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Thursday 12 September 2024

'Stan' Meaning


If anyone remembers, right-wing demonstrators once referred to London as "Londonistan." I believe this was because London elected Sadiq Khan as mayor again, who is Muslim. It seems like they associate the suffix "-stan" with anything Muslim, which isn't accurate. As I mentioned earlier, the Soviets (specifically Lenin) in 1924 created five republics: Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan.

However, the term "-stan" actually comes from the Sanskrit language, which is an ancient language from India and the mother of Indo-European languages. In Sanskrit, "stan" means "place," similar to "Sthanaya" (ස්ථානය) in Sinhalese, spoken in Sri Lanka. For example, "Hindustan" means "place of the Hindus." The Soviets adopted this concept for naming the republics: Uzbekistan means "place of the Uzbeks," and so on. This might explain why Kyrgyzstan was once called "Kirgizia."

Another point: In Samarkand, there are many Tajik people who speak both Uzbek and Tajik. Uzbek, Kazakh, Azeri (spoken in Azerbaijan), and Kyrgyz are Turkic languages, which have Turkic origins. On the other hand, Tajik comes from the Persian language, which in turn has roots in Sanskrit. So, Tajik is linguistically connected to Sanskrit. 

And this part from Chatgpt (AI tool):

Tajik is an Indo-Iranian language, which is a branch of the larger Indo-European language family. Latin, on the other hand, is part of the Italic branch of the Indo-European family. So, while Tajik and Latin are both part of the Indo-European family, they are from different branches, and their development diverged long ago.

As for English and German, they are part of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European family, not directly from Latin. However, English has borrowed a lot of vocabulary from Latin, especially through French, but its core structure and grammar come from Germanic roots.

In summary:

  • Tajik and Latin both come from the Indo-European family but from different branches.
  • English and German come from the Germanic branch, not Latin.
  • English has a significant Latin influence due to historical factors, but it is not derived from Latin.

 Tajikistan, located near Nepal, as well as Uzbekistan, were once Buddhist countries. This is because Buddhist monks from India used the Silk Road to reach Central Asia.

 


4 comments:

  1. These names initially came to us through Russian literature and we never thought about their origin or meaning.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. me too. I took them as defualt. until I went to uzbekistan last week.

      Delete
  2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Londinium

    ReplyDelete

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