Questions tagged [latin]
For linguistic questions concerning the Latin language, a dead Indo-European language of the Roman Empire and ancestor of modern Catalan, French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, and a few others. For questions specific to Latin only, please visit our sister site Latin Language Stack Exchange.
233
questions
3
votes
0
answers
228
views
Does understanding Greek as well as Latin help for improving English vocabulary? [migrated]
Is it correct that half percentage of English vocabulary is derived from Latin vocabulary and the other half from Greek? I am reading Marriam Webster Vocabulary Builder, and Word Power Made Easy, and ...
- 403
9
votes
1
answer
5k
views
How did the generic masculine emerge?
In an essay for school I recently claimed the generic masculine was caused by sexism, but my teacher complained that I hadn't given a reason for this. Assuming my hypothesis is correct, how did this ...
- 225
0
votes
1
answer
85
views
Is PIE weyh₁ (to hunt, persecute) somehow related to PIE weyk (to separate, to select for sacrifice)
I am amateurishly passionate about etymologies (especially of my native Romanian) but more seriously interested in the anthropological theories of René Girard and Walter Burkert, which both ...
- 454
5
votes
1
answer
904
views
Does French retain more Celtic words than English does?
English has very few words left from the Ancient British. I am wondering if the language of the Gauls suffered much the same fate, or whether there are significantly more Celtic substrate words ...
- 51
2
votes
0
answers
54
views
Origin of Latin Non-Finite Verbal Endings
I'm wondering about the origins of the various non-finite verbal endings in Latin.
My understanding so far of their PIE origins:
Infinitives:
Present Active: -s-ey (dative of an s-stem verbal noun)
...
- 5,983
3
votes
2
answers
334
views
How did ⟨x⟩ become /ʃ/ in Iberian Romance?
In Latin, ⟨x⟩ stood for /ks/. I'm a native Portuguese speaker and nowadays in my language this letter can also have the sounds /gz/, /s/, /z/ and /ʃ/. It seems relatively straightforward for me that /...
- 133
1
vote
0
answers
106
views
How Italian "dito" was derived from Latin DĬGĬTU(M)?
I'm trying to figure out which phenomena may be involved in the development of Italian "dito" from Latin DĬGĬTU(M).
I think one of them may be a loss of intervocalic -G-, as explained in ...
- 177
-5
votes
1
answer
68
views
What is the name of the thing that the tongue does on the syllable pri in Classical Latin, Spanish, Italian, and Brazilian Portuguese? [duplicate]
What is the name of the thing that the tongue does on the syllable pri in Classical Latin, Spanish, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, and possibility other Romance languages?
Since Classical Latin has ...
1
vote
1
answer
414
views
What is the name of the category for the vibrations that the tongue does in linguistics?
There are guttural sounds such as the French R so I'm guessing that there is name for the category of speech sound in which the tongue vibrates! For example, in the words pater, et rubente http://www....
-2
votes
1
answer
73
views
What does "torido chaumate" mean? [closed]
What does "torido chaumate" mean?
I didn't find these words in Latin.
- 53
0
votes
0
answers
80
views
Why did the Latin word marmor became French marbre (which is in present day English marble)?
I would like to know what process suffered the Latin word marmor when it was borrowed in French and became marbre. I know that the process from French marbre to English marble is dissimilation, i.e. ...
user36925
1
vote
1
answer
196
views
Why is feeling and hearing are the same in Italian?
Sentire means hearing, and at the same time feeling, in Italian and it's used passively in both senses.
Mi sento male - I feel bad
Ho sentito il tuo nome - I heard your name
Why among all senses ...
- 111
1
vote
0
answers
85
views
Do we have evidence of the transition from -mentum to -ment?
Several English words end in -ment: augment, document, movement, moment, segment, etc.
According to several dictionaries, the English -ment suffix is in many cases traced to the French -ment, which in ...
- 111
4
votes
2
answers
171
views
Credible sources for Rho-Rotation?
A teacher of mine recently mentioned a phenomenon in linguistics called "rho-rotation". Across eons and languages if a r/rho sound was next to a vowel it tended to switch postitions and &...
- 43
0
votes
1
answer
160
views
Are "brat" and "frater" cognates?
Both the Slavic brat (Брат) and the Latin frater mean brother.
Are they cognates? Or is their phonetic "proximity" a red herring?
Related: How were “bratrъ/bratъ” and “sestra” formed in ...
5
votes
1
answer
117
views
Latin -vus/-uus and PIE -wos
What is the Proto-Indo-European reconstruction, if there is one, of the Latin suffixes -tivus (many examples) and -vus/-uus/-ivus (arvus, residuus, cadivus)?
I read in a non-reliable source once that ...
user36730
0
votes
1
answer
252
views
Pronunciation of "ll" in the Romance languages
I have noticed that all the Romance languages (Spanish, Galician, Catalan, Portuguese, Romanian, Italian, and French) usually pronounce the "ll" like the "y" in "yacht". ...
0
votes
1
answer
159
views
Origin of بطريق
I read here that the Arabic word بطريق (penguin) ultimately derives from Latin patricius (patrician), through Greek and Aramaic, but I couldn't find any explanation of how and why the shift in meaning ...
4
votes
0
answers
96
views
V-Bar Syntax in Latin
I am reading Devine and Stephens Latin Word Order, but without the requisite grounding in formal linguistics. They use the term V-bar syntax, and I am not sure what they mean by this and would like ...
- 797
1
vote
1
answer
89
views
Is the Romanian verb "pișca" etymologically related to Spanish "pellizcar" ( to pinch )?
From wiktioanry: "pellizcar (Spain) /peʝiθˈkaɾ/, [pe.ʝiθˈkaɾ]
(Latin America) /peʝisˈkaɾ/, [pe.ʝisˈkaɾ]- From Vulgar Latin *vellicicāre, from Latin vellicāre, most likely ultimately from vellus (...
- 179
7
votes
2
answers
639
views
How did Gothic "𐌰𐌽𐌳𐌱𐌰𐌷𐍄𐌹" (andbahti) become Medieval Latin "ambasiator"?
I found the following etymology of the word "ambassador" on Wiktionary.
From Middle English ambassadore, from Anglo-Norman ambassadeur, ambassateur, from Old Italian ambassatore, ...
- 125
3
votes
0
answers
106
views
How did latin "de post" become Romanian "după"?
Wouldn't the expected result be: "dopă"? I understand that the short "e" was assimilated by the long "o" from the next word, and then /o/ -> /ə/, but why o -> u ?
...
- 179
0
votes
2
answers
153
views
Is there a rule which accounts for a d in PIE becoming a b in Latin?
According to Wikitionary, the Latin word verb is derived from the Proto-Indo-European word *werdʰh₁om which is the etonym of the English word word and the German wort. I am familiar with Grimm's Law ...
0
votes
2
answers
102
views
Why is fucus reconstructed as *bhoiko-?
Why is fucus reconstructed as *bhoiko-?
Not *bhoikos or *bhoikon?
Is "cus" a suffix like in raucus > ravis?
3
votes
3
answers
941
views
Is there a common ancestor between the Hebrew לבן ("lavan", white) and the English "albino"?
I noticed these two words share the same central consonants, and wouldn't it be fascinating if the l-b-n semitic root has a common source to the English "albin-" as in albino and albinism?
I ...
1
vote
1
answer
214
views
Which Romance languages have three verbs for, and preserved the differences between, Latin's esse, sedere, stare?
Yoïn van Spijk's diagram substantiates that French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish merged at least two of Latin's esse, sedere, stare.
Are there any Romance languages which still feature direct ...
user5306
2
votes
1
answer
101
views
Are Latin causative verb ending -eō and Old Slavic -ити from verbs eō and ити ("to go")?
Are Latin causative verb ending -eō and Old Slavic -ити from verbs eō and ити ("to go")?
7
votes
2
answers
564
views
Why is the proto-italic reconstruction of "corpora" "*korpezā"?
I was studying rhotacism and I came across the word corpora (plural of corpus). I would reconstruct the proto-italic form as *korpoza, but I saw the entry on Wiktionary and it says that the actual ...
- 1,316
0
votes
0
answers
101
views
Percentage of Latin loanwords in northern Germanic languages
What is the percentage of Latin loanwords or words that are of ultimate Latin origin even from intermediate languages in each of the northern Germanic languages? I have noticed that there seem to be ...
3
votes
1
answer
2k
views
Was the word "Jew" originally a racial slur?
The English ethnonyms "Jew" and "Jewish" originate from the Biblical Hebrew "Yehudi" (יהודי, meaning "Judahite," "Judean," or "one from the ...
- 149
3
votes
0
answers
161
views
Did Classical Latin lack tenseness contrast in long and short vowels?
Contrary to the traditional supposition of /ɪ ʊ ɛ ɔ/ vs /iː uː eː oː/, the idea that Classical Latin contrasted the short and long versions of high and mid (or just mid) vowels only quantitatively, ...
- 4,795
0
votes
1
answer
180
views
How could Vulgar Latin divide in so many branches in the Balkans in a such small timespan?
From the literature I've read ( Al.Rosetti History of Romanian for example ) it looks like we can talk about Vulgar Latin until the 4th or 5th century in the Balkans, and further than that many ...
- 179
5
votes
3
answers
432
views
The outcome of *woid- in Latin/Italic
The IE root * weid- seems to have meant “to see” and, in its perfective stem * woid-, “to know”.
The “know”-semantics of this root are well attested in all the main branches of IE (English wot, Greek ...
- 1,367
1
vote
1
answer
146
views
Why do verbs use 1st singular present active indicative instead of infinitive as the "canonical" or "representative" form in Latin?
I see many dictionaries use the 1st person singular present active indicative form as the "canonical" or dictionary entry for verbs in Latin. For example, a typical dictionary would show ...
- 417
4
votes
0
answers
205
views
Origin of Italian plurals
Some sources say that italian plurals come from the nominative case, so "italiano" has the plural "italiani", and "italiana" has the plural "italiane".
However ...
- 1,316
34
votes
3
answers
6k
views
Why is the word "war" in Romance languages predominantly of Germanic origin instead of Latin?
I wonder why in all Romance languages the word "war" ("guerra", with their multiple intonations) is a term that comes from Germanic languages, and that no modern language resembles ...
- 433
-5
votes
1
answer
233
views
Does the root word mus- in Latin mean "thief"'? Mouse=thief, Moses=Extractor etc
I first got the idea of Latin mus- = mouse = thief from this list
My primary question here is whether someone can confirm this, because I have not found any direct words in Latin that indicates that ...
1
vote
2
answers
146
views
-1
votes
1
answer
95
views
Why are PIE oi changes to ī in Latin and Proto-Slavic?
Why are PIE oe changes to ī in Latin and Old Slavic?
English PIE Latin Old Slavic
wolves *wĺ̥kʷoes lupi vlĭci
Is it a result of short u singular ending in place of PIE o?
English PIE Latin Old ...
- 313
6
votes
2
answers
1k
views
Pronunciation of P in Latin, versus Ph in Greek
In Latin, it seems some sounds that are pronounced like an "F" in Greek, are pronounced like a "P", why is this?
For example, we have the Greek word Phoenicians, and this word ...
- 793
12
votes
3
answers
997
views
Is there a form descending from Latin genitive plural somewhere in modern Romance languages?
The Latin genitive plurals in -rum are very noticeable in the paradigm. Be it first declension in -ārum, second in -ōrum, or fifth in -ērum, they are heavyweight, attract accent and basicall stand out ...
- 508
2
votes
2
answers
596
views
Words with "hybrid" declension (in Latin, or borrowed by English from Latin)?
There is a recently-coined technical usage (in mathematics) of the word "anima", borrowed from Latin to English. The funny thing about this coinage is that the coin-ers of the term insist on ...
- 123
7
votes
2
answers
482
views
Apparent exceptions to the sound law f -> h in old Spanish
At some point during the evolution of Spanish, several initial [f] became silent (this is represented with an h in modern Spanish). This explains words such as hacer, harina, herir and many more. ...
- 624
1
vote
1
answer
209
views
Why are native English speakers convinced that English language is a Romance language? [closed]
Most people I've know so far in the USA are always saying that learning Latin would be really easy because, since English comes from Latin, it cannot be a hard thing to do, and they really get shocked ...
6
votes
2
answers
212
views
What other languages, apart from Latin, mix elements from different syntactic constituents? And why mixing?
Latin has a curious syntactic possibility, which is mixing elements from different constituents, like in the sentence
Mors et vita duello conflixere mirando
which is translated by Wiktionary as
...
- 161
0
votes
1
answer
234
views
Etymology of latin suffix -idus
What is the (probably Indo-European) origin of the latin suffix -idus, as in "acidus"? Are there any known cognates?
2
votes
1
answer
105
views
Latin suffixes -or and -idus, is there a correspondence?
In Latin (and daughter languages), there seems to be a correspondence between nouns of the third declension in -or/-us, -oris denoting a quality, and adjectives of the Ist class in -idus,a,um denoting ...
- 261
2
votes
1
answer
129
views
(Latin) spondeo > (Spanish) esposas?
I am looking for the exact history of the Spanish word esposas ("handcuffs") and its connection with the Latin word spondeo ("promise").
I read several times on the web the ...
- 1,979
4
votes
1
answer
186
views
Is English grammar teaching tradition rooted in Latin?
I heard once that the way English grammar was taught as school was rooted in Latin and it wasn't a correct approach for a number of reason ?
This was a long time ago, so I cannot remember the details.
...
- 263
10
votes
1
answer
658
views
Can or has the comparative method be used in current Arabic dialects to reconstruct Classical Arabic?
The comparative method has been used in modern Romance languages to piece together Vulgar Latin and Proto Romance. Has the same been done for the modern Arabic dialects to recreate the last descendant ...
- 101