Talk:طبل

From Arabic?

What is the source for the etymology? I think this word comes from an Indo-European root, not a Semitic root, since Hindi also has this term. 71.66.97.228 05:04, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Continued removal of RFE tag

The same name is used in Indic and Semitic languages for their drums, so it is quite important to add whether this term comes from a Semitic or Indo-European root. Removing the RFE tag, which was added in good faith in an attempt (as always) to improve our Wiktionary and its etymologies--multiple times--without actually adding the etymology, is not helpful to our project. 71.66.97.228 23:24, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Source for تبیر

What is the source for the purported Persian term تبیر? 173.89.236.187 22:01, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

Middle Iranian or Middle Persian?

When you say "From Middle Iranian *tabir, tabil (“drum”)" don't you mean Middle Persian (the historical language) rather than Middle Iranian (the regional group of languages)? 173.89.236.187 22:04, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

No, we mean "one of the Middle Iranian languages". Often we have no way of knowing whether the word is from Middle Persian or, say, Parthian. --Vahag (talk) 08:50, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

That doesn't really make sense--what is the source for "from Middle Iranian *tabir, tabil (“drum”)"? There would be multiple languages in the Middle Iranian group which would not necessarily have the same words for "drum." 173.89.236.187 19:05, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

I checked and found that Roudaki used تبیر (tabīr) in his poems (858-940 AD) while Firdausi (940-1020 AD) used تبیره (tabīreh). It seems to me that Middle Persian should be the correct term for this etymology, since wasn't that the prestige language those famous poets were using? Persian-language influence over India via the Moghuls came a few centuries later. 173.89.236.187 22:19, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

It does seem very strange that Hindi would restore the "L" found in Persian طبل, so I think derivation of the Hindi term from طبل makes more sense than from the "R" forms تبیر or تبیره. 173.89.236.187 22:22, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

Your thoughts are hard to follow. What do Indians have to do with the Arabic borrowing from Iranian? I don't have enough information to decide whether the word was borrowed from the attested Parthian ṯbyl (tabil, “tambourine, drum (?)”) or its Middle Persian cognate. --Vahag (talk) 16:09, 5 August 2015 (UTC)