Q: Latin loans into other languages

[Tore Janson]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Larry Trask asks which case form of a Latin word is borrowed into other
languages, such as Basque or Welsh. There is no simple answer to that
question; it depends on when the word is borrowed, and from what source,
and also on the structure of the recipient language.

The earliest Latin loanwords into Germanic languages are found in Gothic,
and many clearly retain the Latin nominative for Gothic nominative. Examples
are Gothic nom. katils from Latin nom. catillus (acc. catillum), Gothic
spaikulatur from Latin nom. speculator (acc. speculatorem). When those words
were borrowed, not later than the fourth century AD, the Latin nominative
form was still in general use in the spoken language.

But later loans into German and other Germanic languages, say from about the
seventh century and onwards, are often based upon the Latin accusative form,
for example Old High German calc, Old English cealc, "chalk/lime", which is
derived from Latin acc. calcem (nom. calx). This is quite natural, for in
the Romance area the formal distinction between nominative and accusative in
nouns eventually disappeared in the spoken language, and the remaining form
normally came from the old Latin accusative, not from the nominative.
Whether those loans are from Latin or from a Romance language/dialect is of
course a matter for debate. I would contend they are from Latin, at least in
the early Middle Ages, and so, I think, would Roger Wright. Although I know
nothing about Welsh or Basque, I suspect these languages continued borrowing
from Latin/Romance throughout the Middle Ages, and so probably have imported
many forms ultimately derivable from the Latin accusative.

But there is a further complication. What is said so far refers to words
borrowed from one spoken language into another. But Latin has been the
learned written language of Europe for two millennia, and very many words
have been introduced into other languages directly from written Latin,
sometimes quite recently. Many of these ultimately derive from Latin
accusatives, but often indirectly. The English word president is from Latin
accusative praesidentem via French, for example. In some cases, though, the
nominative is used, as in the recent English word processor.

A couple of comments to the interesting letter from Roger Wright. The
English word radium for a substance is actually not derived from the Latin
accusative of radius. Rather, it is a new formation by 19th  century
chemists, who coined dozens or hundreds of names for substances by using a
Latin or Greek stem an attaching the ending -ium to it. Examples are helium,
iridium, and so on. Some are also formed from other stems, as ytterbium, an
element first found on the farm Ytterby in Sweden. All those words can be
regarded as Latin neutral nouns; for them, the nominative and accusative
forms are identical.

I must also object to Roger's statement that Italian usually forms nouns
from the Latin nominative. They normally come from Latin accusative, as in
all other Romance languages. The example uomo from homo is one of a few
enumerable exceptions, like French soeur from soror and Spanish Dios from
deus

Regards,

Tore Janson