Names of Cereals in the Turkic Languages - Wydział Filologiczny UJ

14 as || Barleyasforms:as Khak.: Dmitrieva 1972aš Brb.: R I 585b || Šr. R I 585blanguages:Brb.: aš || Khak.: as || Šr.: ašetymology:1974: ÈSTJA: < Ir. āš ‘soup’commentary:Corresponds with Tkc. aš ‘food’ et al., including Khak., Kmk. ‘cereal’; Oyr., Tat.dial.‘cereal in ears and the like’; Khak., Oyr. ‘grain’, presumably < Ir. (ÈSTJa). The word appearsin many Tkc. languages in different meanings (ÈSTJa) which can be reduced to threegroups: 1. ‘soup’, ‘pilaff’; 2. ‘food, nourishment’, and 3. ‘cereal’, ‘grain’. ÈSTJa believes thefirst group to be a Čag. innovation (even though such a meaning is attested in MIr. wherethe word originates from), the second group represents the original meaning (this is theonly meaning attested in older Tkc. monuments), and the third one to be a later concretizationof meaning 2. (it only appears in Brb., Khak., Kmk., Oyr., Tat.dial. and Šr.).In the oldest monuments, the word is only attested in the meaning of ‘food, nourishment’(ÈSTJa). However, it does not seem to be very probable that such a meaningwould evolve into ‘cereal’, ‘grain’ and so on in Khak., Kmk., Oyr., Tat.dial. &c. Wewould rather believe that it is these languages that preserved the original meaningfrom before the OTkc. period. This hint, together with the commonness of the wordin Tkc. could suggest that its relationship to Ir. aš ‘kind of soup’ has just the oppositedirection than the one suggested by ÈSTJa. However, the Ir. word has an establishedetymology: Pers. āš < Skr. āśa ‘food, nourishment’ (Turner 1966–69: 66), Skr. aca- inprataraca- ‘breakfast’, Av. kahrkasa- ‘Hühnerfresser’ (Horn 1893: 29). Thus, we shouldprobably accept the slightly strange evolution from ‘food’ to 1. ‘soup’, 2. ‘cereal’, where1. must have come into existence still in the OTkc. period.Whether Khak. has evolved the meaning of ‘barley’ from ‘cereal; grain’, or independently(i.e. from the original ‘food, nourishment’), cannot be determined with certainty.The latter seems, however, to be more plausible because: 1. it has almost always beenwheat and not barley, that was the most important cereal for the Tkc. peoples, andso we would rather expect ‘cereal; grain’ to evolve into ‘wheat’, rather than ‘barley’;2. barley was an important part of nourishment in the form of a gruel or a pulp; also,beer was made from it (Tryjarski 1993: 54, 123) which seems to point to the evolutionfrom the meaning of ‘soup’ rather than ‘cereal; grain’.Cf. aš(lyk) ‘wheat’.jačmeńforms: jačmeń Tof.: RTofSetymology: as yet not discussedcommentary: < Russ. jačmenь id.