them a great advantage in transport, hunting, and war. The Renaissance humanist Nebrija17 wrote in 1492: “Language was always with the weapons. And in such a way followed them, that both began, grew and flourished together, and later on both fell at the same time.” Whatever the reason, the Kurgans and their language initiated an expansion. The result was that people were absorbed, fused and influenced by the Kurgans. Their successors spread and dispersed the Indo-European languages and produced the languages of many cultures and races, from the pigmented peoples of the Indo valley, to the Mediterranean
Table 2. Names for tear, eye and water derived from the Proto-Indo-European language. Tear
Eye
Water
ALBANIAN Albanian
lot
sy
ujë
ARMENIAN Armenian
artsunk
achk
djur
BALTO-SLAVIC Old Baltic Bulgarian Czech Lettish Lithuanian Macedonian Polish Russian Serbo-Croatian Slovak Slovene Ukrainian
dáœru sleza slza asara â+ara solza +za sleza suza slza solza sloza
oko oko acs akìs oko oko glaz, óko oko oko oko oko
voda voda ûdens vanduô voda woda voda voda voda voda voda
CELTIC Gaelic Old Irish Irish Scottish Manx Welsh
dueiro der deoir deur jeir dagr
súil
ulsce
súil sùil sooill llygad
uisce uisge ushtei dyfrio
GERMANIC Old Germanic Old English
zahar tæhher
ouga eage
wazar brim
tear? träne traan träne tåre traan tear tár traan ter träne, zähre tár traan tåre tåg tår traen trer
eye aauk oog aauk øje oog eye eyga oog each auge auga oog øye øga øga aug oyg
American English Austrian German Afrikaans Austrian German Danish Dutch English Faeroese Flemish Frisian German Icelandic Netherlandic Norwegian Skånska Swedish Swiss German Yiddish
THE OCULAR SURFACE / OCTOBER 2005, VOL. 3, NO. 4 / www.theocularsurface.com
wora (pronunc.) wossa water wossa vand water water vatn water wetter wasser vatna water vann vatten vatten wasser vaser continued
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Table 2. Names for tear, eye and water derived from the Proto-Indo-European language, continued.
GREEK Classic INDO-IRANIAN Bengali Farsi/Persian Hindi
Tear
Eye
Water
dákry
óphthalmós
h+dor
ashru , oshru ashk ansoo
chokh , choke chashm ankh
ansoo ansoo
akh ankh
jal, pani aab pani, wudu (for praying) pan pani, wudu
oculus oho güello güeyu ull ogu œil ollo occhio
aqua, unda agua augua agua aigua acqua eau água acqua
uèlh oeucc uolho wowo olho ochi ocru ózo occhiu ojo
aiga acqua auga awa água apã, uda abba ágwa acqua agua
okulo
akvo
Panjabi Urdu
ITALIC Latin dacruma, lacrima Andalusian lágrima Aragonese glarima Asturias Bable llágrima, llárima Catalan llàgrima Corsican lástima French larme Galician lágrima Italian lacrima, lagrima Languedoc/Occitan/ Provençal lagrema Lombard lacrima Mirandêse lágrima Papiamen lágrima Portuguese lágrima Romanian lacrimã Sardinian làrghimu Sephardi lágrima Sicilian làgrima Spanish lágrima ESPERANTO
larmo
countries, to the depigmented blond Baltics (Figure 1). Some millennia later, Indo-European languages are the most spoken in the world (Figure 2). HYPOTHESES OF THE ETYMOLOGY OF “TEAR”
An old hypothesis is that of Isidore of Seville,18 who in 636 BC wrote: “Some people say that “lacrimae” comes from a laceratione mentis, i.e., from the wound of the soul. Others say it comes from the Greek dakrya.” The basis for this hypothesis is imperfect due to the limitations of knowledge at that time. 180
According to current knowledge, the different known Indo-European languages converged to a supposed Proto-Indo-European origin in *(d)ak’ru. There are several modern hypotheses on the origin of this word. Bopp (1874)19 suggested that it derived from Sanskrit “dan´ ´ s” (to bite), and the suffix –ru. Pokorny (1959)20 hypothesized an unknown prefix dor dr- and the root *akr’ (acrid) because of the salty flavor of tears. I suggested (1981)21 that it is derived from a hypothetical *uda-r-oku (“water that runs from the eye”), formed by the association of three phonemes:
uda=water, -r, which meant running movement, and oku=eye. The root uda has produced many analogic terms, such as Greek hudor, Latin unda, udus and umidus; and the present English water and wet. The root -r- expressed the noise of movement, and has given many other words, such as Greek rheo, Latin rivus, and English run. The root oku meant eye. These roots could have given origin to the Proto-IndoEuropean *(d)ak’ru, and from there, to the Greek dakryon, Latin dacruma and lacrima, Celtic der, Germanic tagr and tahar, and Baltic and Veda dasru. The existence of a protoform *(d)ak’ru, with variants without d(testified in Indo-Iranian, Lithuanian and Tocharian), and the usual phonetic rules of each one of the derived languages do not confirm any one of these hypotheses, but at the same time do not invalidate them: Table 2 shows the names for tear, eye and water in Indo-European languages derived from the Proto-IndoEuropean. WILL THE TERM “TEAR” PERSIST?
Maybe the next evolution will be the suppression of the plural tears when speaking generically and not of several tear drops. The reason for still using the plural today for the generic term of the tear fluid is a left-over from history: The origin of the plural term tears was related to the millennial observation of the many drops that overflowed from the lids when reflex (foreign bodies, corneal wounds, conjunctivitis) or emotional (sorrow, solidarity) tearing. So, the fluid was given a plural name, tears. The existence of a basal lacrimal secretion forming the invisible preocular tear film, but no drops, was unknown until three centuries ago.23 As this finding is relatively recent, all languages still use the plural when generically referring to tears, and we usually say “osmolarity of tears” and “lactoferrin in tears.” No doubt this will gradually be substituted by a singular generic term, and we will say “osmolarity of tear” and “lactoferrin in tear,” just as we say “osmolarity of
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urine” and “lactoferrin in saliva.” The Kurgans and their derived civilizations with Indo-European languages usually transferred an important part of their culture and a minimum of their blood to other countries. When the Empires died, the influence of their languages stopped, and gave way to combinations of new languages. The complex interrelations of ancient peoples diversified their languages. During the century before the World War I, French and German, followed by English, were the most international cultural languages in the world. World War II brought and consolidated a new Empire, the English-speaking USA. In this way, in the second half of the twentieth century, English became the international language, during a time when the easily achieved, continuous and pervasive international interactions consolidated the expansion of English until it became accepted as the second language of many countries. The first part of the assertion by Nebrija that language always follows the empire remains true. Maybe the second part will not happen in the present epoch, and whatever the fate of the “empire” may be, English will continue in the future as the language of humans. The tower of Babel is nearing completion, at least in the scientific world. Maybe the term tear will remain for centuries. REFERENCES 1. Lieberman P, et al. The anatomy, physiology, acoustics and perception of speech: essential elements in analysis of the evolution of human speech. J Human Evolution 1992;23:565-71
2. Arsuaga JL, Martínez I. [The elected species]. Madrid, Efca, 2000, ed 19, pp 301-19. (Spanish) 3. Shevoroshkin VV, Markey T. Typology relationship and time. Ann Arbor, MI, Karoma, 1986, pp 27-50 4. Crystal D. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,1997, ed 2, p 333 5. Pedersen H. [The common Indo-European and Pre-Indo-European voices]. Copenhague, Nordisk Sprogog Kulturforlag, 1951. (German) 6. Dolgopolsky AB. A probabilistic hypothesis concerning the oldest relationships among the language families of North Eurasia, in Shevoroshkin VV, et al (eds). Typology relationship and time. Ann Arbor, MI, Karoma, 1986, pp 27-50 7. Villar F. [The Indo-Europeans and the origin of Europe]. Madrid, Gredos, 1996, p 559. (Spanish) 8. de Saussure F. [Report on the primitive system of vowels in Indo-European languages]. Leipzig, BG Teubner, 1879. (French) 9. Anonymous. Genesis, chapter XI, verses 1-9. c. 1400 bJ. (Aramaic) 10. Jaeger A. [The very old language of Europe, Scytho-Celtic and Gothic]. Wittenberg, 1686. (French) 11. von Schlegel F. [On the language and wisdom of India]. Heidelberg, Mohr & Zimmer, 1808. (German) 12. Young T. Adelung’s general history of languages. Quarterly Review, 1813, 10(19):250-92 13. Ivanov-Gramkrelidze VV. L’organisation sociale des tribus indo-européennes d’après les données linguistiques [The social organization of Indo-European languages based on the linguistic data]. Cahiers d’Histoire Mondiale 1960;5:796-9 14. Renfrew C. Archaeology and language:
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the puzzle of Indo-European origins. London: J. Cape, 1987 Schrader O. Prehistoric antiquities of the Aryan peoples. New York, Scribner & Welford, 1890 Gimbutas M. Proto-Indo-European culture. The Kurgan culture during the 5th to the 3rd milllennia BC. Philadelphia, Cardona et al. 1970, pp 155-98 de Nebrija EA. Prologue. In: Gramática de la lengua castellana. [Grammatic of the Castillian language], 1492. Reprinted by Madrid: Aguilar, Quilis edition, 1992, fol. 2 r.) (Spanish) Isidore of Sevilla. [Etymologies]. Liber XI, 41 . Anno 636 bJ. (Latin) Bopp F. [Comparative grammatic of Indo-European languages, including Sanskrit, Zendic, Armenian, Greek, Latin, Lithuanian, Old Slavonic, Gothic and German]. French translation of the third German edition. Paris, Impr Nationale, 1868-1886. Vol. I, p 54. (German-French) Pokorny J. Indogermanisches etymologisches Worterbuch, 1854. [Indo-Germanic Etymologic Dictionary]. Bern, Francke, 1959. (German) Murube J. [Basic dacryology]. Madrid, Soc Españ Oftalmol 1981, pp 768-70. (Spanish) Murube J, Paterson A, Murube E. Classification of artificial tears. I. Composition and properties. Adv Exp Med Biol 1998;438:693-704 Janin J. [Recollection and anatomic, physiologic, and physic observations on the eye and the diseases that affect this organ]. Lyon & Paris,1772. (French)
Juan Murube is Professor of Ophthalmology, University of Alcala-Madrid, Spain, President of the Spanish Society of Ophthalmology, and President of the International Society of Dacryology.
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