deb ther

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དེབ་ཐེར
annal, chronicle, records, documents, records, catalogues, registers, lists, books [RY]

annals, chronicle, records, documents, records, catalogues, registers, lists, books [IW]

register, documents, catalogues, anything recorded in writing or stitched together [JV]

historical book, annals [RY]

1) annals, historical annals, recorded annals, chronicles, historical chronicles, recorded chronicles, records, historical records; 2) record books, documents, historical documents, catalogs, historical catalogs, catalog of records, registers, historical registers, recorded registers, listings, historical listings, recorded listings; 3) books, scrolls. Borrowed from Middle or Early New Persian دفتر‎ (daftar), meaning "account book" and usually meaning "notebook", "list" or "register" in Modern Persian, which in turn is from Aramaic דפתרא‎ / ܕܦܬܪܐ‎, and ultimately from Ancient Greek διφθέρᾱ (diphthérā, “parchment”, "scrolls" or "pages"); which itself is possibly from Proto-Hellenic dipʰtʰérā, related to διψάρα (dipsára, “writing-tablet; piece of leather”) and Mycenaean Greek 𐀇𐁇𐀨 (di-pte-ra), and probably connected with δέφω (déphō) or δέψω (dépsō, “to soften (with the hand)”). Compare also Old Persian 𐎮𐎡𐎱𐎡 (dipi), Akkadian 𒁾 (ṭuppu, “tablet, document, letter”), Sumerian 𒁾 (dub, “tablet”) and even Arabic كِتَاب (kitāb, "book", "message", "scripture", "recorded accounts" etc.). The word also exists as a Persian loanword in Arabic as دَفْتَر (daftar). There is also an irregular spelling with གཏེར (deb gter) (rather than ther) based on a Tibetan 'folk etymology' connecting it to the meaning "treasure", due to the accidental similarity of the Persian-Greek -tar/-thérā with the Tibetan word. Thus it appears that this Greco-Persian etymology is also the ultimate origin of deb, which is main Tibetan word for "book", as the monosyllabic deb is derived as a shortened form of the longer word deb ther. The main native Tibetan word for "book" (which is not a foreign loan word) is dpe cha. It is worth noting that the pronunciation of the Tibetan version of this word arguably sounds more like the original Greek diphthér(ā) than the Persian daftar, perhaps intentionally trying to imitate the Greek form, but also partly due to the general lack of the f sound in Tibetan (but especially as a final consonant, since pha is pronounced as fa in some dialects of Tibetan but is never a final consonant). This word probably entered Tibet via the Silk Road trading routes, and therefore may have originally meant "accounts" in the mercantile sense. [Erick Tsiknopoulos]