Karud: the weapon that did not exist:-)

ariel · 22nd August 2017, 01:05 PM

Alan,

The point is that there are no two different spellings of Kard and Karud. In Persian it is spelled Kard and nothing else. As you have previously noted, the soft rolling of "r" gives an aural impression of yet another vowel after it ( "u" for Gilchrist and Moser, "e" for Holstein): an epenthesis. Karud is a word that did not exist in written form: it is just a result of a phonetical mishap.

That was the salient point of my inquiry into the origin of the word Karud in the contemporary Western literature, no more.

I find it amusing that there still are attempts to use a phonetical error to officially create a separate class of realia. Some phonetical peculiarities acquire a life of their own: in Arabic there is no phoneme "p"; thus the language of Pars became Farsi and Greco-Roman Neapolis became Nablus. Still, they refer to the same things.

As to the usage of Karud in unofficial discussions, I have no beef with it.

My point referred to "professional literature", and I clearly indicated it in the last sentence of my original post.

A. G. Maisey · 22nd August 2017, 02:19 PM

Yes Ariel, correct, as I wrote in my previous post:-

"--- The original word has generated two spellings for the same word and object---"

The people who owned the object and its name clearly thought of this object as the same thing, whether it had a straight blade or a waved blade, but through the process of transliteration that one word became two words when it passed into other languages and other script.

We're on the same page here, perhaps I was insufficiently clear in what I wrote.

As I understand it, for some collectors this "karud" word has become an addition to their lexicon of weapon names. In other words it has entered collector jargon. We know it is not legit. We know it is a construct, but if it helps some people express themselves clearly and save all that effort of using an adjective, it probably doesn't matter. The academics will continue to try their best to be precise, as you have demonstrated with your quotes, so the serious literature will remain correct, and the friendly social chatter can use whatever words everybody agrees to.

I'm not into kards, nor karuds, but if I was, I think I'd probably spell the word "khard", that seems to me to have a much more regal touch to it than the plebian old "kard". A little bit of aspiration never did do anything but put a slightly gilded edge to a word.

22nd August 2017, 01:05 PM	#1
ariel Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Ann Arbor, MI Posts: 5,503	Alan, The point is that there are no two different spellings of Kard and Karud. In Persian it is spelled Kard and nothing else. As you have previously noted, the soft rolling of "r" gives an aural impression of yet another vowel after it ( "u" for Gilchrist and Moser, "e" for Holstein): an epenthesis. Karud is a word that did not exist in written form: it is just a result of a phonetical mishap. That was the salient point of my inquiry into the origin of the word Karud in the contemporary Western literature, no more. I find it amusing that there still are attempts to use a phonetical error to officially create a separate class of realia. Some phonetical peculiarities acquire a life of their own: in Arabic there is no phoneme "p"; thus the language of Pars became Farsi and Greco-Roman Neapolis became Nablus. Still, they refer to the same things. As to the usage of Karud in unofficial discussions, I have no beef with it. My point referred to "professional literature", and I clearly indicated it in the last sentence of my original post. Last edited by ariel; 22nd August 2017 at 01:52 PM.

22nd August 2017, 02:19 PM	#2
A. G. Maisey Member Join Date: May 2006 Posts: 7,048	Yes Ariel, correct, as I wrote in my previous post:- "--- The original word has generated two spellings for the same word and object---" The people who owned the object and its name clearly thought of this object as the same thing, whether it had a straight blade or a waved blade, but through the process of transliteration that one word became two words when it passed into other languages and other script. We're on the same page here, perhaps I was insufficiently clear in what I wrote. As I understand it, for some collectors this "karud" word has become an addition to their lexicon of weapon names. In other words it has entered collector jargon. We know it is not legit. We know it is a construct, but if it helps some people express themselves clearly and save all that effort of using an adjective, it probably doesn't matter. The academics will continue to try their best to be precise, as you have demonstrated with your quotes, so the serious literature will remain correct, and the friendly social chatter can use whatever words everybody agrees to. I'm not into kards, nor karuds, but if I was, I think I'd probably spell the word "khard", that seems to me to have a much more regal touch to it than the plebian old "kard". A little bit of aspiration never did do anything but put a slightly gilded edge to a word.