Wanderwort

Translations

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Article

A Wanderwort is a word that circulates among the languages of a more or less large area, following different paths of borrowing which are sometimes difficult or impossible to clearly reconstruct.

Wanderwörter may emerge in a large number of languages of different genealogical affiliation, and their diffusion is not limited to specific areas, but may even surpass typical areal boundaries and appear in languages that are significantly far away from each other. Structurally, Wanderwörter undergo independent processes of adaptation and integration in the lexica of each of the languages in which they appear, which often results in significant formal differences, which frequently complicates the task of identifying them.

Example

There are several examples of Wanderwörter within the Mediterranean area: mostly, they circulated via the Eastern Mediterranean during the Iron Age. For the sake of illustrating a case of extremely wide circulation, the best example is probably represented by the word that will ultimately yield the modern name curcuma, which appears in Hittite as kunkumān, in Akkadian as kurkānu, in Greek as κρόκος, in Hebrew as כַּרְכֹּם, but also has parallels in Sanskrit (कुङ्कुमम्) and in Tamil (குங்குமம்) (cf. Rizza 2012 for a study of these forms).

References

Rizza, A. 2012. Polveri di parole - polveri di spezie. Sulle tracce dello zafferano nell'area indo-mediterranea antica. In: P. Cotticelli and M. Giorgieri, eds, Interferenze linguistiche e contatti culturali in Anatolia tra II e I millennio a.C. Studi in onore di Onofrio Carruba in occasione del suo 80° compleanno, Pavia, 231-265.