Linguistics Behind the Wicket (LBW) #1: Shahid Afridi and Free Love Friday

In belated celebration of the breaking of Australia's 34-match unbeaten run in World Cup matches by Pakistan, I offer the first in what I plan to be a recurring series of cricket-related linguistic investigations. I'm dubbing this series LBW ("Linguistics Behind (the) Wicket").

Shahid Afridi during the Pakistani World Cup 2011 match with Australia

This first investigation is a study in onomastics, taking as its subject the name of the skipper of the Pakistan team: Shahid Afridi (Urdu: شاہد آفریدی). To find out the connection between Afridi and free, "love", and Friday, read on!

[A brief word about the sources of Hindi/Urdu words: alongside of the native Indo-Aryan vocabulary (inherited, ultimately, from a vernacular cousin of Sanskrit), both the Hindi and Urdu varieties of Hindi/Urdu employ a large number of Persian and Arabic words (as a result of the Mughal invasion of India).]

Shahid (Hindi: शहीद; Urdu: شاہد) is an Hindi/Urdu word of Perso-Arabic origins, meaning "martyr" (religious or political). It derives ultimately from an Arabic root شہد, which Platts[1] glosses as meaning "to give testimony". Not being a semiticist, I cannot offer any further interesting discussion.

It is rather the name Afridi (Hindi: आफ़्रीदी; Urdu: آفریدی) which is of more interest for me. Jokingly, I have sometimes referred to Afridi as "Afriti", since his aggressive cricketing (Afridi holds the record (37 deliveries) for fastest century in one-day cricket) and mercurial temperament is suggestive of an Arabian Afreet (an angry sort of djinn): Arabic ʻIfrīt عفريت, pl. ʻAfārīt عفاريت. [The origin of this word is rather opaque to me: Platts[1] derives it from an Arabic root عفر meaning "to roll in the dust"; the Wikipedia article suggests that it comes from عفرت (`afrt) meaning "the evil"; the translation of the Qur'anic passage, Sura An-Naml (27:39-40) seems gloss it as "strong one". Maybe semiticists could enlighten me here?]

However, Āfrīdī, in fact, has no connection with Arabic "Afreet". Rather, it is a word of Iranian origin, which, being the name of a certain Pathan tribe, is thus presumably indicative of Shahid Afridi's ancestral origins.

Some afridis in the Khyber Rifles

In terms of its etymology, the word āfrīdī can be derived from the Persian word آفريده āfrīda, which means "creature" (noun) or "created" (adjective). (The āfrīdīs are thus perhaps "the created people".)

Āfrīda itself can be derived as the past/perfect participial form of the Avestan root frī- "love" combined with the prefix ā- (theoretically contributing a sense of "near, towards", but sometimes resulting in idiosyncratic meanings). Avestan āfrīda would corresponds to Sanskrit āprīta, both meaning "gladdened, joyous" etc.

The semantic change from Avestan "gladdened, joyous" to Persian "created" is intriguing. The earlier meaning of "joy" still seems to be present in Persian (and Hindi/Urdu) āfrīn/āfirīn, which can be used to mean "bravo! well done!" (though it too can have the "create" sense, at least in the compound jahān-āfirīn "creator of the world").

The root underlying both Sanskrit āprīta and Avestan āfrīda is Proto-Indo-Iranian *prī-, which itself can be traced back to the Proto-Indo-European root *prī- whose most basic sense is "to love".

The PIE root *prī- (see Watkins[2]) is also the source of English free (from Old English frēo, derived from the verb frēon "to love, to set free"), friend (from Old English frēond "friend, lover"), and Friday (from Old English Frīgedæge "Frigg's day", where Frigg, the name of the Scandinavian goddess of love, Odin's wife, derives from Proto-Germanic *frijjō "beloved, wife"); as well as Old English frioðu "peace", which sadly has no direct reflexes in modern English.

In fact, PIE *prī- underlies not only the Persian tribal name Afridi, but also a variety of Germanic-derived names (see Watkins[2]), including:

1. Siegfried, from Old High German Sigi-frith "victorious peace"
2. Godfrey, from Old High German Goda-frid "peace of god"
3. Frederick, from French Frédéric, itself a borrowing of Old High German Fridu-rīh "peaceful ruler"
4. Geoffrey, from Old French Geoffroi from mediaeval Latin Gaufridus, itself a borrowing from Germanic *Gawja-frithu- "(having a) peaceful region"

Thus perhaps Geoffrey Boycott can mention his "prī-" connection with Shahid Afridi if he ever needs some filler material when commentating a Pakistan match...

So, this concludes the first LBW. I'm open to suggestions for other cricketers or cricket terminology to etymologise for future episodes.

Bibliography:

[1]Platts, John T. 1884. A dictionary of Urdū, classical Hindī, and English. London: W. H. Allen & Co., 1884. (Reprinted, New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 2000.) [online]

[2]Watkins, Calvert. 2000. The American Heritage dictionary of Indo-European roots. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2nd edn.

[3]McGregor, R.S. 1993. The Oxford Hindi-English dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Indian edition: New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994.)

Kahte hain ki that rupees are the biggest: On complementiser doubling in Hindi-English codeswitching

Codeswitching--switching between languages--is a prominent feature of language in multilingual India.

Sometimes the switch between languages occurs in-between sentences, as in example I (examples I-V adapted from Hock & Joseph[1]:360-1):

(I)

Kahte	haiṁ	ki	ājkal	bahut	logoṁ	ko	yah
saying	are	that	nowadays	many	people	to	this

nahīṁ	pasand	hai	ki	rāj	nārāin	pāgal
not	pleasing	is	that	Raj	Narain	crazy

ke samān	aikṭ kar	rahā	hai.
like	act	AUX	is.

But he seems like the same old Raj Narain to me.

"They're saying that these days many people don't like it that Raj Narain is acting like a fool. But he seems like the same old Raj Narain to me."

But codeswitching can also occur in the middle of a sentence, at the boundary between two clauses, as in example II:

(II)

Kahte	haiṁ	ki	ājkal	bahut	logoṁ	ko	yah
saying	are	that	nowadays	many	people	to	this

nahīṁ	pasand	hai	ki	Raj	Narain	is
not	pleasing	is	that

acting

like

a fool...

"They're saying that these days many people don't like it that Raj Narain is acting like a fool..."

We even find examples of a switch from Hindi to English back to Hindi in a single sentence (again, the switches occur at the clause boundaries), as in example III:

(III)

Kahte	haiṁ	ki	nowadays	many	people	don’t
saying	are	that

like	it	ki	rāj	nārāin	pāgal
		that	Raj	Narain	crazy

ke samān	aikṭ kar	rahā	hai...
like	act	AUX	is...

"They're saying that these days many people don't like it that Raj Narain is acting like a fool..."

Codeswitching in the middle of a clause is much rarer, and codeswitches in the middle of a syntactic constituent, as in example IV, are nearly ungrammatical (as indicated by the '??!' marking):

(IV)??!

Kahte	haiṁ	ki	ājkal	bahut	people	don't	like...
saying	are	that	nowadays	many

??! "They're saying that these days many people don't like..."

Interestingly, however, codeswitching can occur both immediately before and immediately after the clause boundary, so that, for instance, the Hindi complementiser (or subordinator) ki "that" may stand alone in the midst of English words, as in example V (...don't like it ki Raj Narain is...):

(V)

Kahte	haiṁ	ki	nowadays	many	people	don’t
saying	are	that

like	it		ki	Raj	Narain	is
			that

acting

like

a fool.

"They're saying that these days many people don't like it that Raj Narain is acting like a fool..."

What is even more interesting is that it appears to be possible to "double" the complementiser at the point of the codeswitch, so that the complementiser appears once in English (that) and then immediately following in Hindi (ki/ke), as in example VI. This example is taken from the song "Sabse Bada Rupaiya" from the 2005 Hindi film Bluffmaster, starring as male lead Abhishek Bachchan (son of Amitabh Bachchan, the world's most famous actor; and grandson of 'Shadowist' [छायावाद] poet Harivansh Rai Bachchan)--see the video below:

(VI)

Na	bībī,	na	baccā,	na	bāp	baṛā,	na	māiṁyā,
Not	wife,	not	child,	not	father	big,	not	mother,

the	whole	thing	is	that	ke,	bhāiyā,
					that,	brother,

sabse	baṛā	rupayā.
than-all	big	money.

“It’s not your wife, your child, your father, or your mother that’s important—the whole thing is that (that), brother, money’s greater than everything.”

This song is actually a remake of a song from the 1976 Mehmood film "Sabse Bada Rupaiya"; the lyrics of the 1976 version are slightly different, but the line the whole thing is that ke, bhāiyā, sabse baṛā rupayā also occurs there:

[There's some other interesting codeswitches in the old version too.]

The complementiser of Hindi is usually ki /ki/, and the ke /kē/ found in the lyrics cited above seems to be the Urdu form. (This complementiser was actually originally borrowed from Persian ke /ke/; Hindi/Urdu lack the short /e/ vowel found in Persian, and chose to nativise it in different ways: Hindi preserved the vowel length at the expense of the vowel quality [=/ki/], Urdu preserved the vowel quality at the expense of the vowel length [=/kē/].)

In any case, this doubling of the complementiser at the point of the codeswitch (...that ke...) is rather intriguing, though I must admit I'm not exactly sure what it tells us about the syntactic structure of Hindi/Urdu clauses...

For more Hindi-English codeswitching, again from Bluffmaster, here's another video, the Hiphop/Bollywood-fusion song "Right Here, Right Now"--with Abhishek himself as male vocalist.

[you may have to click to close the ads which might appear between 10-15 seconds in to see the subtitles]

There's no complementiser-doubling here, but there are a number of interesting "translations" from Hindi into "hiphop English", e.g. the actress Priyanka Chopra becomes "Piggy Chops" (vaguely reminiscent of rapper names like "Snoop Dogg"). Also is the line "hiphop fakers" or "hiphop fakirs"? (fakir = a Sufi mystic who performs feats of magic)

References:

[1]Hock, Hans Henrich & Brian D. Joseph. 2009. Language history, language change, and language relationship. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2nd edn.