Rap

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Veda

Etymology

From Proto-Veda *rʔp.

Pronunciation

IPA(key): /ˈɾap/

Orthographic Form

rap

Noun

rap

  1. hand
  2. arm
Derived Terms

Creation and Usage Notes

This word's pictograph r served as the source for the r glyph in the abjadic system.

As I started entering Veda numerals, I realized that I messed this word up somehow. As a word on its own, I listed the etymology as *rʔp. In conjunction with other elements where it forms numerals, however, I listed the etymology as *rp. This leads to radically different results in the numerals than we have here. One of them is wrong. Since I could see numerals getting whittled down more easily than this word, though, I decided to go with the *rʔp etymology and live with the numerals. Unfortunate, though. This word should have been rǝp.

On reflection, I think I know what happened. Veda has a sound change whereby /ǝ/ becomes [a] after certain consonants (e.g. [q], [x], and [ʔ]). Arabic has a very similar sound change. Amongst the consonants that effect this change in Arabic is [r]. Not so in Veda. I may have forgotten this at one point and made the phonetic form for this word [ɾap], while the etymology was *rp. Later on, coming across the word again, I would have seen the discrepancy and "fixed" the etymology, since the only way to get [ɾap] is with an etymology of *rʔp. And then I never checked for any other compounds and ended up using this word in actual translations, and then... Well, here we are.

-David J. Peterson 17:07, 31 December 2019 (PST)