Gezar

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Gezar arabice baucia omnia hec scripta que a gim littera arabica incipiunt melius per .i. consonans scribuntur sed quia sepius per .g. scripta inveniuntur usum secutus sum ut magis in promptu sint secundum usum.


Apparatus:

Gezar B | Geʒar AC ef | Geçar jp
bautia AC jp | baucia B ef
hec ABC | hic e fj | h’ p
gim | gĩ B | gihĩ p
arabica AC f | arabice ms. e | araca j | ař. B | ã ms. p
melius om. j
inveniuntur | reperiuntur AC
usum | vsus f
secutus | sequutus f
sum om. f
in promptu | ĩ promtu B | impinti j
sint ABC p | sit ms. e | st~ j | sint querenti f


Translation:

Gezar is Arabic for Latin baucia {"carrot"}. All the words that start with the letter gim in Arabic are written with initial 'g', but it is better to transcribe them with a consonantal 'i', but because they are very commonly found written with 'g' I have followed that custom, so that they are more easily looked up since they accord with the convention.


Commentary:

Gezar:
Wehr (1976): ﺟﺯﺭ /ğazar/ "carrot(s)".
Siggel (1950: 25): ﺟﺯﺭ /ğazar/ "Daucus carota (Umb.), Mohrrübe {i.e. 'carrot'}".

Simon also has this word written as Iezar, the headword of a separate entry. In the writing of the time, the letters Ii/Jj were not yet distinguished but mere calligraphic variants. However Simon in his Preface § 6 intended to distinguish contrastively the two variants using the letter “I,i” for the vowel/semivowel, e.g. Latin Iuncus {“a rush (plant)”; initial sound as in “yes”, but “J,j” for the consonant, i.e. affricate, Arabic ﺟﻤﻴﺰ /ğummaiz/ *Jumeiz” {“sycamore fig”; initial sound as in “jest”}. Unfortunately the scribes did not adhere to this proposal and the distinction is nowhere clearly applied in the witnesses consulted.

In the spelling of the Italian in Simon's time the sound /ğ/ would have been written as “I,i/J,j”, e.g. iorno "day" but today is written: giorno. In classical Arabic the letter ﺝ /ğīm/ represents this sound, but in a number of dialects some variation is encountered, e.g. the sound is pronounced like the sound in the middle of the word "vision" or word-initially in French "jour". Another variation, mainly found in Egypt, is the "hard g" sound as word-initially in English "game".

Baucia/Bautia:
is a medieval Latin word for "carrot". In the synonymy appended to the Antidotarium Nicolai, written between ca. 1230-1250, its editio princeps appeared in 1471, it reads: Baucia .i. pastinaca domestica - "Baucia is the cultivated pastinaca {'carrot'}", bearing in mind that at the time pastinaca denotes the parsnip, but also includes the carrot.

For the wild carrot the word Daucus is often used.


WilfGunther (talk) 21/11/2013


See also: Iezar, Daucus


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