Talk:हम

12th December 2020

@AryamanA I don't know who added that Bhojpuri pronoun's (हम) etymology, but is there a source for that? I was having a debate with someone saying it's from अस्मे and not from अहम्. I was pretty convinced it's from अस्मे. But then that person mentioned in New-Indo-Aryan the final -m was nasalised so as per him अस्मे cannot be the source. Some inherited words from अस्मे are haũ (Braj) hũ (Gujarati) [they have nasalised vowels]. I was thinking that in Hindi the eastern usage of हम as 1P singular was because it's from PIE *éģh₂óm (अहम्) and the western Hindi's हम was from PIE *n̥smé (अस्मे). (they converged to look the same, I was thinking that maybe eastern hindi got it from other local languages like bhojpuri or maybe it never got lost in eastern hindi as it did in western hindi and instead eastern hindi mixed the two pronouns). I also read the eastern हम is not the royal-we (it's on hindustani grammar wikipage) so I think that kind of supports it being from अहम्. Itsmeyash31 (talk) 16:39, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

@Itsmeyash31: Interesting question. The thing with pronouns is that there is a lot of analogy, interference, and language contact that affects their forms. E.g. ye and vo in Hindi is very difficult to easily trace to a source. Same with tū vs. tum, arguably both have something to do with tvám. So with ham, Turner says it's from asme and I am inclined to agree. Development was probably like asme > amhe > amhi (or some other vowel reduction) > ham (aspiration is pretty unstable on m in this region of NIA).

I don't think ahám can work here, since there's no way for the m to be retained (it would indeed be nasalised). That's how we get e.g. Konkani hā̃v, Gujarati hũ (which I disagree with you, it can't be from asme), Vicholi Sindhi āū̃, etc. none of which retain the m. asme in that area gives Konkani āmi (plural), Marathi āmhī (plural) which makes sense given the development I wrote out earlier for ham. —Aryaman^{A (मुझसे बात करें • योगदान)} 00:16, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

Also, I think the two sources theory is a stretch. The pronoun for "we" has become singular near Bhojpuri. The obvious example is Bengali, which has adapted āmi as first person singular (in the past, it had mui and some dialects do retain that). Very likely that language contact influenced Eastern Hindi to do this. And even in Western Hindi, I wouldn't find it too strange for people to say ham in singular in some contexts, certainly not as restricted as the "royal we" (which is English-specific). Farther in NIA, we find Kashmiri has done the same with bü (singular first-person) < vayam. —Aryaman^{A (मुझसे बात करें • योगदान)} 00:20, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

@AryamanA: There I meant अहम् and not अस्मे. It was a typing error. I agree with you there, those are not from अस्मे. So, I am still a little confused after reading what you said, I think I agree now हम cannot be from अहम्, then why is Bhojpuri's etymology for हम mentioned as अहम् on this page? Same for Maithili.

• हम from From Bihari [Term?], from Magadhi Prakrit 𑀳𑀁 (haṃ), from Sanskrit अहम् (aham). Itsmeyash31 (talk) 00:51, 5 December 2020 (UTC)