Thanks ahvalj.In Old Persian, ardatam means “silver” — Darius' foundation tablet from Susa, line 40:
abariya \ hya \ idâ \ karta \ ardatam(see below in the translation the phrase The silver and the ebony were brought from Egypt).
Ok, so Persians dropped ardata in favour of asēm~asēmēn at the Byzantine Greek period rather than the much earlier contact with the Greeks?The idea about the Greek origin of the Middle>New>modern Persian word does exist among Iranists. In Zoroastrian Pahlavi this word is asēm~asēmēn.
There is ارزیز but, if indeed related, it must have been borrowed from a North-Western language because of this z. And the suffix is different as well.Do we know if ardata survived in MP/NP in some form?
Does anyone know the actual NP for ālī please, it can only be آلی ?For modern forms there is apparently Yazdi (Zoroastrian Dari/Gabri/Behdinan) ālī (< *ardata/arzata)
More precisely, in Persian ard becomes āl as in sāl; ṛd (with vocalic ṛ) becomes il (as in dil) or ul (as in gul).
I thought that was the case so drafted a post to ask for clarification but changed my mind, so red faced either wayYazdi in #7 means a term, not an etymologically related syllable.
These are just parallel examples of the Old Persian rd sequence developing into New Persian l. I am too lazy to look up the exact attested and reconstructed forms right now, but they would be roughly something like θard-, dṛd- and wṛd- in Old Persian. Compare the first two with Sanskrit śarad- and hṛd-; the last with the loanword in Arabic: ward-.
The passage to which this translation belongs is in lines 40-41: rdatam \ utâ \ asâ \ dâruv \ hacâ \ Mudrâyâ \ abariya \In Old Persian, ardatam is translated as “silver” — Darius' foundation tablet from Susa, line 40:
abariya \ hya \ idâ \ karta \ ardatam(see below in the translation the phrase The silver and the ebony were brought from Egypt).
The term asimon exists in Hebrew no later than the 2nd century (appears several times in the Mishnah) so could be borrowed by Persian too before the Byzantine era. Denotes the meaning as described above: "unsigned", a piece of metal similar to coin but with no specified value.I think the middle/modern Persian word is a borrowing from Byzantine Greek. In Byzantine Greek, colloquially, silver was «ἀσήμιν» asḗmin, Late ByzGr asímin, diminutive of the neuter noun «ἄσημον» ásēmon (Late ByzGr ásimon) --> newly-cut unimpressed/unmarked silver coin = privative prefix «ἀ-» a- + neuter noun «σῆμα» sêmă --> sign, symbol, trait, omen, mark, character, feature, gravestone.
In MoGr colloquially, silver is ασήμι [aˈsi.mi] (neut.).