Consonants of Standard Arabic

The consonantal inventory of Arabic is quite daunting for a speaker of an Indo-European language.  There is a large number of guttural (velar/uvular/pharyngeal/glottal sounds).  Modern Hebrew does not pose such a problem for two reasons.  Firstly, Hebrew had already in antiquity lost some of the consonants of Proto-Semitic, notable some of the ephatic consonants.  Secondly, Modern Hebrew has since lost almost all of the remaining difficult consonants, including the pharyngeals and all the emphatics.  This is likely due to influence from Indo-European languages such as Yiddish.

I always get confused when I try to remember what all the sounds of Arabic are.  Here is attempt to classify them.  I shall ignore the relatively easy sounds of /m, b, f, w, θ, ð, n, t, d, s, z, l, r, d͡ʒ and ʃ/ which all appear in Standard English (except for /r/, which appears however in many other IE languages).   I shall concentrate on the more difficult guttural consonants.

Using the IPA as a basis, we get the following table (the phones in bold occur in MSA)

	velar	uvular	pharyngeal	glottal
nasal	ŋ	N
stop	k g	q G		ʔ
fricative	x ɣ	χ ʁ	ħ ʕ	h ɦ
approximant	ɰ	(ʁ)	(ʕ)

/x/ and /ɣ/ aren’t too tricky to pronounce: /x/ appears in the German Bach and /ɣ/ in the Spanish agua.  You will notice that according to IPA, the distinction between fricative and approximant is lost in the uvular and pharyngeal columns.  This makes sense to me.  Even in the velar column, /ɣ/ and /ɰ/ sound very similar to me.  /q/ is also not that hard to pronounce, merely being a /k/ pronounced as far back in the throat as you can.  /h/ is an English phoneme, as is /ʔ/, albeit marginally, in uh-oh and the Cockney bottle.

The really difficult ones are /ħ and ʕ/ which honestly just sound like voiced and unvoiced choking sounds.  Technically, they are produced by pharyngeal constriction.  In Arabic, the uvular and velar columns are more alike (/x and χ/ are allophones, as are /ɣ and ʁ/).  However it makes more sense for me to think of the velar consonants as being, well, velar, and to group the uvular and pharyngeal consonants together, concentrating on producing them as far back in the throat as possible.  Ignoring the straightforward /h/ and /ʔ/, this leaves:

	velar	uvular/pharyngeal
stop	k g	q G
fricative	x ɣ	ħ ʕ

Which is not particularly hard to remember.  And now describing the emphatic consonants /tˤ dˤ sˤ  and zˤ~ðˤ/ becomes reasonably straightforward too, with /tˤ/ being roughly equivalent to coarticulated /t + ħ/, /dˤ/ to /d + ʕ/, and so on.

And here is some vocab for comparison.

Numbers

	MSA	Moroccan A	Egyptian A	Mod Hebrew
1	waaħid	waaħed	wāħed	ehad
2	iθnaan	ʒuʒ	ʔetnēn	ʃnayim
3	θalaaθa	tlata	talāta	ʃloʃa
4	arbaʕa	rebʕa	ʔarbaʕa	arbaʔa
5	xamsa	xemsa	xamsa	hamiʃa
6	sitta	setta	setta	ʃiʃa
7	sabʕa	sebʕa	sabʕa	ʃivʔa
8	θamaaneya	tmenya	tamanya	ʃmona
9	tisʕa	tesʕuud	tesʕa	tiʃʔa
10	ʕaʃara	ʕaʃara	ʕaʃra	ʔassara

Arabic consonants – derivation + writing

You may have noticed that there are quite a few extra letters in the Arabic language, compared to the basic Semitic alphabet.  These are derivatives of the basic letters:

• ذ ð
• خ x
• ظ ẓ/ðˤ
• غ ɣ
• ض ḍ
• ش ʃ
• ث θ

There are quite a few modified Hebrew letters too, but these exist mostly to allow the writing of non-indigenous phones, such as /p/ and /v/.  The Semitic alphabet actually fits the Hebrew language much better than the Arabic language, because it was designed to transcribe North-West Semitic languages (i.e. Canaanite, Phoenician) whose modern descendent is Hebrew.  Arabic is a Central Semitic language which has retained the above consonants from Proto-Semitic.

Proto-Semitic had 5 triads of voiced/voiceless/emphatic consonants:

• Dental stops: d t tˤ
• Velar stops: g k kˤ (phonetically g k q)
• Interdental: ð θ θˤ
• Dental sibilants: z s/ʃ sˤ
• Lateral: l ɬ ɬˤ (also written l ś śˤ)

As Proto-Semitic evolved into North-Western Semitic, several of these consonant sounds coalesced.  The dental stops remained separate (although in modern Hebrew, taw t and teth tˤ are pronounced the same), as did the velar stops.  Among the sibilants (dental, interdental and lateral):

• the voiced ð and z coalesced to make zayin z, but l lamed remained separate.
• the unvoiced θ, ʃ and ɬ coalesced to make shin ʃ, but s samekh remained separate.
• the emphatic θˤ, sˤ and ɬˤ coalesced to make sadhe sˤ (modern hebrew pronounced ts).

The case of shin is the only case where Ancient Hebrew and earlier North-Western languages such as Phoenecian where not in alignment.  While the Ancient Hebrew script followed the Phoenician example, having only one letter for the coalesced θ, ʃ and ɬ, in the spoken language, θ and ʃ had coalesced to ʃ while ɬ had transformed into s.  Later diacritics were invented to mark this difference.

The Central Semitic languages such as Arabic retained all the distinctions of the Proto-Semitic language, except for the loss of samekh.  By and large the Arabic sounds are the same as those in Proto-Semitic.  Exceptions include:

• ɬ -> ʃ and ʃ -> s (the opposite of Hebrew)
• θˤ -> ðˤ~zˤ
• ɬˤ -> dˤ

The origin of the “extra” fricative letters in Arabic is obscured by the fact that these letters are largely not based on the letters with which the sounds coalesced in North-West Semitic, but on the letters which they most ressemble phonetically, hence:

• ð is spelt ذ, derived from daleth, not zayin (ð -> zayin in Hebrew)
• θ is spelt ث, derived from taw, not shin (θ -> shin in Hebrew)
• ðˤ~zˤ (PS θˤ) is spelt ظ , derived from teth, not sadhe (θˤ -> sadhe in Hebrew)

But the following letters do reflect derivation:

• ʃ (PS ɬ) is spelt ش, derived from shin (Arabic ʃ corresponds to shin in Hebrew)
• dˤ (PS ɬˤ) is spelt ض. , derived from sadhe (Arabic dˤ corresponds to sadhe in Hebrew)

Proto-Semitic also had a voiced and unvoiced pair of velar/uvular and pharyngeal fricatives:

• voiced: ɣ/ʁ, ʕ
• unvoiced: x/χ, ħ

These coalseced on the basis of voicing in North-Western Semitic, but not in Central Semitic.

PS	North-West Semitic		Central Semitic
	Phoen.	MH	MSA
t	t taw	t	t ت
tˤ	tˤ teth	t	tˤ ط
d	d daleth	d	d د
ð z	z zayin	z	ð ذ from daleth z ز
l	l lamed	l	l ل
θ ʃ ɬ	ʃ shin	ʃ ʃ s	θ ث  from taw s س ʃ ش
s	s samekh	s	–
θˤ ʃˤ ɬˤ	sˤ sadhe	ts	ðˤ~zˤ ظ  from teth sˤ ص dˤ ض
ʕ ɣ/ʁ	ʕ ayin	ʔ	ʕ ع ɣ غ
ħ x/χ	ħ heth	χ	ħ ح x خ

The Semitic alphabets

When I tried to learn the Arabic alphabet a few years ago I found it really hard because the ordering of the letters seems very haphazard.  However there is an alternate method of ordering which follows the original Semitic (e.g. Phonecian) alphabet.  It resembles the Greek and Latin alpabets closely.

Ph	Hebrew		pron (if dif)	Arabic		pron (if dif)	vars	Greek	Latin
/ʔ/	aleph	א	/Ø,ʔ/	‘alif	أ	/Ø,ʔ/		alpha	A
/b/	beth	ב		bā’	ب			beta	B
/g/	gimel	ג		jīm	ج	/dʒ/		gamma	C G
/d/	daleth	ד		dāl	د		ذ ð	delta	D
/h/	he	ה		hā’	ه			epsilon	E
/w/	waw	ו	/v (w)/	wāw	و			digamma, upsilon	F U V W Y
/z/	zayin	ז		zayn	ز			zeta	Z
/ħ/	heth	ח	/χ(ħ)/	ḥā’	ح		خ x	eta	H
/ṭ/	teth	ט	/t/	ṭā’	ط		ظ ẓ/ðˤ	theta
/j/	yod	י		yā’	ي			iota	I
/k/	kaph	כ/ך	/χ/	kāf	ك			kappa	K
/l/	lamed	ל		lām	ل			lambda	L
/m/	mem	מ/ם		mīm	م			mu	M
/n/	nun	נ/ן		nūn	ن			nu	N
/s/	samekh	ס						xi, chi	X
/ʕ/	ayin	ע	/ʔ(ʕ)/	‘ayn	ع		غ ɣ	omicron	O
/p/	pe	פ/ף	/f/	fā’	ف	/f/		pi	P
/ṣ/	sadhe	צ/ץ	/ts/	ṣād	ص		ض ḍ	san
/q/	qoph	ק	/k/	qāf	ق			koppa	Q
/r/	resh	ר	/ʁ/	rā’	ر			rho	R
/ʃ/	shin	ש		sīn	س	/s/	ش ʃ	sigma	S
/t/	tav	ת		tā’	ت		ث θ	tau	T

Memorising the tones in Mandarin

妈 mā 麻 má 马 mǎ 骂 mà

One of the hardest parts about learning Chinese for me is the tones.  I can pronounce the tones fine (when I concentrate), and if a word is said to me in isolation I can perceive its tones without a problem.  The problem for me is that when I memorise a new word, I don’t naturally internalise the tone.  For me, the pronunciation of the word is intrinsic to it, whereas the tone is just an add-on.  For me 水饺 (dumplings) will always be pronounced shui jiao.  I just have to force myself to remember that 水饺  is meant to be pronounced shuǐ jiǎo (not, for example, shuì jiào, which means  睡觉 go to sleep).  Of course, the tone is an integral part of the word.  For native Chinese speakers, 水饺 and 睡觉 are as distinct as the words dinner and Donna are to us English speakers.  But, not having grown up speaking a tonal language, tones will always be something extrinsic to me.

The answer to this problem is just to study more, of course.  If you revise and practise using a word long enough then eventually you will internalise the tone.  The tones of the most basic words (e.g. 日, 火, 车, 知道) are all etched into my brain.  I never have to look their tones up.

But I’m lazy, so I turn to mnemonics.  I note that I’m not the first person to have this problem, and other people have suggested mnemonics for tone memorisation before, namely:

1. Associating the tone (and hence the word) with an emotion.
2. Making individual mnemonics for each word, e.g. an aeroplane’s wings are straight, so 飞机 is pronounced fēi jī.
3. Colour-coding each word in your review list by tone.

These are all OK, but my favourite method is weirder.  It’s the one that is used in the most common system of romanisation of the Hmong language, the RPA (Romanised Popular Alphabet).  In it, the word Hmong is spelt Hmoob.  Looks weird right?  But it makes sense.  The ‘oo’ is just another representation of the coda, which is not really /oŋ/, but actually /ɔ̃/.  And the ‘b’ at the end is not intended to be pronounced – it’s just a tone marker.

I think this system is quite brilliant.  I bet if I told 50 people that Hmong was pronounced “Hmong + high tone”, and another 50 that Hmong was pronounced “Hmoob, where the -b was not pronounced -b, but represented the high tone”, way way more of the second group would remember the tone.  For us Westerners, spelling is an integral part of a new word, which we internalise, where as tone is not.  Interestingly, this is also the principle behind the extremely unpopular Gwoyeu Romatzyh system of romanising Chinese (which is rather terribly done, if I might say so).

Tone	Hmong Daw example	RPA spelling
High ˥	/pɔ́/ ‘ball’	pob
Mid ˧	/pɔ/ ‘spleen’	po
Low ˩	/pɔ̀/ ‘thorn’	pos
High-falling ˥˧	/pɔ̂/ ‘female’	poj
Mid-rising ˧˦	/pɔ̌/ ‘to throw’	pov
Low checked (creaky) tone ˩	/pɔ̰̀/ ‘to see’	pom
Mid-falling breathy tone ˧˩	/pɔ̤̂/ ‘grandmother’	pog

This system obviously works better for languages which don’t usually have consonantal codas (or whose range of such are reduced) – Chinese is happily one of these languages.  It’s easy enough to remember mas for horse 马 and mat for mother 妈.  Much less easy to remember mătr for face and măts for eye (for mặt and mắt in Vietnamese).

It’s a crazy idea, but I’ve tried it and it words pretty well.  I use -t, -p, -s, and -k for tones 1, 2, 3 and 4.  You just have to memorise, for example, jit bens instead of jī běn for fundamental 基本 and chit dait instead of chī dāi for dementia 痴呆.  Then you can use the mnemonic as a hook for another mnemonic.  For example, “if you cheat on your diet, you’ll get dementia”.  Cheat diet -> chit dait -> chī dāi.

The main drawback is that, apart from being kind of ridiculous, the system also gets confusing if you have any awareness of the lost consonantal codas.  For example, under my system, moon 月 yuè would be yuek, and 福 fú would be fup. Etymologically however, 月 is yuet (or even *ngiuæt, if you go back far enough, according to Wiki), and 福 is fuk.  These codas are of importance if you also study another CJKV language (月 and 福 are getsu and fuku in Japanese; yut6 and fuk1 in Cantonese; nguyệt and phúc in Vietnamese).

They’re just mnemonics.  And like all mnemonics, they’re just a way to get ahead without putting in too much effort.  Eventually you still have to do the study.

Types of on-reading for Japanese kanji

We all know about on and kun readings in Japanese.  But there are a few different types of on reading, reflecting the period in which the kanji was borrowed from Chinese.  Most kanji only have a kanon reading, but some also have a goon reading (which can be quite different).  The kanji which have goon readings tend to be those which describe very basic concepts, or which are connected with Buddhism.  A small few kanji only have goon readings (for example, the numerals).

goon 呉音	Wu sound	Southern and Northern Dynasties during the 5th and 6th centuries. Especially common in Buddhist borrowings.
kanon 漢音	Han sound	Tang Dynasty in the 7th to 9th centuries. The most common reading.
tooon 唐音	Tang sound	Later dynasties, such as the Song (宋) and Ming (明). They cover all readings adopted from the Heian era (平安) to the Edo period (江戸). This is also known as Tōsō-on (唐宋音).
kanyooon 慣用音	Idiomatic sound	Mistaken or changed readings of the kanji that have become accepted into the language.

Kanji	Meaning	Go-on	Kan-on	Tō-on	Kan’yō-on
明	bright	myō	mei	(min)	—
行	go	gyō gō	kō kō	(an)	—
極	extreme	goku	kyoku	—	—
珠	pearl	shu	shu	ju	(zu)
度	degree	do	(to)	—	—
輸	transport	(shu)	(shu)	—	yu
雄	masculine	—	—	—	yū
熊	bear	—	—	—	yū
子	child	shi	shi	su	—
清	clear	shō	sei	(shin)	—
京	capital	kyō	kei	(kin)	—
兵	soldier	hyō	hei	—	—
強	strong	gō	kyō	—	—
日	sun, day	nichi	jitsu	—	—

Paradigms for expression of ownership

Human languages use different constructions to mark possession.  The most common constructions are:

1. Using a possessive adjective – usual with European languages when the possessor is a personal pronoun.
2. Simple juxtaposition of possessor and noun, in either order, with or without an intervening particle – usual for Asian languages regardless of whether the possessor is a personal pronoun.
3. Use of the genitive case.
4. Use of a personal suffix – used by certain agglutinative and inflected languages when the possessor is a personal pronoun.

First case: possessor is not a personal pronoun
1.    Possessor + [particle] + noun

• Hungarian – Peter auto    (Dative case also possible: Peternek auto)
• Japanese – Peter no kuruma
• Chinese – Peter [de] qìchē

2.    Noun + [particle] + possessor

• Vietnamese – xe [cửa] Peter
• English – the cousin of my aunt (*the cousin of Peter)
• French – le cousin de Pierre
• Spanish – el primo de Pedro

3.    Genitive case of noun + noun

• English – Peter’s car
• German – Peters auto
• Lithuanian – Petro mašina

Second case: possessor is a personal pronoun (where different to the first case)
1.    Possessive adjective + noun

• English – my car
• French – ma voiture
• Spanish – mi coche
• Portuguese – [o] meu carro
• German – mein auto
• Russian – mnye auto
• Lithuanian – mano mašina

2.    Noun + possessive ending

• Hungarian – autóm (autó + m)
• Turkish – arabam (araba + m)

Expressing ownership in Hungarian

Hungarian has no word for my.  Instead, it has a suffix, -m, which one attaches to the noun in question:

• autó (car) -> autóm (my car)
• szem (eye) -> szemem (my eye)

Of course there are other suffixes for your, his, our, etc.

• fej (head) -> fejed (your head)
• hajó (ship) -> hajója (his ship)
• ház (house) -> házonk (our house)

Summary:

English	suffix	example	variant suffixes
my	-m	autóm	-om, -em, -öm
thy	-d	autód	-od, -ed, -öd
his/her/its	-ja	autója	-a, -e, -je
our	-nk	autónk	-unk, -ünk
your	-tok	autótok	-tek, -tök, -otok, -etek, -ötök
their	-juk	autójuk	-uk, -ük, -jük

Note: if you look at this table you can see that the suffixes for the plural persons are clearly just the suffixes for the singular persons + -k (the plural morpheme in Hungarian).

At first, it seems like a strange way of indicating possession, but once you get the hang of it, it feels logical and satisfying.

Other languages do this too, including Turkish, Finnish, Farsi and the Semitic Languages.

• Turkish: araba (car) -> arabam (my car), araban (your car), arabamiz (our car)
• Arabic: bayt (house) -> baytī (my house), baytunā (our house), baytuka (your house, male owner), baytuki (your house, female owner)

Vowel pronuncation in Brazilian Portugese

The pronunciation of vowels in Brazilian Portuguese is a little confusing, especially since the use of the acute accent and the circumflex is the opposite to that in French for the letter e.

	low vowel	high vowel	nasal high vowel
a	á, non-final a= [a]	â, final a = [ɐ]	ã, am = [ɐ̃]
e	é, e = [ɛ]	ê, e = [e]	em = [ẽ]
i		i, final e = [i]	im = [ĩ]
o	ó = [ɔ]	ô = [o]	om = [õ]
u		u, final o = [u]	um = [ũ]

Points to note:

• the circumflex indicates the stressed high (close) vowel – it is also nasal if followed by n or m
• the acute accent indicates the stressed low (open) vowel
• nasalised vowels are always high
• height is not usually marked, for example seco (adj.) has [e] while seco (n.) has [ɛ]
• however, non-marked a is always [ɐ] when final and [a] when non-final
• the exact pronunciation of e and o is only inferable without prior knowledge when the vowel is final
• height only differentiates in stressed syllables, in non-final unstressed syllables only [a, e, o] are possible

Latin nouns 1

Cases
There are 6 cases in Latin: nominative, vocative, accusative, genetive, dative and ablative.  Ablative denotes means, i.e. by, with, from, who what.

Gender and declensions
There are 3 genders in Latin: masculine, feminine and neuter.  They are rather randomly scattered among 5 declensions.  The infections are rather variable in each declension, but the genitive singular is unique for every declension.  Here is a simple summary of the declensions, their genders and nominative singular inflections.  There is a more detailed table below.

1st: -a, generally F
2nd: -us/er/r M, -um N
3rd: a variety of endings, M/N/F
4th: -us generally M, -ū N
5th: -ēs, mostly F

Or by gender:
F nouns can be 1st, 3rd, 5th (rarely 4th)
M nouns can be 2nd, 3rd, 4th (rarely 1st, 5th)
N nouns can be 2nd, 3rd, 4th

Or by nom S ending:
-a: 1st F (or 3rd)
-ū: 4th N
-other vowel: 3rd
-us: 2nd or 4th generally M (or 3rd)
-ēs: 5th generally F
-um: 2nd N
-er/r: 2nd M (or 3rd)
-any other ending: 3rd

The 5 declensions of Latin nouns

	GenS	NomS	NomP	Gender
1st	ae	a	ae	F most: fēmina, cerva, dea, filia, via, aqua, mensa M nouns referring to males: poēta, agricola, nauta
2nd	ī	us/er/r/um	ī	M most: servus, deus, equus, dominus, fīlius, puer, magister, ānus, campus, annus N -um: bellum, castellum, auxilium, theātrum
3rd	is	a/e/ī/ō/y/c/l/n/r/s/t	es/a/ēs/ia	M: consul, mōns, testis, pōns, flos, vīs, prīnceps, amor  F: legiō, arx, nox, pax, phoenīx, gēns, pars, urbis, plēbs, Venus N: animal, flūmen, onus, viscus, genus M/F: cīvis, sūs, bōs
4th	ūs	us/ū	ūs/ua	M most -us: exercitus, fluctus, portus, lacus, sexus, sinus, tribus, coitus, flatus, spiritus F a very few -us: domus, manus, idus N -ū: genū, cornū
5th	ēi	ēs	ēs	F most: rēs, effigiēs, fidēs, speciēs M a very few: diēs, meridiēs

Doctor

The word doctor means teacher in Latin.  Doctor was originally a title indicating a learned person, and only later came to indicate a medical practitioner specifically.  It’s a good sounding word, and has the advantage of being the same or similar in many different languages:

• French – docteur
• Spanish, Romanian – doctor
• Portuguese – doutor
• Italian – dottore
• German, Hungarian, Turkish, Russian, Swedish, Slovak – doktor
• Dutch, Afrikaans, Malay – dokter
• Lithuanian – daktaras

But there are other, cooler words for doctor in English and in other languages. In English there are 2 other words for doctor – physician and medic, none of which mean exactly the same thing as doctor.  A physician is technically a doctor of internal medicine, that is, a doctor who is not a surgeon or a psychiatrist.  Physician is a cool word, if a little pretentious sounding.  It comes from the word physic, which means natural law in Greek (hence the related words physics and physical) – meaning that a physician is a pure scientist, one with knowledge of natural law.

Medic has two meanings in English – a military doctor, and an ironic term for a civilian doctor.  I like the term medic, as it sounds quite egalitarian – a medic is a person whose vocation is medicine, and can include paramedics and medical students, at a pinch.  The word comes from the Latin medicus, meaning a medical person, a healer, related to the verb mederi, to heal.  It is cool to think of oneself as a medicus, a medical being, rather than just a person who has amassed some medical knowledge.  Anyway, in the Romance languages, terms derived from medicus are standard words for doctor.

• French – médecin
• Spanish, Portuguese – médico
• Italian – medico
• Romanian – medic

The German word for doctor is Artzt (Dutch arts), a awesome punchy, monosyllabic word.  At first I thought it was a native Germanic word, but it turns out that it derives from the Latin and Greek archiater: arch (great) + iater (physician).  Great physician!  That’s pretty cool title.  Ιατρός /iatros/ is the standard Modern Greek word for doctor, familiar to English speakers through the words psychiatrist, paediatrician and iatrogenic.  It’s also part of a famous phrase: Ἰατρέ, θεράπευσον σεαυτόν, /iatre, therapeuton seauton/ “physician, heal thyself” – a cryptic piece of advice from the Bible which means one should look to ones own defects before criticising others.

The Indic languages have shunned their indigenous words for doctor: Hindi : डाक्टर /ḍākṭar/, but the native words survive in the languages of the Indianised South-East Asian languages: Thai แพทย์ /phaet/ which arises from the Sanskrit वैद्य /vaidya/, the same word as the last half of Ayurveda.

The East Asian words for doctor derive from the Chinese 醫生. 醫 means medicine or the healing arts.  生 is a rather general term meaning give birth to/be born/live, so I suppose, with poetic license, 醫生 means healing soul.  In Mandarin it is pronounced /yī shēng/, in Cantonese /yī sāng/, in Hokkien /yi qīng/.  The word is almost the same in Japanese: 医者 /isha/.  医 is a simplified form of 醫, and 者means body – a  healing body.

Vietnamese is a strange case.  The word for doctor is bác sĩ.  I only just found out that the origin is the Chinese 博士, pronounced /bó shì/ in Mandarin and meaning the holder of a PhD.  So the words for medical doctor and doctor of philosophy coalesce again, in an unexpected location.

The Arabic word for doctor is طَبيب /ṭabiib/, pretty cool sounding, and the source of the French slang word toubib, meaning “doc”.  Hungarian does its own thing as usual with the word orvos, probably meaning healer, as orvosol means to remedy.

Most languages, then, seem to have an indigenous word for doctor, in addition to the word derived from the Latin word.  This makes sense, as the position of healer seems a pretty fundamental one in a basic society.  Does or did English ever have a native word for doctor or healer?  Our cousins the Scandinavians do: läkare (Swedish), læknir (Icelandic) and læge (Danish).  Pretty cool sounding words.  All derived from lækna, meaning to heal, in Old Norse.  As it turns out, there was an Old Egnlish word for doctor related to the Scandinavian ones, læce (pronounced like “latch-eh”.  Unfortunately this pretty word was abandoned in favour of the Latinate terms.

The native Slavic words for doctor seem quite similar to the Germanic ones above: Serbocroatian lekar, Russian лекарь /lekar’/, Polish lekarz.  Could they be derived from Germanic?

But Russian has another word for doctor, the coolest word of all – врач /vrach/.  What an awesome monosyallabic title – I am a vrach.