Two such ‘totally unconnected’ language families are the Bantu language family (which includes Setswana) and the Indo-European language family: Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, the Germanic languages, English, etc. But, contrary to conventional thought, I have unearthed an ancient link between all languages and even consider such links in the specific context of ‘attraction’ and ‘repulsion’.
Beginning with ‘attraction’ itself, I find that it is rooted in a word – raka (meet) – that we have treated in past consecutive articles. ‘A’ is a prefix that means either ‘towards/belonging to’ or ‘away [from]’ depending on the context. ‘Ta’ means ‘come’ and in the past I have dealt with it in terms such as Tii-ta-an (Titan: ‘Mighty One (tii) [Who] Comes From (ta) the Heavens (an)’). The aggregate meaning of a-ta-raka is thus ‘come so as to meet’. Even the term ‘draw’ as meaning ‘attract’, though based on the Middle English term drawen, actually emanates from the Icelandic/ Old English term draga(n), which evidently relates to ‘drag’ (pull/ attract to oneself). In Latin, ‘attract’ is attrahere, and the key term is here rather than raka – thus a-ta-here (adhere). Here, we can discern from Setswana, means ‘mix [up]’, as in hereta (source of ‘heretic’ a person who causes confusion, mixes up people). Of course, when things ‘mix’, they impliedly attract (‘come together’) – but the fact that ‘adhere’ now specifically means ‘stick to’, and not ‘mix’, clearly involves a semantic shift.
