5) Key

Now that these oversights have been corrected, it's time for me to keep the promise I made in my eaSTeR 2022 video on the covenant of the PaRTs. Remember ? I made the connection between BeRiyT, the Hebrew word for covenant, and BeTaR, the PaRT or the PaRTy, and I promised that we'd come back to the « Ta Ra » sound at the heart of cooperation and sharing. Well, here we are, one year later.

As a matter of fact, I've already kept part of that promise in my previous video on the « R _Ra » sound. But « Ra » is just one piece of the PuZZLe. A very important piece - like one of the four corners of a jigsaw puzzle, from which you build the edges and then the center - but a piece nonetheless. And now, it's time for me to reveal the hidden meaning of the TowRah - sorry, of the word « Ta Ra » - which is probably the most important edge of the - human language puzzle. For this word is seminal in human culture, at least in the great civilizations of antiquity, from ancient Egypt to Rome, as well as the Levant, Arabia, Mesopotamia, India, Iran and Greece.

Before getting back to « Ta Ra », let's first take a tour of « Ra Ta »- the inversion of « Ta » and « Ra » -, something called a metathesis in linguistics, and which we've already encountered in the connection between BeRiyT, the covenant, and BeTaR, the PaRT or PaRTy. metathesis is a key feature of Paleolithic linguistics. It's quite confusing at first. I first came across it in the spring of 2021, when I realized that in the Torah, lamb was both KeBeS, for example in Leviticus chapter 4 verse 32, and KeSeB, 3 verses later, with the Ba and Sha sounds iNVeRTed.

It took me months to get my head around this because back then, in my mind – as in yours today, I imagine - the order of the LeTTeRs was of great importance, especially in a text like the Bible, where the position of each letter is supposed to be crucial. Therefore, it took me almost a year to realize that what I thought was a linguistic « bug » was in fact proof that the order of letters and sounds was far less important than the choice of those letters and sounds. This realization led to another: the meaning of words actually stems from the combination of the archaic meaning of each consonant; meanings that our species gradually forgot in the Neolithic period, especially with the advent of WRiTing.

And to kick off this little tour of « Ra Ta », what better way to start than with ZaRaThuSTRa. Or rather, with the Gathas, the poems this great prophet - this « Star » - composed over 3,000 years ago in present day Iran. In the Gathas, we often come across « aSHa and aRTa », which seem to be used interchangeably to mean existence, TRuTh and the RiGhT RouTe, which ZaRaThuSTRa is seeking. So that you understand what I'm talking about, I'm going to read you a tiny part of the first song.

I who would serve you, O Mazda Ahura and Vohu Mano, do ye give through Asha the blessings of both worlds, the bodily and that of the Spirit, which set the faithful in felicity.

I who would praise ye as never before, Right and Good Thought and Mazda Ahura, and those for whom Piety makes an imperishable Dominion to grow; come ye to me help at my call.

I who have set my heart on watching over the soul, in union with Good Thought, and as knowing the rewards of Mazda Ahura for our works, will, while I have power and strength, teach men to seek after Right.

Did you notice something when I mentioned « aSHa and aRTa » ? Come on, open your ears ! Here again : the 3 archaic consonants, our 3 buddies, the sounds Sha, Ra and Ta, with which I chose to start my Paleolithic linguistics course! Come on!

Don’t worry. Apart from aRTa, the right route, in Latin we have ReTe, the net, related to what is rare and streaked, as I explained in my last video. But more importantly, in Greek, there's RèToS - the word, the spoken thing. Now you're going to tell me it's very simple: RèToS comes from éiRô which means to speak, and which I talked about at length in my previous video, with a suffix -ToS. However, you're only half right, but we'll return to these suffixes soon ...

Back to Latin : the two most important words with Ra Ta are RiTus and RoTa. We've already seen RiTus in my video on the RiGhT form in RiTuaLs. RiTus, in short, is usage, custom, manner, procedure, in other words, the RiGhT form - like ZaRaThuSTRa's aRTa. And RoTa is the wheel which turns, whether it’s the chariot wheel or the potter's wheel, but I'll tell you more in my next video.

Meanwhile, there's also the aoRTa from the Greek aoRTè, the aRTeRy running like a road through the body, or the TRaChea that pierces through the upper body. Or the fish bones, aRêTes in French, that cut the fish's body in half, and which sometimes pierce our throats. But more importantly, in French and English, there's the RouTe which, like RiTus or Arta and the words containing « Ra Ta », expresses the idea of a right path, a right TRaCk. A track, which one can CRiSS-CRoSS to create a RaTuRe, a crossing-out in French, a RaTé, a miss, in French too.

But let's come back to « Ta Ra », which is much more frequent than « Ra Ta ». Within this semantic field connected with the idea of TRaCing, there is first of all, in French, the weaver’s TRaMe (weft) and the perpendicular ChaîNe (warp); remember ShaRShaR, the chain in Hebrew. Here : trame and chaîne, the 3 buddies Ra Sha Ta yet again. Unbelievable !

More importantly, there's the king of all, the prefix TRaNS-, which in Latin means beyond, through, and which is found in a great many French and English words. « Ta Ra » is also found as a suffix in a number of very important words related to the idea of TRaVeRSing, such as the prefixes iNTRo- (from which derives eNTRy) or ReTRo-, iNTRa-, eXTRa or uLTRa.

Another very important aspect: words in « Ta Ra » or « Ra Ta » are often polysemous, i.e. they have a large number of different meanings, depending on the context. And in French, the epitome of polysemy is TiRer, to pull or to draw out, which etymology seems to derive from the Latin TRaHo, and which according to Wiktionnary has 47 different meanings. Or, again in French, the words TRaiT with 33 different meanings, TRaiN or TRaîNer (to drag) with 14 different meanings in French, and finally TRaCe, coming from the Latin TRaHeRe, and which has 10 different meanings in French. TRaHeRe is probably related to the Greek TRéQô meaning to move, to run - in short, to leave a trace, or a track.

This polysemy is essential: it's the trace of an archaic usage of the primordial word « Ta Ra », which over the millennia has taken on more and more different meanings. Put another way, a rule of Paleolithic linguistics is that the more different meanings a word has, the more archaic it is.

Lastly, to round off this semantic field of the stroke we trace, we should note the words ThReShoLD, which we cross, and TRaiL, which is also polysemic and means both trace, road, path or to drag. As for Egyptian, the harvest in this semantic field is rather scant, but it is significant with RuWT which means door, threshold.