23
votes
Did Latin have the same gender labels that the Romance languages have?
Yes, Latin had a distinction between masculine and feminine nouns (and also a third category, "neuter"). This didn't always correspond to biology—homo "human" is always masculine, ...
- 69k
17
votes
Accepted
Are there Latin words known only by reconstruction from Romance languages?
Wiktionary has over 350 reconstructed terms for Latin. Each of these have been proposed by linguists based on etymological evidence. Each page for these terms is described as follows:
This Latin ...
- 10.8k
16
votes
Accepted
What were the original Latin verbs for the Spanish verbs?
Unfortunately, your source is slightly misleading.
It's true that verbs formed from nouns and verbs denoting repeated action in Latin tend to be in the -āre conjugation. However, many other ...
- 69k
11
votes
Accepted
Why did "cattus" replace Latin "feles"?
From the history of cats, it is clear that domesticated cats were introduced to the Romans from Egypt. Before that, the Romans had ferrets as mouse hunters. So the classical word feles refers to the ...
- 2,307
10
votes
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Does "laviniaque" from Vergil's Aeneid point to Romance palatalization?
This is a phenomenon called synizesis (συνίζησις), and it happens in both Greek and Latin poetry. For example, at the beginning of the Iliad:
μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος
To fit in a hexameter, ...
- 69k
9
votes
Bisyllables ending in -ex/ix: Does the accusative stress always fall on the same part?
There are no native words in -ĭx, only in -īx, with a long vowel. It's not necessarily clear whether that's a regular development or just a coincidence—almost all of these words are feminine agent ...
- 10.8k
8
votes
Why is specifically "Latin America" called that when numerous other regions' languages are also based on the Latin language?
But doesn't English and French and German and Italian and basically everything in Europe come from Latin as well?
Not in the same way!
Essentially all European languages have borrowed a lot of ...
- 116k
8
votes
What evidence points to a long ō in the first syllable of nōscō's present-tense form?
A note re: evidence from IE comparanda
PIE *nH > Sanskrit ā, Avestan ā, Latin nā, etc. but Greek nē/ā/ō (Beekes 2011: 151).
Some of the relevant IE cognates are Greek γιγνώσκω, OPers. xšnāsāhiy, ...
- 11.7k
7
votes
What is the origin of the deponent verbs and their evolution in Romance languages?
Most of the time, deponent verbs in Latin come from the Indo-European middle voice, which had pretty much completely died out by Classical Latin times. But in other Indo-European languages, such as ...
- 69k
7
votes
Accepted
Septīmus or septĭmus?
French septime is clearly marked as a learned form by the use of -pt-. As a learned word, it provides no evidence to the length of the Latin vowel. The TLFi mentions an old form sedme, setme inherited ...
- 29.8k
6
votes
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Parallel examples of the change of Apothēca to boutique?
Nyrop, Grammaire historique de la langue française (1914, p. 256) gives the following additional examples (among others) for French:
Apulia > Pouille, Aquitania > Guyenne
hemicrania > ...
- 31.5k
6
votes
Accepted
Is the word "pitikkus" (meaning small) attested in Vulgar (or other) Latin?
I don't see why Latin, even vulgar Latin, would adopt a double-k, but that's actually beside the point.
The entry in Wiktionary has an asterisk before the word: *pitikkus. This mark means that the ...
cmw♦
- 57.6k
6
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Why is specifically "Latin America" called that when numerous other regions' languages are also based on the Latin language?
Latin American here.
As mentioned in the other answers, the Americas were colonized basically by the British, Spanish, and Portuguese (and to a lesser extent by the French and Dutch). All the French ...
- 11.6k
6
votes
Can gender be kept from Latin to a descend language? Are there patterns for this?
"Words neuter in Latin become masculine in Spanish"
This is generally correct!
In Latin, the most common type of masculine noun and the most common type of neuter noun look almost identical. They're ...
- 69k
6
votes
Is *rīcus attested?
Ricus and riccus show up in late Medieval and Humanist Latin, but they're certainly backports from French and Italian, not pre-Medieval loans. The various Romance cognates of rich are actually ...
- 10.8k
6
votes
What evidence points to a long ō in the first syllable of nōscō's present-tense form?
Since posting the question, I was able to consult Peter Schrijver's "The Reflexes of the Proto-Indo-European Laryngeals in Latin" (1991) (cited by de Vaan), which, along with Alex B.'s answer, has ...
- 29.8k
5
votes
What evidence is there for volēre over volere?
A Latin form *volĕre would have been stressed on the first syllable. Italian volere is stressed on the penultimate syllable, like a Latin form *volēre. There could have been a Vulgar Latin form *...
- 29.8k
5
votes
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
Despite my respect for Bervoets' efforts and his commitment to recreating an authentic Latin pronunciation (see this video) which I also share, his intonation sounds histrionic and highly unnatural to ...
- 6,004
4
votes
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
FYI, some of your links don't work (e.g., the first one).
To my ear, Dora Marquez speaks in a variety of standard American English with no obvious trace of a Spanish-influenced accent as you have said....
- 2,710
4
votes
Latin version of "non ho che un" or "je n'ai qu'un"
The construction at issue here seems to have its origin in Late Latin. According to Moignet (1973: 50), one has to consider Fr. ne que "come remontant au latin tardif non...quam, représentant non ...
- 9,121
4
votes
Accepted
When did the penult stress rule disappear?
I think you're mistaken when you say "certain sound changes in the Romance languages, like posttonic vowel syncope ..., still rely on the penult stress rules".
There are two separate processes ...
- 4,713
4
votes
Is long vowel feature completely lost in deviated languages?
Not just the long vowel future—all Latin future-tense marking was lost in the Romance languages!
A few different factors conspired to make the future tense no longer useful in Vulgar Latin:
For an ...
- 69k
4
votes
Accepted
Why does the Italian word for comedy, "commedia", have a double 'm'?
The prefix com- is fairly common in Latin—but specifically before a labial consonant, not before a vowel. (Before a vowel it becomes co- instead, as in coalescō.) As a result, comm- is much more ...
- 69k
4
votes
Did Latin have the same gender labels that the Romance languages have?
Most1 Afroasiatic Languages also have noun gender. This appears to indicate it was likely a common feature of Proto-Afroasiatic, and not borrowed later from contact with Indo-European. I'm not sure ...
- 149
3
votes
Is long vowel feature completely lost in deviated languages?
Since the question's changed, here's an answer to the updated one…
Yes, long vowels were lost very early in Vulgar Latin, in the first few centuries CE.
Originally, Latin's long and short vowels (...
- 69k
3
votes
When did the penult stress rule disappear?
I cannot agree with your statement that “vowel length seems to have been lost very early” in Latin. Latin long and short vowels develop differently in the daughter languages. For example Latin short e ...
- 18k
3
votes
Why is specifically "Latin America" called that when numerous other regions' languages are also based on the Latin language?
Welcome to the Latin SE! Latin was not just a language - it also referred to a specific group of people who lived on the Italic peninsula before the Roman Empire or Republic. After the rise of Rome, ...
- 8,732
3
votes
Why is *salāta feminine? What was the original noun it is modifying?
It could easily originally be a neuter plural: salata — "salted things".
- 3,004
3
votes
Parallel examples of the change of Apothēca to boutique?
Loss of an initial vowel is the kind of thing that tends to happen relatively freely. In this case, the fact that it was a greek word, rather than latin, allows it to have been acquired imperfectly, ...
- 131
3
votes
Vowel hiatus and non-diphthong vowel pairs (compared to Romance languages)
I think poetry is the biggest data source indicating that hiatus was usual in Latin for i e u + vowel.
In the stage of the language that was ancestral to the Romance languages, both i and e were ...
- 29.8k
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