1

Azerbaijani: çün
Persian: çun
Means: because
Origin: Persian

Azerbaijani: üçün üç+ün
old-Turkic: uçun
Means: because of
Origin: old-Turkic

So, can somebody explain how this is possible?

More Explain:

It is not possible that üçün has been made using üç+ün
We don't have ün/un suffix in Turkic.
I think it was like "O çun" means "because of that" and cause of accent transformed to "üçün", cause you know in Turkic we can't have O and Ü together in one word.

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  • Does this relate to Arabic عشان (ʿašān), analyzed as from šaʾn "mater, sake, etc", with plural šuʾūn? For gods sakes, if it says Persian and Old-Turkic, that could mean somewhen between 1000 and 2000 years ago, which leaves a lot of room, and if Turkic doesn't have ün, that does not say much at all about Old Turkic. By the way, what's üç then? Does that relate to the question, that was posted here some moons ago, whether Turkish defies the maximal coda principle?
    – vectory
    Feb 24, 2019 at 22:50
  • üç means 3 in Turkic. Feb 24, 2019 at 22:58
  • also, it is not related to the Arabic one. Feb 24, 2019 at 23:04
  • What I dislike more than you dislike Persian etymologies are the Arabic etymologies, where the roots rather serve to help remembering their system of conjugation and inflection, that is intensely complex from my point of view.
    – vectory
    Feb 25, 2019 at 0:56
  • 2
    @ArnaudFournet Where for example? I only know here. also if you ask a Turkic professor about these words, +90% they will say they are Turkic. Feb 25, 2019 at 8:32

2 Answers 2

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Turkic üçün is a postposition meaning “because of, on account of”. It is undeniably Turkic; see Clauson, Etym. dictionary of pre-13th-century Turkish, p. 28 seq.

Persian čūn is a conjunction meaning “when, since” and a preposition meaning “like, as”. It has an impeccable Iranian etymology: Old Iranian či-gauna “what colour” > Middle Persian čiyōn > New Persian čūn.

The superficial similarity of the two is accidental.

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  • 1
    Persian çun doesn't mean "when", I am a native Persian and Turkic speaker. Also if we even accept it is old-Iranic, it still can be Turkic. Feb 25, 2019 at 12:31
  • Turkic is not the mother of all languages, this is a fact that centuries before old-Turkic and old-Iranic Turks and Iranians were neighbors. I just fixed your wrong translation. çun means because, nothing more, nothing less. Feb 25, 2019 at 12:50
  • Maybe accidental is not the right word, the could have become more similar in pronunciation or in sense because of confusion by speakers. Feb 26, 2019 at 4:56
  • @AdamBittlingmayer. I doubt that very much. The two words have very different meanings and usages. Moreover, the Turkish word is already in Old Turkish, where it could have been influenced by Sogdian, but not by Persian.
    – fdb
    Feb 26, 2019 at 9:13
  • "different" is a matter of subjectivity. Of course you might disagree with that and see it differently.
    – vectory
    Feb 26, 2019 at 9:18
1

Turkish çünki comes from Persian čūn "because" and Persian ke "of". The literal meaning is "because of" and can be compared to French parce-que.

Turkish için, Azeri üçün and Uzbek uchun all come from Old Turkic "end, tip, boundary" + old Turkic suffix +(I)n. In modern turkish it means "for" and nothing else. Ne için? "for what?", senin için "for you". It never means "because of".

Your statement saying that there's no -un suffix in Turkish is completely false. +(I)n suffix produces time and place adverbs from nouns and adjectives in Old Turkic. Most of the time + In, sometimes + An form is used.

Examples of words suffixed by +(I)n : Yarın "tomorrow" Erken "early" Uzun "long" Zorunlu "by force, obligated" Ect. Ect.

In the case of için, the etymological meaning is "in the (location of the) limit, boundary, end of"

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  • Thanks for your comment. I request two clarifications: a) I guess čūn, ke is supposed to reflect PIE *kwo- (whence e.g. En wh-words, Lat qu-; please excuse the lack of superscript *w) and *ko-(m) (whence e.g. Lat co- etc, AGr kei "and"), is that on point? Translating literally because of is very biased by English (though note the be-, if akin to by which bears semantic resemblence to of, with etc, cp whereby; note too that labialized velars sometimes become plosives or delabialized, e.g. in Greek or Sanskrit respectively); b) please clarify "end, tip, boundary" > "for".
    – vectory
    Aug 19, 2019 at 17:09
  • ... you probably imply "to what end" ("what for?"); cp Ger "endlich" ("finally, soon, now, ..."), "und nu" ("now what?"). Also note that n-(e)- was in Gothic, e.g., an inquisitive particle too. Funny that. Oh in Ancient Greek was similarly used as negation, while -u- was a preverbal pronoun often combined with n- in Gothic, cf V. V. Ivanov, Gothic Syntax, and others',; I don't know the half of it, it gives many questions to research; Such short particles are extremely difficult to derive, even synchronically, even less in young languages without a lot of early textual evidence. Oh no!
    – vectory
    Aug 19, 2019 at 17:27

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