I noticed that "Romanticism" in French is "romantisme," contrary to my guess of "romanticisme." I was curious how other the word was spelled in other European languages.
Similar to English ("icism")
- English: Romanticism
- Spanish: Romanticismo
- Italian: Romanticismo
Similar to French ("ism")
- French: romantisme
- Portuguese: Romantismo
- Romanian: Romantism
- Polish: Romantyzm
- Russian: Романти́зм
- Czech: Romantismus
- Bulgarian: романтизъм
- Croatian: Romantizam
- Serbian: Романтизам
- Greek: Ρομαντισμός
Similar to German ("ik")
- German: Romantik
- Danish: Romantikken
- Dutch: romantiek
- Swedish: Romantik
- Norwegian: romantikken
- Finnish: romantiikka
- Hungarian: Romantika
There are some patterns that make sense. For instance, most of the Germanic and Uralic languages end up in the third category, while the Slavic languages are in the second. What confuses me is how the Romance languages seem to be split between the first two categories. And I also do not have a hypothesis for why English is in the first category.
Is there a simple explanation for how this "icism"/"ism"/"ik" split works? I am not too knowledgeable about linguistics, so apologies in advance if I have made some blunder.