Umbrae said:
Over and under (Ober and Unter) are not the same as Knave (pronounced ‘Nāv’).
Right. Ober and Unter mean "over" and "under" respectively. The Knave or Jack corresponds only to the "unter", not both of them.
Further, as mjhurst has described (in more than the above quote) in this post, we should eschew speculation.
I don't see where he said that. He didn't use the word "eschew" to qualify "speculation" in your quote, he used the word "unsubstantiated". To me, this implies that he approves of "substantiated speculation" - that is, speculating on some implication of certain given, and usually presented, facts.
So where or how does the term Knave get attributed to what we now call the ‘Jack’?
That's a good question. If you know the answer, why don't you tell us?
The answer seems to be complex and to involve some history - things change according to time and circumstance, which together make for a complex picture - but it probably partly depends on who "we" are. "Knave" is still common in the UK, although it is not in Canada, and I can't speak for other English speaking countries.
The simplest answer is that "jack" was (and is) a term for the common or lowest man, and was applied to the card quite early.
http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~daf/i-p-c-s.org/faq/jack+knave.php
But the prevalence of the term might have something to do with labelling the cards with a single letter, a practice dating to the 19th century, in which case the King's "K" would easily get mixed up with the Knave's "K". Double letters presumably were seen as inelegant (there's some speculation for you), so "Kn" didn't fly with cardmakers who wanted to make a slick product. So they took the already common term "Jack" and used its first letter quite easily.
We know that the archaic Italian word for "playing cards" (naibi or naibbi, and the Spanish equivalent, naipes) are still used, both come from the Arabic word na'ib, meaning "delegate" or "deputy".
"Deputies" were two court cards of the old Arabic deck: the "viceroy" and the "second viceroy".
It's good to see you accept the Arabic origin of the term. But I don't think the term "naibi" is still used by any Italian. Please feel free to correct me.
However, it is not connected etymologically or homophonically with "nabi".
The derivation of the term "nayb" in whatever spelling from Arabic has been expressed for a long time, although I believe it is only since the publication of Mayer's work on the Topkapi museum cards in 1939 that it became the consensus among playing card historians. See Mayer, "Mamluk Playing Cards", Bulletin de l'Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale" (BIFAO) 38 (1939), 113-118
http://www.ifao.egnet.net/doc/PubEnLigne/BIFAO/Sommaires/BIFAO_038.php
- especially page 117 note 1, where he writes: "To consider the word
naipes as a corruption of the Arabic (or Hebrew)
nabi ("prophet") is bad enough... but to seek in this designation a reason for the popularity of card games (as does the author the article
Cards in the
Encyclopedia Brittanica) amounts almost to blasphemy. Muhammad's aversion to hazardous games is too well know to need any proof, cf. e.g.
Sura II. 213, V. 93, anf gambling never ceased to be a crime in the eyes of later Moslem codifiers." etc.
Na'ib -Naibi - Naip - Naipes - Naibbe - Naipero
Okay. What do all these related terms have to say? "(modern transcription of Arabic word) deputy - (late 14th-earlyl 15th century word for) playing cards - (another late 14th-early 15th century word for) playing card - (modern Spanish word for) playing cards - (another old word for) playing cards - (Spanish word for) card-maker."
So?
How does an englishman pronouce Na'ib?
If the Englishman doesn't know much about Semitic languages or their transliteration into Latin characters, I imagine he pronounces it "nay-b".
Of course back in the 14th, 15th, 16th and 17th centuries, the little apostrophe was not routinely included (and it is very important).
But if the Englishman were learning the word from a living person who used it to mean "playing cards", I imagine he would pronounce "naipe" (the real word, not the modern transcribed Arabic word from the Mamluk cards) "nigh-EE-peh".
Wow! I guessed right. I guess the Englishman in question fits my first description.
Homonym perhaps?
Which becomes over time "Nāv"?
Nope - the English word "knave" has a good pedigree that is attested as far back as the Old English "Cnafa" (if you don't have a dictionary that gives that etymology on hand, I'll provide a reference on demand). Nothing to do, in any conceivable way, with the (forgivably) ignorant Englishman's pronunciation of the relatively-modernly Latin-transliterated Arabic word "Na'ib".
The more important part is to know that the Spanish word still preserves the distinction between the vowels "a" and "i", which is the most basic proof of its antiquity and its derivation from the Arabic, where an 'alif separates the sounds "a" and "i". The 'alif is a glottal stop, which prevents making a diphthong of the sound (making "nabe" from "nay-eeb"). If you want an example in English that everybody knows, think of the "cockney" pronunciation of the word "water". Many Londoners say "wa'er". They don't say "war". That transition doesn't happen (maybe someone could be forgiven for mishearing it though). The missing "t" is the glottal stop - a glottal stop is recognized as a consonant in phonetics. It often happens with the dental consonants d and t, although it can happen to any consonant caught in a vocalization (lazy lips and tongue) issue between two vowels.
If you want to hear the modern Spanish pronunciation of "naipe", listen to (for example)
http://courses.yahoo.com/reference/dict_en_es/spanish/naipe
The difference between the vowels is clear. This pronunciation is actually attested in the earliest evidence of the word "naip" in any European language, Jaume March, "Diccionari de rims", in 1371. This is an amazing source for the word, because it is rhymed with other words. We know it was pronounced "nah-eep." Other sources have things like "nahip", which make it clearer.
Even the German ‘Nabo’ equates linguistically (via homonym) to Naip.
Please tell me what "nabo" means in German (any German dialect will do, preferably one around the 14th-15th centuries).
As far as I can tell, Nabo isn't a German word, and it doesn't really equate linguistically with an Englishman's pronuciation of "naip". I think the word you want is phonetic, not linguistic. And even that is pretty far-fetched, you have to admit. "Nabo" looks like "nah-boh" to me (sorry I'm a Canadian, not an Englishman, although as English as it gets racially), while I can see "nay-b" in "naip". Not really too homophonic or homonymic with "nabo".
.........
This subject is going very far off-topic for this thread, and it seems like I have bitten troll-bait.
Ross
