[vitno]

to be clear, I don't speak Arabic - I'm merely intrigued by etymology.

I think they are referring to "إنسان" or "Insaan" which has the root of nisyah which means "to forget".

My understanding is that this isn't the common word for person, which would be "شخص" or shakhs. However that also doesn't originate from the word for earth. What word are you referring too?

I'd love for an arabic speaker to chime in!

[tekacs]

I think that your parent commenter looked up the etymology of the English word 'human', which comes from humus (earth).

I think they read the grandparent post as suggesting that the English word 'human' came from Arabic, rather than your (correct) inference that they meant the Arabic word for human.

[ars]

It's from the name of the first human "Adam", which comes from the word for earth. And I thought that was the origin of the word that means human in Arabic.

But another poster said there are multiple words for human in Arabic, so now I'm not sure.

[levindole]

That's just wrong.

The root of "human" إنسان (insaan) is ء ن س (ʾ-n-s)

The root of "forget" إنس (insa) is ن س ي (n-s-y)

Not the same root.

The word templates and roots are different, but the combination root1+template1 happens to look identical to root2+template2. (each arabic word is a 3-letter root + assigned into a large n-letter word template)

insa is the second-person masculine singular active imperative of نَسِيَ‎ (nasiya), equivalent to the command "forget!" in english, addressed to male.

I think I found the root of this rumor [3] (some religious mumbo jumbo):

"In Egyptian Arabic, the word 'insan' means 'human'. If we remove the 'n', the word becomes 'insa', which means 'to forget'. So you see, the word 'forget' is taken from the word 'human'. And since it was God who created our minds and hearts, He knew from the very beginning that we would quickly forget our history"

refs:

[1] human - https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D8%A5%D9%86%D8%B3%D8%A7%D9%8...

[2] forget - https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D9%86%D8%B3%D9%8A

[3] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7942501-in-egyptian-arabic-...

Note: I corrected my comment - previously I spelled the second word incorrectly.

[eyeundersand]

Could you please type the word for forget in Roman? I can't read Arabic but am intrigued.

[vitno]

Fantastic. Thank you so much for chiming in!

[tetris11]

However 'insan' is the commonly used turkish word for human

[eyeundersand]

Same with Hindi and a bunch of other South Asian languages.