This book transcends any neat scheme of categorisation. It is not, strictly speaking, a work of etymology (the study of origin of words) or of philology (the study of language) or even of cultural anthropology. Instead, Khaled Ahmed's new exploration covers all this and much more, ultimately offering commentary on the linguistic heritage of a significant section of human civilisation spread over more than two millennia.
Ahmed, a senior journalist and editor (the essays here are collected newspaper columns from a span of several years), focuses on phonetic and etymological analysis of words in everyday use in Pakistan in their wider social and cultural contexts. The ruminations here explore linkages across vast distances of time and space, connections between the linguistic legacies of four of the world's major civilisations – Judaism, Christianity, Islam and the heterogeneous cultures of the Indian Subcontinent. In so doing, the author lays bare the fact that the ethnocentric vision of the votaries of various faith communities is myopic, inasmuch as they look at their own cultural heritage in exclusive terms.
Word for Word tells a different story: that world cultures have profusely borrowed their everyday linguistic expressions from each other. The story of these linkages is defined by the common roots of words belonging to the Indo-European languages from present-day South and West Asia as well as the Atlantic communities. For example, it is known that the Indian, Zoroastrian, Jewish, Arab, Roman and Greek worlds interacted with each other for thousands of years through conquest, proselytisation and trade, both by land and sea. As such, Ahmed is mostly concerned with language with regard to the Indo-European world, with explorations into the connections with, for instance, Chinese civilisation and the African traditions not fully represented here.
This study synthesises expressions from mythology, religion, art, literature, philosophy, market behaviour and gender-based formulations. Ahmed is thus able to offer a kaleidoscopic view of the origins of words and the patterns of their transformation, as seen through the multiple domains of social life. For example, we find the word right and its 'righteous' connotations in English, with parallel words in Latin (dexter, dexterous), Sanskrit (daksh, right; dakshin, the country on the right when facing the sun; along with dakshina, alms given with the right hand), French-English (droit, right; adroit) and Arabic (Yemen, the country on the right while facing the sun; and iman, on the right side of god). The relationship between the word for right and its meaning as 'good' can thus be seen reverberating through multiple languages. Upon reflection, it is truly amazing that far-flung human civilisations have developed shared attitudes towards the right being good, superior, true.