There is an interesting Hebrew word, rather root:
לעז
The derived words are:
לוֹעֲזי -
foreign, of foreign-language
לוֹעֲזִית -
foreign language
לוֹעֵז
, or in fact a verb
לָעַז - to speak
foreign language (בצאת ישראל ממצרים, בית יעקב מעם לועז)
and so on (at least theoretically.)
The usual explanation says, the root
לעז is abbreviation of
לשון עם
זר, i.e. "foreign people's language".
However, as one of my virtual friends (the guy is Assyrian and knows
unbelievable number of languages, including Hebrew, Arabic, ancient Aramaic and
Assyrian/Neo-Aramaic) had drawn my attention to the fact that
לעז is quite close to
לעס ("to
chew", which also exists in Assyrian language), and also to Arabic word
لغز (as we'd transliterate it in Hebrew:
לע'ז), which
means "to mistify, to talk riddles". All this points out that the word
לעז is by no means
abbreviation (that's rather
folk ethymology), but
a normal historical root also existing in other Semitic languages. Given the
examples above, one might see the original meaning of
לעז as "mumbling" or
"speaking not clearly".
