आज का शब्द / آج كا شبد / ਅੱਜ ਦਾ ਸ਼ਬਦ

[muckefuck]

प्याज़ / پياز / ਪਿਆਜ਼ pyaaz "onion"

A quick one today, inspired by wwidsith. Not much to say about this term, since it's a straightforward loan from Persian. It does however spawn the nisbah adjective प्याज़ी / پيازي / प्याज़ी pyaazee which in addition to meaning "oniony" has the extended meaning "of reddish colour". (For Hindi, Platts gives "crimson" whereas my Panjabi sources agree on "pinkish". Anyone have an opinion on how to describe the hue of Indian onions?)

Another term (which may well be more common in Panjabi) is गण्डा gaNDaa / ਗੰਢਾ gaMDhaa, which looks tadbhava, but I'm unsure of the exact origin. The Panjabi diminutive ਗੰਢੀ gaMDhee has among its meanings "clove [of garlic]" (i.e. ਥੋਮ ਦੀ ਗੰਢੀ). Garlic also has an assortment of names in NIA--so many in fact, they're probably best explored in another post.

Comments

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

OK, I just went and looked up Koine and Persian, and decided to delete my previous comment. I am curious about the "from Persian" designation for Indian languages, though: the histories of the Mughals that I've read seem to suggest that Persian influence became important in India during/because of the Mughal regime, but that's clearly not the case, and I wonder just how one draws a line between the Hindi-Urdu that emerged following Babur's invasion and the Persian-influenced languages that came before it - whether one can, actually, come up with a neat origin story for Hindi-Urdu that gives it two parents: one Persian, the other "Indian."

[mollpeartree.livejournal.com]

So, the movie Pyaaza is named that because why, I wonder? I had been assuming it was some kind of variant on pyaar. Or maybe it is? I'm not up to adjective endings tacked on to nouns yet, if Hindi has those.