Castilian <falda>

Larry Trask larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk
Wed Mar 10 09:49:23 UTC 1999


On Sun, 7 Mar 1999, Rick Mc Callister wrote:

[on Basque <alte> ~ <alde> `side']

> 	This word resembles Spanish falda "skirt, flank"--which
> unaccountably begins with /fV/; which, as anyone who was studied
> Ibero-Romance knows, is a no-no. Is there an Old Castilian, Gasco'n or
> Aragone's form /*alda, *alde/ ?

Castilian <falda> is commonly glossed `skirt', but in fact it denotes
more generally `any part of a garment which hangs loosely and freely
away from the body'.  In addition to `skirt(s)', the word can translate
English `fold', `drape', `train', with reference to garments.

In the Middle Ages, the word is recorded frequently as both <falda> and
<halda>, the second exhibiting the categorical Castilian shift of /f/ to
/h/ in initial position before most following sounds.  The form <falda>
eventually won out in the standard language.

Corominas sees the word as descending from Frankish *<falda> `fold',
cognate with English `fold'; the word is found throughout continental
Germanic, including in Gothic.  The predominance of /f/ is certainly
puzzling; Corominas rejects a semi-learned origin, on the ground that
this is not the sort of word likely to have such an origin, and prefers
to assume that <falda> was re-borrowed into Castilian from a neighboring
Romance variety which had not undergone the Castilian shift of /f/ to
/h/, probably Occitan or Catalan.

The Castilian word has a transferred sense of `lower part of a slope',
and this, or a related Romance form, is thought to be the source of
Basque <malda> `slope', which can hardly be native.

I know of no Castilian, Gascon or Aragonese word of the form suggested,
but cannot assert with confidence that no such form exists.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk



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