"Garden"[]
- Sumeroaltaic
- šār earth > garden
- Sumerian
- sar garden; a unit of area; a unit of volume
- Altaic
- si̯ắŕi earth, sand; marsh
Long-Term Connection ? (Borean CVRV dirt; Eurasiatic c`VrV dirt)
Notes: The long-term relation makes the Sumerian derivation very clear - a plot of land or garden > unit of area with volume possibly deriving from an 'irrigated' field. Having said that there are no directly analogous semantic derivations; nor can the origin of the Sumerian term be necessarily localized. However, one can probably make some educated exclusions - such as Austric pat'iɣ (pat'aɣ) 'sand', Dravidian saṛap- 'cowdung' and Uralic śarV~ (ćarV) "excrement, to defecate" (although not necessarily in either case). One could additionally exclude Tungus-Manchu siru 'sand', Basque saur̄nV 'pus' and Sino-Tibetan srāj 'sand'.
This leaves semantic relations most likely to North Caucasian swüre "dirt, soot, sand", Afroasiatic > Sem sVhr (?) and Eg. sr 'dirt'; and Turkic siaŕ "marsh, dirt", Mongolian siro- "earth", Korean hằrk "earth", and maybe the unclear Japanese situ "damp place, dampness".