Get to the truth
Any work requires a reliable tool even if we decide to make a mental journey to the languages origins. The science of etymology seems to have been created in order to restore broken connections in the meanings of words. It is designed to look inside the form, in-form about the origin and meaning of the word, to tell about its metamorphoses what happened to this word once and what is happening to it now.
The word etymology (ττυμολογία) is a Greek word. It consists of two words: etymon (ττυμον) is the truth and logos (λόγος)is to speak. It was invented by ancient philosophers, who already understood perfectly well that without knowledge of the true meaning of the word, it is impossible to know the truth.
The first sound e indicates some kind of affiliation. In the words ego and ekho (echo), it explains that it is about the person. In the word eco is about something what surrounds person, about his\her home, environment. Behind the word etika (ethics) lies a reasonable, meaningful human activity. Even the word efir (ether) has its own identity literally, belonging to a hole filled with something invisible, but necessarily all-encompassing and all-pervading. The words Hellenic and Hellas are about places that belong to my favorite Greeks, where lada is in the same semantic field as the Russian lad (harmony).
In the word etymon (the meaning of the word), the protoroot mon is the key, which means that truth is unique and monarchical, as well as harmony. Mon is the only one who brings food, who is the master of offspring, and any other mn can not be. These are the harsh conditions of existence. This protoroot has generated a lot of words, which emphasize the separateness, uniqueness, exclusivity. It is sound in the words monakh (monk) and monarkh (monarch), in the names Solomon and Suleyman; it can be found in the word ataman (father, senior man) and in the word mongol (mon-Ka-le, nomad).
The brilliant Russian conductor Teodor Curentzis once said that harmony is a point. How right he is! Harmony is the point, the unity, of which the first biblical commandment speaks. So etymon is a unified understanding of our actions, our existence. This is the truth.
The second part of the word etymology goes back to the biblical logos (word). Academician Dmitry Likhachev has repeatedly warned that we understand or interpret some ancient texts incorrectly. In his opinion, the translation of the gospel text: In the beginning was logos (word\slovo)incorrectly conveys the meaning of the word logos. In the ancient Greek Dictionary of Joseph Dvornitsky, logos has 34 different nests of meanings. In our reading, this word goes back to three ancient roots: lo, kho and s. The first has the meaning beloved, the second is the sound of breathing-means dusha (soul), and the third means sacred water. What meaning could these sounds have acquired over the centuries? We can agree with academician Likhachev that we are talking about what distinguishes man from the animal world about the ability to think.
However, Likhachev could be wrong because as the great Russian poet Fyodor Tyutchev said: A spoken thought is a lie. Fedor Ivanovich knew perfectly well that the ancient Greek word legu is translated as to speak, but in Russian it is interpreted quite differently. Still, lets focus on what is close to us. Etymology is the desire to get to the truth, to understand the meaning and essence of our being. Jesus Christ, pronouncing the Covenant: Verily I say unto you, I sincerely wanted people to get rid of lies, deception and delusions. So we are trying to understand and interpret the deep meaning of our language, our speech, our being.
Ancient prepositions
Wisdom teaches that if you are confused and cant find the right way, go back and start all over again. This technique is acceptable even for functional parts of speech: prepositions, conjunctions, particles and interjections. Modern science does not give an unambiguous understanding of how these words occurred and where to look for their primitive meanings. My heart tells me that they were born together with the protoroots and have a similar nature.
Lets start with the simplest the ancient preposition kin English to. If the sounds kh, g and"k came from the human breath, then the ancient preposition k belongs to this group. Its meaning is close to the meaning of way, directionwhere to go, what we will come to.
The preposition oin English aboutgot its meaning not so much from the pronounced sound, but from the shape of the lips in which it is formed around, about or about something.
The ancient preposition uin English near, being the sound of breathing, had a special connotation it attracted the attention of a tribesman to some circumstance, phenomenon, object. It is the sound of moaning, the sound of crying. This is an invitation to come closer, to share others in your pain. Its later values are near or around or otherwise marked accessory, the closeness, the belonging to someone, a sense of ownership.
The sound ain English [a] was always the sound of an open mouth. It can have a variety of meanings. In combination with the sounds of feeding, it forms a combination of ma or na, indicating the desire to eat, the readiness to take food. A child will never ask to be fed with a combination of m and o sounds. The same applies to the combination of na, which we pronounce when we offer food to the child. By the way, I have repeatedly seen that a child, when holding out his hands to food, also utters a cherished and kind na, as opposed to a restrictive no (but).
Oddly enough, the ancient preposition poin English atis also formed from the sounds of breathing. P is the sound of puffing, the sound of locking the lips and then releasing the air with a little effort. Its either puffing or farting. Over time, this sound has grown more complex meanings, has passed through centuries of evolution and now it denotes what surrounds us. The later meaning along appeared during numerous human journeys. But at the time when the first sounds and meanings were put into speech, people lived in burrows, and the preposition po had a very modest scale.
The preposition sin English withoriginally went back to the sounds of drinking and the protoroot ms. In some languages, the meaning of the words drink, water has retained the sound m, in otherss. The Japanese have preserved the root completely. In Hebrew, both the word sea and the word water retained the m sound. In Turkic languages su means water, in Englishsea. However, the question remains, how was the preposition s formed with the meaning together? Most likely, its origin was connected with the rules of hunting, or some rules of visiting a water hole, or with the ancient instinct of emptying the bladder together.
In general, the combination the sounds of puffing and water in ancient times formed the root ps. It is found in many languages around the world as well as protoroot pkh. Protoroot pr is also the sound of puffing, but not simple, but aggressive, when something is pierced or flatulence is released too deliberately.