All Questions
Tagged with romance-languages italian
13 questions
2
votes
3
answers
273
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Are there Romance parallel descendants to Italian "cicalare" and Romanian "cicăli(re)"?
I am looking for the etymology of the Romanian verb a cicăli (to make reproaches repeatedly, to nag), which is reported of unknown origin, and I have found an almost identical word in Italian: ...
- 780
1
vote
1
answer
140
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Auxilary verb alternation in analytic perfect for French/Italian and German languages [duplicate]
French/Italian and German have a composite past tense (passé composé/passato prossimo/Perfekt) that is formed using either auxiliary verb to be (être/essere/sein) or auxiliary verb to have (avoir/...
- 978
1
vote
1
answer
545
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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 ...
5
votes
0
answers
152
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Etymology of initial "g-" in Sicilian "giurana" (frog)
Most Romance words for "frog" derive from Latin rana (e.g. es. rana, it. rana, pt. rã. See also va. renoc ("toad")).
However, an unexpected initial g- appears in the cognates of several Gallo-:
fr. ...
- 3,132
4
votes
2
answers
362
views
Historical morphology of Italian nouns from Latin 3rd declension
Italian is commonly analysed as inheriting the nominative forms of nouns from Vulgar Latin, instead of the accusative ones. But what happened to 3rd declension nouns?
It looks like for the majority ...
- 364
6
votes
1
answer
5k
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Why does Italian use definite articles before possessive adjectives, except when these are followed by a singular family noun?
In Italian possessive adjectives are preceded by a definite article: “il mio amico” (the my friend), “la nostra casa”, “i tuoi libri”. The article however is always dropped with singular nouns ...
- 390
9
votes
4
answers
554
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Any other example of "socially stigmatized phoneme" like the "th" sound in some Venetian dialect?
Older people living in some rural areas north of Venice use the voiceless dental fricative /θ/ for many words, like cena "supper" which is pronounced θena, exactly like in Spanish cena (Castilian, not ...
- 390
6
votes
4
answers
743
views
From Italian to Spanish, consonant + "i" goes to consonant + "l"?
Why is it, that in words like plaza / piazza, or blanca / bianca, the "l" in Spanish corresponds to an "i" in Italian? Is there a preference for this kind of sound in Italian, or ...
user2146
1
vote
1
answer
91
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grammatical role of the word "e" in Emiliano and Romagnolo languages
What is grammatical role of e word in Emiliano and Romagnolo languages? Notice the following excerpt:
>
La léngua emiliâna-rumagnōla l’é parlêda int l’Emélia-Rumâgna, int la pêrt ed sōvra dal ...
- 725
2
votes
3
answers
511
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Are there any specific traits in Italian which make it different from other Romance languages?
Although Wikipedia says 'the grammar is typical of the grammar of Romance languages', I suppose some ancient Italic (or perhaps even pre-italic) traits might prevail.
I am especially curious about ...
- 2,779
5
votes
1
answer
241
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To what extent do African dialects of Italian differ from their European counterparts?
According to Wikipedia, Italian is spoken to some degree in Libya, Eritrea and Federal Republic of Somalia.
Are there in Africa any clearly different varieties of this language which have distinct ...
- 2,779
10
votes
4
answers
2k
views
Italian passato prossimo agrees with subject with 'essere' but not 'avere'. Why?
Another question about Italian grammar aside from this one which has bugged me for ages.
In Italian, when forming the passato prossimo with an intransitive verb, we use forms of the auxiliary verb ...
- 5,162
15
votes
1
answer
615
views
Italian past participle ending -uto
Why, in the paradigm for Italian past participles ending in -ere, does the regular past participle end in -uto? Whence the vowel, when the other two paradigms have -ato and -ito?
- 5,162