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Language Log » Spinach: Mongolian rhapsody

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July 10, 2025 @ 6:34 pm · Filed by Victor Mair under Borrowing, Etymology, Language and biology, Language and food « previous post | next post » [This is a guest post from Christopher Atwood] Building on observations of Andras Rona-Tas (Tibeto-Mongolica, pp. 213-14), one can observe a basic division in Mongolian words for cultivated plants. They divide into two types: 1) words for grains and grain cultivation; and 2) words for fruits and vegetables. Words in the first category (tariya "grain" buudai "wheat," arbai "barley," shish "sorghum," am "millet," budaa "grain," anjisu "plow" mill "teerem" etc) are consistent throughout the Mongolic family, and have great time depth — most of them are not obviously loan words from any other language (some have Turkic cognates, but at a considerable time depth). The other have little time depth, are inconsistent across the Mongolic family, and in any given Mongolic language or dialect are usually borrowed from the neighboring non-Mongolic farming

Language Log >> Spinach: Mongolian rhapsody Language Log Home About Comments policy Spinach: Mongolian rhapsody July 10, 2025 @ 6:34 pm &#183; Filed by Victor Mair under Borrowing , Etymology , Language and biology , Language and food << Xanadu meme | Beautiful music and logical warts >> --> << previous post | next post >> [This is a guest post from Christopher Atwood] Building on observations of Andras Rona-Tas (Tibeto-Mongolica, pp. 213-14), one can observe a basic division in Mongolian words for cultivated plants. They divide into two types: 1) words for grains and grain cultivation; and 2)

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