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

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 «shuraba» (ةبروش [ˈʃuːraba]), including its variants like the Amharic «ሾрባ» [ˈʃorɪ̯ba] and Azerbaijani «şorba» [ʃɔrˈba], to the formation of the modern word «soup.» The research traces the dialectal alternation of the sounds [b/p] (represented by the letters Б/B and П/P) in the word «shurpa,» and the subsequent formation of «soup» through the alternation of sounds [s/ʃ] (letters С/S/z and Ш/ş/ç), as well as the loss or reduction of the sound [r] (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.