dost
'friend' was one of the first few Hindi
words I encountered, and like so many words in Hindi, it has been
borrowed from Persian (in Modern Persian it has become dust,
as far as I know).
I
don't know in how many contemporary languages it has become a
loanword as well, but at least I often read it in Turkish internet
posts.
Its
meaning alone makes me love the word – but for a person interested
in historical linguistics, there is a lot more to it – a long
history dating back to, roughly estimated, 3,000 BCE, and a rich
variety of descendants of the original Proto-Indo-European word in
various Indo-European languages.
But
how can we know that word and what it meant?
First,
we can go back to the Old Persian language, to the inscriptions of
King Dareios. With the word dauštar 'friend', the
predecessor of dost, Dareios seems to have spoken of his true
allies, as opposed to the „liars“, those who betrayed him.
In
the most ancient layer of the Sanskrit language, called Vedic, we
have a word that is phonetically corresponding to dauštar :
joṣṭár 'loving'. As the two meanings can also easily be
related to each other, we can be sure there must have been a word
that is the common predecessor of both.
Most
likely, that predecessor wasn't a noun, but a cognate verb. As we can
tell from the suffix -tar-, which is common to both nouns, these words
are agent nouns derived from a verbal root.
That
verbal root in fact exists; it is to be found in Old Persian as well
as in Old Avestan (the language of Zoroaster), and also in Vedic
Sanskrit:
The
Old Persian verb is dauš-, the Old Avestan cognate being
zauš-, and the Sanskrit word is juṣ-.
The
three verbs share roughly the same meaning: ENJOY.
Looking
closer into the Sanskrit texts, it becomes clear that 'enjoy' isn't
just meant to be a passive emotional state elicited by a pleasurable
sensation, but a feeling evoked by something or someone that has been
CHOSEN.
By
looking back even further in time (plus by comparing cognates from even more Indo-European languages), at last we find the
Proto-Indo-European (PIE) verb *ğeus- 'to taste', 'to
relish'.
After
that most ancient PIE stage (which we can only deduce, of course),
the Indo-Iranian branch wasn't the only one in which that verb was
preserved in several ways.
In
our Germanic languages, Old English ceosan 'choose', 'taste',
'try' has originated from Proto-Germanic *keusanan (cf. Dutch
kiezen, Old High German kiosan, German kiesen,
Old Nordic kjosa , and the like in other Germanic languages),
which of course has descended from the same PIE base *ğeus-, and has eventually become our choose (somehow choice is also related to it, btw).
The
Romance languages have preserved that ancient Indo-European verb as
well. Latin gustare 'taste',
'take a little of' is cognate to the verbs discussed above and a
descendant of *ğeus- .,
with several modern verbs (and nouns) originating from it, e.g. Spanish
gustar.
- It
is obvious that the semantic development of the root takes various
directions in the respective language families, may it be 'choose'
or 'try' in the Germanic languages, and often 'taste' in Romance.
So English choose, Persian/Hindi/Turkish dost and Spanish gustar (plus many more words in other languages) all originate from a common ancestor, the PIE word *ğeus- 'taste', 'relish'.
Because it fits with this post in a way, at last a link to a wonderful song: Manu Chao, Me gustas tú
