Questions tagged [romance-languages]
Branch of the Indo-European language family including all languages descended from Latin, such as French, Spanish and Italian.
14 questions with no upvoted or accepted answers
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Romance languages - "to mean" as "to want to say"
I have noticed this phenomenon in quite a few Romance languages, that the verb "to mean" can also be conveyed by the phrase "to want to say", regardless of the origin of the verb "to want".
For ...
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Why does French use diminutive suffixes differently from other Romance languages?
I'm a native French speaker, and I noticed that for a lot of masculine objects, we use the suffix -ette to designate a smaller version of it, which turns it into a feminine word. Here are a few ...
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The letter <u> in Provençal: when is it [y] and when is it [œ]?
In most dialects of Occitan, the letter <u> is pronounced [y] generally. However, in Provençal it appears to be pronounced [œ] by some speakers some of the time.
This wikipedia article states (...
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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. ...
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Past participle agreement in French
Background (skip if you know French)
In French, to generate the past tense, you use the past participle of the verb, attaching in front a conjugated form of avoir or être. For example:
J'ai mangé. (I ...
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(proto-)Germanic evidence for Late Latin vowel length
I would like to find a list of borrowings illustrating the reflexes in (proto-)Germanic of Latin long and short vowels. In particular I would like to find substantiation to the standard claim that it ...
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Was Latin A Nasalized Language?
Thinking about it, most of the Romance languages I have heard nasalize vowels quite frequently and it seems consistent: that has me wondering, is there any evidence to show that Latin was a heavily-...
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Could the Romanian gând/gândi (thought/think) be ultimately of Latin and/or Albanian origin?
A gândi is in modern Romanian the common/main form of the verb "to think", based on the noun gând ("thought"). It is considered of Hungarian origin, from "gond".
I don't ...
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Is there a Slavic equivalent of the Greek and Latin semantic transfer from "chest/vault" to "treasure", like θησαυρός/thesaurus?
I was looking at the etymology of the Romanian word comoară ("treasure", "hoard", "pile of precious things") and it seems based on the widespread Slavic form komora, ...
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Did Romance languages evolve in Pannonia?
As a sister question of Did Romance languages evolve in North Africa?, I would like to ask what was the situation in Pannonia was there a Pannonian Romance Language and what research is there to it's ...
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Etymological development of forms of Spanish "seguir" from Latin "SEQVI" (*sequire)
I am seeking an explanation for the development of the forms of Spanish "seguir" from Latin "SEQVI" (Vulgar Latin: *sequire), especially the irregular forms.
Especially, why did the "e" become "i" in ...
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Why were prefixes repeated as postverbal prepositions?
French: s'abstenir de Spanish: abstenerse de English: abstain [from] (v.)
[<--]
late 14c., "to withhold oneself," from Old French abstenir (14c.), earlier astenir (13c.) "hold (...
user5306
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Do all languages with pre-positional articles have zero-articles if they don't have post-positional articles?
To clarify, pre-positional articles are the articles positioned before a noun they refer to, like English the or a(n).
Post-positional articles are those positioned after a noun they refer to, like ...
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Hypothetical ancestry and evolution of PGmc *auziwandliaz
This is cross-posted from r/asklinguistics, with influence from Wiktionary's Tea Room.
So I'm bundling up three questions regarding the PGmc. proper noun *Auziwandilaz.
First: The /w/ in the ...
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