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.
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Latin -que suffix in romance languages
In Latin the suffix -que can be used to mean "and". For example:
Fames sitisque (Hunger and thirst)
Are there any modern Romance languages that use the suffix -que or something similar to it?
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Why do the Romance languages use definite articles, when Latin doesn't?
Classical Latin, as I understand things, barely has a definite article at all: ille is the nearest equivalent, and even this word is closer to English that than the. But Spanish, French and Italian ...
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The Origin of the Word 'Mammoth' [closed]
As per the Wiktionary article the origin of the world is Russian:
From obsolete Russian ма́мант (mámant), modern ма́монт (mámont), probably from a Uralic language, such as Proto-Mansi *mē̮ŋ-ońt (“...
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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 ...
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How certain is the Latin origin of Albanian ”gënjej” (to lie) from Latin (ingannō<ganniō)?
Albanian word gënjej ("to lie") is considered to be of Latin origin — from Vulgar Latin ingannō, from Latin ganniō... These are the only details I could find. Wiktionary gives no scholarly ...
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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)
...
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How does L. "quartus" come from L. "quattuor", which has "quat" but "quart"?
quartus
From Latin quattuor ("four"), originally from Proto-Indo-European
As at July 2 2021, the Etymology at the same link for quartus Wiktionary has changed.
From Proto-Indo-European *...
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What differences are between Ablative of Manner and Ablative of Means/Instrument? [closed]
Keller's Learn to Read Latin says on p42
Association/Instrument
In the sentence "The farmer came to the party with a poet", the phrase
"with a poet" indicates that the farmer was ...
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Etymology of Romanian "amor" (cf. "iubire")
I found it interesting to learn that Romanian borrowed this word from a Slavic language as well as the verb "a iubi". I also discovered that the word "amor" is present in Romanian but apparently it ...
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How can a language-learner determine the root, prefix, and suffix of a word in English, if they know its language of origin?
Many English vocabulary-building books (for example, Merriam-Webster Vocabulary Builder, Word Power Made Easy) break the meaning of words down into three pieces: prefix + root + suffix.
On the website ...
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Which Romance Language is the least similar to Latin?
People state that Romanian is closest in some aspects (grammar mainly), and that to learn a romance language studying latin may give you a leg up (which in my opinion just study the language), but for ...
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Why are there so few Hellenic languages when there are so many Romance languages? [duplicate]
Both Greece and Rome had huge empires and Greek was even used to administer the Eastern Roman Empire. Christian scriptures are even primarily written in Greek.
So why are there so many Romance ...
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Is the name "Melisande" related to the Latin for "honey", "Mel"?
Some people say "Melisande" is just French Melissa, which ''is'' clearly derived from "mel", but Wikipedia doesn't mention any such thing for Melisande, instead saying that the ...
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History and Reason of Portuguese accentuation marks
What is the background of having rules for marking the accentuated syllables in Portuguese? For example the word "tecnológica" is a proparoxytone, and all of these words must have a graphic ...
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How did it happen that K was introduced to Latin alphabet in place of C and C started to mark /t͡s/ or /s/ in many languages?
I know that K has been derived from Greek kappa and C from gamma.
But how did it happen that people started to use K in place of C? From what I know there were already C and G in the Latin alphabet ...
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When did people realize French has its root in Latin?
By investigating into historical documents like Oaths of Strasbourg
and applying the comparative method, modern linguists are able to know French is a Romance language. When the components of ...
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Greek root in Latin: Greek ekleiptikos became Latin eclīpticus
How come it's lip and not leip? The English word eclipsis is derived from the Latin eclīpticus, of an eclipse, which is in turn from Greek ekleiptikos, from ekleipein, to fail to appear; Ancient Greek ...
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Was there a Greek or Latin name spelled "Jesus" or similarly before the advent of Christianity?
Many of the originally Barbarian names in history were Christianized. Many Christian saints with Slavic/Germanic names were given similar-sounding Greek and Latin names. In this way "Kuzma" (...
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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 ...
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Do each intensive prefix intensify a verb uniquely and differently from other intensive prefixes?
Please feel free to emend this if I have not described my question cogently. Though knowing little of Latin, I have exemplified with it because I have encountered it more than Ancient Greek.
For ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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Why do so many core Romanian words with Latin roots come from different roots than in the other Romance languages?
Romanian is a romance language like Catalan, Italian, French, Portuguese, and Spanish so much of its core vocabulary is derived from Latin.
Why then even in core vocabulary does Romanian so often ...
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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 (...
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Scrambling in Languages like Latin
Consider a clause in Latin that has n words. Latin frequently uses scrambling, so there are n! possible ways to arrange that clause given a free word order. However, Latin writers use only a small ...
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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 /...
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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?
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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....
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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 &...
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What are the benefits of learning Latin using Spanish?
I am a native speaker of Spanish. I also learned English.
I am now trying to learn Latin. Obviously, the Spanish --> Latin route is a lot more preferable than the English --> Latin route given that ...
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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 ...
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Are there any active Classical Latin users nowadays?
Are there any groups of active Classical Latin users nowadays?
By active I mean they meet regularly and speak in classical Latin, or make some videos/vlogs/podcasts or present lectures.
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What does "torido chaumate" mean? [closed]
What does "torido chaumate" mean?
I didn't find these words in Latin.
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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 ...
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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. ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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Why does Latin, Turkish, and Albanian share common words?
Latin and Albanian are Indo-European languages so it makes sense that those two languages share many words with each-other.
But why is it that Turkish — a non-Indo-European language — shares words ...
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How many Latin words have Greek roots?
I was wondering how many Latin (both Classical and Medieval varieties) words
have Greek roots. Is Greek the common root of most IE languages?
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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". ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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, ...
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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 ?
...
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Meaning of the root "ject"
What does the root "ject" mean? It occurs in words such as "subject", "object", "project", "injection", "surjection", "bijection". As far as I know these words came to English from French and, in turn,...
