MWW 56: Дэвтэр

How the history of "дэвтэр" reflects the history of writing

Cyrillic	дэвтэр
Transcription	devter
IPA	[ˈteʍ.thɪr] [ˈteɸ.thɪr]
Layman’s Pronunciation	"DEFF-tihr" (or sort of like "deaf tear")
Translation	notebook
In Classical Mongolian it was debter.

In modern times, Mongolian has borrowed the English word "notebook" as нөүтбүк (nöütbük) to refer to a laptop computer. The word doesn't seem to appear in dictionaries yet, but a Google search turns up many pictures of laptops. Instead the Mongolians call their paper notebooks дэвтэр, which can also refer to a notepad, ledger, log, journal, or diary. There are зургийн дэвтэр (zurgiin devter, "sketchbook"), and I once had a Mongolian-Chinese ярианы дэвтэр (yariany devter, "phrase book"). But despite its mundaneness, дэвтэр has had quite an adventure getting to Mongolia.

The Notebook's Journey Around the World

Similar words for notebooks are found in Turkic languages: Kazakh дәптер (däpter), Kyrgyz дептер (depter), and Uzbek daftar. These words came from either Arabic دَفْتَر (daftar) or Persian دفتر (daftar). Arabic and Persian seem to have taken it from Aramaic דפתרא / ܕܦܬܪܐ(dptr), which in turn came from Greek διφθέρα. [1] My guess is that the direct ancestor to дэвтэр is Uyghur دەپتەر (depter), since the Mongolians also took their traditional script from Uyghurs. The Uyghur script was adapted from the Sogdian script, which was adapted from the Aramaic script - similar to дэвтэр itself. (The Uyghurs have abandoned this script in favor of the Arabic alphabet.)

Greece to Mongolia is a long way for дэвтэр to go, but it has gone much further than that. Under the combined influence of Persian, Arabic, and Turkish, διφθέρα has spread across almost half the eastern hemisphere: Armenian դավթար (davtʿar / tavtar), Georgian დავთარი (davt’ari), Hebrew דִּפְתָּר (diftar), Turkish defter, Tajik дафтар (daftar), and in several South Slavic languages, тефтер (tefter), all of which mean something like "notebook," "ledger," or "register." In fact, the Greeks themselves re-borrowed the word from Turkish as τεφτέρι.

To me the most interesting detour of this global lexical journey is Ge'ez, the liturgical language of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. Διφθέρα is the source of ደብተር (dabtar) "notebook, register," but also ደብተርራ (dabtarā) "tabernacle, tent." By extension, ደብተርራ has also come to refer to an "unordained member of the clergy who is well-versed in traditional church learning and who performs the hymns and sacred dances during the Mass." [2]

Διφθέρα originally meant "prepared hide" or "piece of leather," but it was also extended to refer to all kinds of leather goods, such as "drum skin," "wallet," "tent," (remember Ge'ez?) and more. [3] Herodotus used the word to refer to boats made in Armenia from animal hides. [4] Its sense of "notebook" comes from the practice of writing on dried animal skins. For comparison, think of the history of "paper" in English. Paper now refers not only to sheets of dry wood pulp, but also whatever is written on pulp, like an "academic paper." In fact, nowadays an academic paper could be published online without ever showing up on wood pulp, and "paper" refers only to the content, not the material.

Διφθέρα's conquest of the Old World

Διφθέρα may have made a different journey westward. According to Calvert Watkins, διφθέρα comes from an Indo-European root *deph- "to stamp," though he admits it is an "uncertain root form." He also believes Latin littera "letter" derives from *deph-, or from διφθέρα itself, via Etruscan. [5] Of course, littera is also the source of English letter, literacy, literal, alliteration, literature, and numerous words in other European languages: Dutch letter, French lettre, Spanish and Portuguese letra, Italian lettera, Irish litir, Albanian letër, Polish litera, Romanian literă, Russian литера, and so on. In a sense, the history of дэвтэр resembles the history of writing: starting out as a word for skins, it became the words written on skins, and from the Near East spread outward across Asia, Africa, and Europe on the wings of empires and religious movements.

There's one more twist to the story. In 1826, French doctor Pierre Bretonneau was studying a disease which caused "leathery" patches inside the mouth and throat, so he named the disease diphtérite. English speakers know this disease as diphtheria, one of the diseases targeted by the DPT vaccine given to American children. Strange to think that there's a connection among Mongolian notebooks, Ethiopian priests, and a notorious childhood disease. What other cognates might you know?

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Notes

1. Most of the examples (and more that I didn't use) were found on Wiktionary in the entries for διφθέρα and littera.
   
2. Leslau, Wolf. Comparative Dictionary of Geʻez (Classical Ethiopic): Geʻez-English, English-Geʻez, with an Index of the Semitic Roots. https://books.google.com/books?id=WqkbGRnoSncC&dq.
   
3. Liddell, Henry George, and Scott, Robert. A Greek–English Lexicon. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1940. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0057:entry=difqe/ra.
   
4. Herodotus. Cited in A Greek–English Lexicon: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:abo:tlg,0016,001:1:194&lang=original.
5. Watkins, Calvert. The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots. Second edition. The change of d to l in Latin looks odd, but it does happen in some other Latin words.

Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse in Mongolia

Амилсан хүүрийн сүйрлээс Монгол улсад амьд гарах нь

The Ancient Mayan Prophecy of (Maybe) Doom

Two years ago there was a big fuss about the world ending with the end of the Maya calendar on December 21, 2012. The fuss was not confined to America. I heard about it all December from Mongolians, although the nature of the concern was different. They weren't quite sure what exactly was supposed to happen, just that it would get cold. Really cold. And dark. It does anyway at that time of year, because it happens to be the winter solstice, but this time it was supposed to be much colder and darker than usual. Consequently, the herders were "buying lots of candles" and "making lots of buuz," according to one of the teachers. Sure enough, there were no candles left at the market. But so far, it sounded as if the Maya had prophesied nothing more malevolent than an electrical outage.

On the day of the winter solstice (which was indeed very cold), however, there were only ten students in class. When I asked where the other fifteen were, the class leader reported that they had stayed home because of "дэлхийн сүүлд (the end of the world)." I asked if they were worried about the end of the world, and she replied, "No, Mongolians are not afraid of anything." (At least, the ones who dared come to school.) But then she added,

"The Americans are afraid."

"How do you know?"

"I saw it on TV. They were running and yelling."

I assured her that I, at least, was not afraid.

End-of-the-World Time Lags, in Cincinnati and Mongolia

Of course, the world didn't end that day, and I recalled a quote from Mark Twain, which put things in perspective a bit:

"When the world ends, I would like to be in Cincinnati, because everything happens to Cincinnati ten years later than the rest of the world." ¹

I confided to some friends that this is sort of how I felt about living in my village. Given the glacial pace of communication, the world might well have ended without me realizing it yet. As we talked, we thought how lucky we were, because if civilization collapsed, due to, say, a zombie apocalypse, Mongolia would be the best place to be, as I explain below.

Мммм, тархи!

Mongolia is Cold /  Zombicicles

First, assuming that our zombies are created by something like a virus (i.e., not magic), they should conform to what we know about the world scientifically.

This means that zombies, like living, non-un-dead humans, freeze. Initially, zombies may be a bit less ruffled by hypothermia than humans, because symptoms like cognitive and motor impairment don't make much difference to zombies. But if they stay out in sub-zero weather, they will lose heat until they reach the ambient temperature. Frozen muscles, no muscle contractions, no movement.

Mongolia is cold. Usually by late November, the daily high temperature dips below zero (Celsius) and stays there until March or so. Outdoor zombies will be rigid zombicicles for at least three months of the year, immobile and defenseless. An enterprising zombie killer could just walk right up to zombies and shatter their heads with a sledgehammer. He could work at a leisurely pace too.

Frost begins in September and ends in May, punctuated by thaws during the day. This is just as dangerous. The expansion of water and formation of ice crystals ruptures cells, causing frostbite. Every time this repeats, the damage is worse, which is why doctors advise that frostbitten tissue should be kept frozen until it can be thawed once and correctly.² Zombies blown in the shifting whims of weather will freeze and thaw often, suffering massive tissue damage even before they become true zombicicles.

Once they freeze completely, ice crystals will form inside the deepest tissues of the body. The brain will thus be ripped apart by millions of tiny crystals. Everything I've seen about zombies agrees that destroying the central nervous system kills them. So Nature will kill the zombies even without human intervention.

Humans survive by adding layers of clothing, building gers, and starting fires in them. Zombies lack the intelligence and dexterity to do these (and most other) self-preserving actions. It's interesting that every time I see zombies on the screen, it's someplace warm, or during the summer. I guess if they froze, there would be no story.

Son, today I'm going to teach you how to kill zombies.

Mongolia is Remote

The Mongolian climate means that zombies will be a threat only in summer, but even then, there won't be many zombies. Since they will all be killed in winter, they have to build their numbers all over again each summer, probably by immigration from warmer places. They won't be able to accumulate.

Mongolia also has the lowest population density of any sovereign country,³ so the zombies there will be few and sparsely distributed. A dumb corpse could stumble around the steppe for days before running into a living person, so infection would spread slowly. Anyone who did run into a zombie would likely encounter lone zombies rather than flocks.

Mongolia is far away from large population centers. Much of the country is mountain and desert, and mountains and deserts surround it on several sides, creating natural barriers. Since zombies like to throng in cities, where the food is, it's unlikely that they would leave Beijing or Moscow for Mongolia, but if they did, they would freeze or be desiccated while crossing the Gobi, the Taklamakan, the Altai mountains...and so on. For added protection, the Great Wall could be given a makeover. Instead of keeping nomads out of China, it could keep zombies out of Mongolia.

Unless the outbreak started in Ulaanbaatar itself, zombies are unlikely to threaten Mongolia.

Mongolia has Mongols

Then there's the people. Mongolians in the countryside deal with extreme conditions on a daily basis and are good at it. They know how to live without running water, electricity, and many other for-granteds of the modern world. They can ride horses, find fuel, make fires, cook, fix all kinds of things, and more. They frequently wield axes, which can be used to destroy zombie brains. If they're herders, they're also nearly self-sufficient with food (they may need flour imported). So if the infrastructure collapses, they'll manage. And if we're talking about medieval Mongolia, then we're also talking about Mongol hordes - probably the best mounted archers the world has seen. A Mongol warrior could gallop through a gaggle of the undead and hit them with skull-piercing arrows without even getting close.

As far as I know, Cincinnati doesn't have all these advantages.

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1. Or maybe Twain didn't say it. Variations of the joke have been around for a long time in various places, according to Quote Investigator (http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/03/20/end-of-world-time-lag/).

2. For example, see the National Institute of Health (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000057.htm) or the Mayo Clinic (http://www.mayoclinic.org/first-aid/first-aid-frostbite/basics/art-20056653).

3. Not counting Greenland, or Western Sahara, or a bunch of tiny islands which aren't actually independent. Check the World Bank (http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.POP.DNST?order=wbapi_data_value_2013+wbapi_data_value+wbapi_data_value-last&sort=asc) or World Atlas (http://www.worldatlas.com/aatlas/populations/ctypopls.htm), or Index Mundi (http://www.indexmundi.com/g/r.aspx?v=21000).