And do they have any cognates?
“-abad” appears in several place names in Pakistan. And “-grad” is a common suffix in Slavic countries.
I have fears that my 18-year-old TV has bitten the dust. But here’s what’s strange: The picture tube appears to still function, although I can’t get any of the local broadcast channels clear enough to watch them. Way too much static.
What’s strange, though, is that I can hook up my cable directly to the TV, and I get nothing. No signal at all. I can hook up the VCR directly to the TV and play a tape–nothing. I can run the TV input thru A/V wires instead of the coax–still nothing.
I’ve been doing this sort of thing a loooooong time, and have a pretty good idea of how to hook up things so that I get what I need; however, just to be sure, I took out the manuals, and step-by-step went thru the procedures as documented, just in case I was overlooking something.
Nothing.
Maybe I’m just in denial, but I’m not willing to let go of the possibility that I’ve hooked up something incorrectly, which leads to the GQ:
Is it possible for something to go cuckoo so that the TV doesn’t receive input from either the coax or A/V inputs? The unit, other than that, appears to be working.
“Grad” means “town” in many Slavic languages.
Found a little more info: “-abad” is from Farsi, and means “populated” or “settled.”
“Grad” can also mean castle or city in various Slavic languages.
It’s a similar ending to the German “-burg.”
Pulykamell beat me to it. I should note that the Russian for “city” is gorod and -grad as a city-name ending is based on the early Slavic from which Russian is descended, much like -bury and -boro are derived from Anglo-Saxon burh which survives as English borough.
French -ville has a similar sense, as of course does German -burg (but -berg, with almost identical English pronunciation, is different, meaning literally “mountain” and with the city-name connotation of “city that was founded as a fortified high spot”). Cognates to -bury and -burg exist in the Scandinavian languages as well.
BTW, note that the -abad suffix, with pretty much the same meaning, also exists in several of the Central Asian republics.
Similar to the Greek -polis, as used in Minneapolis, Indianapolis, Metropolis, … and no doubt many more city names.
abad is pretty similar to the English abide, isn’t it? The OED says the root of abide is the Old English abiden. Interesting stuff, though any connection would be unprovable…
And even more similar to the English abode, in terms of pronounciation. A common root probably isn’t unprovable, due to Farsi/Urdu and English having the same root language family.
Interestingly, the -abad and -grad suffixes came together, in a sense, in the old Soviet Union. We all know about Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, but there were towns named “Leninabad” in the Soviet Republics (now independent states) of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.
http://www.calle.com/world/UZ/6/Leninabad.html
http://www.calle.com/world/TI/0/Leninabad.html
Also: Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan, was once known as Stalinabad. :eek: