Etymology of Hindi tu/tum

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zompist
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Etymology of Hindi tu/tum

Post by zompist »

I've googled this and checked various grammars without getting a convincing answer.

sure looks like other IE languages, but it doesn't look much like Sanksrit tvam.

Wikipedia thinks (medium polite) tum comes from Skt yuşma, but that's hard to credit. Another source said tvam, but tum is supposed to be originally a plural, and tvam was singular.

Ooh, just found that the Pali forms are (s.) tvam, (pl.) tumhe. And apparently a variant of tvam is tuvam. So that might be it. Though I'd still like to know where it came from, since it differs so much from the Sanskrit.

I also sound that formal āp is from ātman, which is believable, but if you happen to have confirmation, that'd be nice.

hwhatting
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Re: Etymology of Hindi tu/tum

Post by hwhatting »

If I read Turner (my first go-to for all questions of etymology re Modern Indo-Aryan languages) correctly, tum is one of a series of 2Pl. forms in the Indo-Aryan languages where the 2Pl yuṣm- was blended with 2Sg. tu-.
Hindi seems to go back to a nasalised form ̃ that is a contraction of tuvam.
Turner also confirms that āp goes back to ātmán- "self"

zompist
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Re: Etymology of Hindi tu/tum

Post by zompist »

Thank you!

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