Greco-Sinitic ψάμμος / ʃˠa mɑk̚ ("desert")

[This is a guest post by Chau Wu]

The psammo- component of the winning word in this year's Scripps National Spelling Bee, psammophile, is of interest to me because it is a good example of European-Sinitic lexical correspondence. The Ancient Greek word psámmos (ψάμμος) means ‘sand’.  When used together with a definite article (ἡ ψάμμος), it also means ‘the sandy desert’. Examples can be found in Herodotus: ‘the sandy desert’ of Libya (4.173), Ethiopia (3.25), and Egypt (3.26). In Sinitic, ‘sandy desert’ is 沙漠 (MSM shāmò / Tw soa-bô·). From psammos to shāmò, it is easy to see three processes of simplification that may have taken place to transform the Greek loan: simplification of the initial cluster ps- > s-, that of the medial -mm- > -m-, and the loss of the final -s. The simplification of ps- > s- is also seen in Greek derived English words such as psyche, pseudo-, and psalm.

The correspondence between Greek psammos and Sinitic shamo has been mentioned in my SPP-262 paper, p. 99, in the section describing the pattern of sound correspondence: the loss of final -s.

 

Selected readings

• "Dog bites man: Indian wins spelling bee" (6/3/23) — with references to many previous posts
• "'Skin' and 'hide' ('pelt') in Old Sinitic and Proto-Indo-European'" (11/7/20)
• "Of armaments and Old Sinitic reconstructions, part 6" (12/23/17)
• "Of reindeer and Old Sinitic reconstruction" (12/23/18)
• "Of shumai and Old Sinitic reconstructions" (7/19/16)

And dozens of other Language Log posts in this vein.