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Help[Facts] Re: Wriddhiman, anyone?
in reply to a message by Anneza
The Sanskrit (and Hindi) sound is actually a labiodental unaspirated consonant, and most people write it as a v, which in English has slightly more aspiration: the w is probably to avoid that. In any case, in Bengali, it is actually pronounced b, so all that is rather academic. The ri is actually the vowel R (as in grrrr, only shortened to a short vowel length), it is ri in most parts of north India, but ru as you come slightly south of that. The d and dh are dental, unaspirated and aspirated, the i is short, and the a is long open (as in English car).
vR is actually quite common in Sanskrit, but the reflex of the sonorant R is often a consonantal r in other Indoeuropean languages, and the conjunct (or sonorant) sometimes appears as a zero-grade ablaut. The Sanskrit v is often cognate with Germanic w. As far as I know that wren is of unknown etymology beyond Germanic (and it used to be werna, the current form is a metathesis), and writing is a new concept, for which I don't know where the w- comes from (the closes Sanskrit is rikh, to scratch), but wrath does go back to ProtoIndoEuropean wer-/wert- to turn, which is also reflected in Sanskrit vRt/vart to turn/revolve/roll.
In any case, the root is vRdh, to increase (grow, be abundant, grow old) appears already in the Vedic period, of unclear origin, but sometimes connected with the Indo-european base wrad- apparent in English root (plant part), radix, and radish. It with the noun-forming suffix -ti (vRddhi = growth, often figuratively, and also in many technical terms), followed by the possesive (or `has' or `causes') suffix -mat: vRddhimat (apart from a technical term in grammar) means somebody who possesses growth, or becomes powerful. The masculine nominative singular is vRddhimAn.
vR is actually quite common in Sanskrit, but the reflex of the sonorant R is often a consonantal r in other Indoeuropean languages, and the conjunct (or sonorant) sometimes appears as a zero-grade ablaut. The Sanskrit v is often cognate with Germanic w. As far as I know that wren is of unknown etymology beyond Germanic (and it used to be werna, the current form is a metathesis), and writing is a new concept, for which I don't know where the w- comes from (the closes Sanskrit is rikh, to scratch), but wrath does go back to ProtoIndoEuropean wer-/wert- to turn, which is also reflected in Sanskrit vRt/vart to turn/revolve/roll.
In any case, the root is vRdh, to increase (grow, be abundant, grow old) appears already in the Vedic period, of unclear origin, but sometimes connected with the Indo-european base wrad- apparent in English root (plant part), radix, and radish. It with the noun-forming suffix -ti (vRddhi = growth, often figuratively, and also in many technical terms), followed by the possesive (or `has' or `causes') suffix -mat: vRddhimat (apart from a technical term in grammar) means somebody who possesses growth, or becomes powerful. The masculine nominative singular is vRddhimAn.
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