Questions tagged [romance-languages]
For questions related to the process of vulgar/medieval Latin becoming modern Romance languages
18
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Has the word 'focus' ever meant 'fire' in Latin literature?
I ask this because in virtually all the Romance languages, the respective descendants simply mean fire, yet when I come across the term in classical literature specifically, it usually meant 'hearth'. ...
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How did sedeo, sedere supplant some forms of sum, esse in Vulgar Latin?
I had learned that the Romance languages' copulas come from Latin's sum verb obviously, but not all of its forms transferred over. Specifically the verb's present subjunctive forms seem to have been ...
2
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2
answers
345
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Intonation pattern in Classical Latin that is the same intonation pattern Dora Marquez of Dora the Explorer does at times when she is speaking English
Listening to Classical Latin literature I have noticed that Thomas Bervoets launches into the same intonation pattern that Dora Marquez of Dora the Explorer does when she is speaking English at times!
...
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4
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Latin version of "non ho che un" or "je n'ai qu'un"
At least Italian and French have an idiomatic way to say "I have only one friend":
Non ho che un amico.
Je n'ai qu'un ami.
Finnish has the same thing: "Minulla ei ole kuin yksi ystävä....
- 103k
11
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1
answer
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Why is *salāta feminine? What was the original noun it is modifying?
OED traces the "salad" family of words (Portuguese salada, Fra. salate, Spa. ensalada, Ita. insalata etc.) to spoken Latin *salāta, from the verb salāre.
One notices that salāta as well as ...
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3
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1
answer
170
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Vowel hiatus and non-diphthong vowel pairs (compared to Romance languages)
Classical Latin's 6 major diphthongs are clear-cut, phonologically speaking. We know ae is pronounced as one phoneme, such as in [ˈsae̯.pɛ], "saepe." However, we often come across words that have 2 ...
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1
answer
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Are there Latin words known only by reconstruction from Romance languages?
I presume that many Latin words made it to the Romance languages, but were never attested in writing, whether because they were limited to Vulgar Latin or just because by chance no writer used them ...
- 545
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3
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Why is specifically "Latin America" called that when numerous other regions' languages are also based on the Latin language?
There's an entire major region, spanning the entire South America and parts of North America, called "Latin America". People there tend to speak Spanish and closely related languages. There's also the ...
3
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2
answers
197
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Can gender be kept from Latin to a descend language? Are there patterns for this?
I read this in a random forum:
"Words neuter in Latin become masculine in Spanish"
(For instance "vāsum" = el vaso)
Could it be some patterns making predictable the gender from Latin to a descend ...
- 1,666
5
votes
1
answer
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What is the origin of the deponent verbs and their evolution in Romance languages?
How deponent (and semi-deponent) verbs appeared in Latin, and why?
How did they evolve in descend languages? They seem extincts in descend languages (why?) but there are probably specific structured ...
- 1,666
7
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2
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What evidence points to a long ō in the first syllable of nōscō's present-tense form?
I've read in various sources that the verb nosco 'know' had a long vowel in the first syllable in Classical Latin pronunciation: nōscō [noːskoː]. I'm wondering what the linguistic evidence is for the ...
- 20.8k
2
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1
answer
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What evidence is there for volēre over volere?
In this answer, fdb mentions the Classical verb volō, velle transforming into *voleō, volēre in Vulgar Latin. The main evidence for this is a form volendi in Augustine and reflexes like voglio, volere ...
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2
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auscultare < aus - clutare
A question was asked on French stackexchange about ausculter as a medical term and when it started being used in that sense. The meaning seems to go back to the early 19th century and Laennec, the ...
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2
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Is long vowel feature completely lost in deviated languages?
In Latin, some vowels are marked by a macron, they are long vowels. However, I found that in French and Spanish there's no macron in their writing.
Is the long vowel feature completely lost in the ...
- 261
4
votes
2
answers
197
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When did the penult stress rule disappear?
Classical Latin stress was famously based on the "penult rule": stress goes on the penult if heavy, the antepenult otherwise.
In later Latin, vowel length seems to have been lost very early: before ...
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5
votes
1
answer
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Is *rīcus attested?
The word for "rich" in most Romance languages looks something like, well, "rich". It declines like a first/second declension adjective, and seems to go back to Germanic *rīkijaz (possibly through ...
- 50.7k
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1
answer
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Why did "cattus" replace Latin "feles"?
The word for cat is now, in almost every European language, derived from Latin cattus, as stated in Etymonline. It also says that the word was
[...] in general use on the continent by c. 700, ...
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11
votes
1
answer
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Can the use of articles be traced back to Late/Vulgar Latin?
The Romance articles developed from Latin ille. Was ille already used in a way that resembles articles more than demonstratives in very late or Vulgar Latin? Or did it this use only emerge after Latin ...
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