Benefits of Studying Latin
- Thread starter Akela
- Start date
Avus egometipſe, et diligo.
Or like vemortui ambulantes, who every now and then leave their graves to terrorize the living.
One thing that always like is discovering words you wouldn't think were from Latin.
Such as?One thing that always like is discovering words you wouldn't think were from Latin.
Would you have guessed "bedight" was based on Latin dictare?
No (but, cool!)
The origin of most English Latin-derived words is rather obvious, but sometimes some are less, like that one. Also "nice", which I learned from Etaoin comes from nescius (you probably read that post too); I'd never have guessed this one either.No (but, cool!)
weird, isn't it?
I felt like writing a brief explanation, but it got kinda long
I felt like writing a brief explanation, but it got kinda long
most 'native' nouns in modern French, Italian, Spanish, etc. correspond, if derived from latin, to accusative forms. (early french also continued with latin nominatives, but as far as I can tell not for -tas, -tatis words like dignitas). so in this case, we are indeed working with dignitatem
the g there isn't pronounced as a hard /g/ in Latin; instead, it rolls softly into the n, so its orthographic loss in old French isn't actually too unusual. a similar sound effect is heard in the modern french word, and also the italian one, which may imply that it was never lost, or that it was later restored. if it was never lost in french, then it was probably the process of borrowing it into english that reduced the sound to /n/, as /ŋŋ/ isn't common at all in our language, and that sound isn't all too evident in the spelling of deinte, the word in old french.
next let's consider the second i in dignitatem. as a short vowel between two consonants, and what's more, as part of a nonstressed syllable in the middle of the word, the poor letter was doomed from early on. it probably had a habit of disappearing even in classical times; the very similar one in calidus certainly did, giving us the alternate spelling caldus (I believe there's an anecdote about Augustus finding the calidus version snobbish/old-fashioned.) This seems to happen in other words as well, such as saeclum ( < saeculum ), soldus ( < solidus ), valde ( < *valide, already defunct) and such.
next we have the long á in dignitatem. vowel length was blurred in vulgar latin, but not the word stress... as the stress in dignitatem fell on that a, the vowel there remained pronounced clear as day, even if the sound changed somewhat in french, resulting in é. by that period stressed vowels had generally been lengthened, which in this case affected the same vowel which had been long in Latin.
last we have the final syllable -tem. this final t managed to cling to dear life in Spanish (ciudad, libertad, virtud) but not at all in French (cité, liberté, virtue) or Italian (città, libertà, virtù). In any case, the m was very faint in Latin, serving to nasalize the vowel before it, which was a short e. As a word-final syllable with an unstressed vowel, -te(m) wasn't all that loud and distinct in Latin anyway, leaving it at the mercy of natural attrition- or the laziness of native speakers, as a purist might huff.
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In sum, it went like this:
diŋnitátẽ: pronunciation in Latin, more or less
diŋntad: hypothetical form in extremely ancient French
deinté: the form we find in later French (both vowels morphed)
dainty: brittish attempt to pronounce french, with usual results
the g there isn't pronounced as a hard /g/ in Latin; instead, it rolls softly into the n, so its orthographic loss in old French isn't actually too unusual. a similar sound effect is heard in the modern french word, and also the italian one, which may imply that it was never lost, or that it was later restored. if it was never lost in french, then it was probably the process of borrowing it into english that reduced the sound to /n/, as /ŋŋ/ isn't common at all in our language, and that sound isn't all too evident in the spelling of deinte, the word in old french.
next let's consider the second i in dignitatem. as a short vowel between two consonants, and what's more, as part of a nonstressed syllable in the middle of the word, the poor letter was doomed from early on. it probably had a habit of disappearing even in classical times; the very similar one in calidus certainly did, giving us the alternate spelling caldus (I believe there's an anecdote about Augustus finding the calidus version snobbish/old-fashioned.) This seems to happen in other words as well, such as saeclum ( < saeculum ), soldus ( < solidus ), valde ( < *valide, already defunct) and such.
next we have the long á in dignitatem. vowel length was blurred in vulgar latin, but not the word stress... as the stress in dignitatem fell on that a, the vowel there remained pronounced clear as day, even if the sound changed somewhat in french, resulting in é. by that period stressed vowels had generally been lengthened, which in this case affected the same vowel which had been long in Latin.
last we have the final syllable -tem. this final t managed to cling to dear life in Spanish (ciudad, libertad, virtud) but not at all in French (cité, liberté, virtue) or Italian (città, libertà, virtù). In any case, the m was very faint in Latin, serving to nasalize the vowel before it, which was a short e. As a word-final syllable with an unstressed vowel, -te(m) wasn't all that loud and distinct in Latin anyway, leaving it at the mercy of natural attrition- or the laziness of native speakers, as a purist might huff.
---
In sum, it went like this:
diŋnitátẽ: pronunciation in Latin, more or less
diŋntad: hypothetical form in extremely ancient French
deinté: the form we find in later French (both vowels morphed)
dainty: brittish attempt to pronounce french, with usual results
caveat: maybe the syncope with 'i' in dignitatem wasn't common yet in spoken classical latin. possibly.
the early examples of intertonic syncope (that come to my mind anyway) seem to mainly involve liquid consonants, and the case in question doesn't. may have been happened later on, or maybe it was too casual or rare early on to be evinced in the classical writing that survives. don't know, falling asleep
the early examples of intertonic syncope (that come to my mind anyway) seem to mainly involve liquid consonants, and the case in question doesn't. may have been happened later on, or maybe it was too casual or rare early on to be evinced in the classical writing that survives. don't know, falling asleep
cf: count (title) < Old French conte < Latin comitem
part of a later re-latinization trend
E
Etaoin Shrdlu
Guest
It's all much simpler if you accept my theory: the French language is an artificial creation by bored people in a pre-television age designed to irritate everyone. The problem with most conspiracy theories is that they posit something infinitely more complicated and improbable than the banal accepted truth. This one, by contrast, is intuitively obvious, once it's been brought to your attention.
LOL, it definitely succeeded with me (growing up in Canada and hence forced to take French throughout my primary & secondary school years.)
I think the problem with me and French is that my brain, which was evidently designed to read Latin, immediately detected that this was some bizarre form of highly corrupted Latin, and refused to have anything to do with it (except for certain aspects of grammar which I enjoyed, but which were clearly the more "Latinate" parts of the language).
Like what?(except for certain aspects of grammar which I enjoyed, but which were clearly the more "Latinate" parts of the language).
It's been ages, but I remember enjoying verb conjugation, for example. Actually I really didn't mind French grammar; it was trying to speak and understand it that really drove me nuts. It just sounded all wrong.
(continued)
caveat #2: old french would've also had the forms deintie and deintet (in addition to deinté), the first of which seems more likely to have been the source of 'dainty,' as it didn't end up as *daintay except maybe in valley girl pronunciation.
caveat #2: old french would've also had the forms deintie and deintet (in addition to deinté), the first of which seems more likely to have been the source of 'dainty,' as it didn't end up as *daintay except maybe in valley girl pronunciation.
Hmm... although the [a] > [e] change happened in open syllables only, so I think the [a] > [e] step must've happened before the loss of the final vowel.
The way I like to think of the formation of medieval French, I'd use the steps
[dɪŋnɪtaatẽẽ] dignitatem - Classical Latin
*[deɲtade]
*[deintede]
*[deinteθ]
[deinte] deinté - attested medieval French form (Frédéric Godefroy in his Old French dictionary furthermore gives the forms deintié, deintiet, daintié, daintiet, dainté, dointié, denté and deytié...)