Q: Latin loans into other languages

[Paolo Ramat]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
I fully agree with Tore's statements and wish just to add to Tore's last
paragr. that there are a few cases of double derivation: e.g. Ital. 're' <
Nomin. and Old Ital. 'rege' < Accus., Fr. 'on' < Lat. 'homo', Nomin. and
'homme' < Lat. 'homine(m)', Acc.

Regards,
Paolo
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tore Janson" <tore.janson at swipnet.se>
To: <HISTLING at VM.SC.EDU>
Sent: Thursday, April 26, 2001 17:06
Subject: Re: Q: Latin loans into other languages


> ----------------------------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
>