From 'slave water' to 'soup': The linguistic evolution of a culinary term

<p dir="ltr">This article further develops an empirical study into the origin and dissemination of the word «soup» and the concept of liquid dishes known by this name. Through a comprehensive comparative analysis—socio-historical, linguistic, statistical, and ethno-cultural—of international lexemes corresponding to the modern meaning of «soup,» we establish a connection and a hypothetical sequence of transition from «watery slave food» in the Arabic word <b>«shuraba»</b> (ةبروش[ˈʃuːraba]), including its variants like the Amharic <b>«</b><b>ሾ</b><b>р</b><b>ባ</b><b>»</b> [ˈʃorɪ̯ba] and Azerbaijani <b>«şorba»</b> [ʃɔrˈba], to the formation of the modern word «soup.» The research traces the dialectal alternation of the sounds <b>[b/p]</b> (represented by the letters Б/B and П/P) in the word <b>«shurpa,»</b> and the subsequent formation of «soup» through the alternation of sounds <b>[s/ʃ]</b> (letters С/S/z and Ш/ş/ç), as well as the loss or reduction of the sound <b>[r]</b> (letter Р/R). This analysis builds upon the findings of the previous work, «Etymological Study of the Word «Soup»: Asian Roots and Cultural Dissemination» (Pogrebnoj-Alexandroff, 1990-2024), which questions the conventional Eurocentric theory of the Russian word «soup» being borrowed from French, instead proposing its ancient Asian, possibly Turkic or even Proto-Indo-European roots.</p>