Re: USAGE: Catalan (was: Romance demonstratives)

FFlores scripsit:

> > aviat 'soon'                    menjador 'dining room'
> Could it be _menjador_ from same origin as Fr. _manger_?
> Colloquial Sp. has _manyar_ 'eat' from It. _mangiare_.
Probably.

> > barret 'hat'                    mitj=F3 'sock'
> Fr. > Eng. _beret_?
Quite likely, though I don't know whether it's a borrowing
or common origin.  Catalan and Occitan (Provencal) are more closely
related than either is to Std. Spanish or Std. French.

> > butxaca 'pocket'                oi '(tag question element)'
> Sp. _buchaca_ 'bag' is really rare. I've heard it used
> as a technical term for the holes in a pool table.
Called "pockets" in English as well.

> > enraonar 'talk'                 tancar 'shut'
> Must be a coincidence, but Sp. has _(a)trancar_ 'lock'.
Sounds like a coincidence to me too.

> > ganivet 'knife'                 vermell 'red'
> Sp. _bermell=F3n_ 'red, carmin' is rare (mostly used
> for lipstick colours :)
English has "vermeil" < Fr. and "vermilion" < It.

> I would never imagine such quantity of catalanisms.
> Most of them are indeed standard and very common.
> The Iberic Peninsula was/is really a boiling language
> stew :) and I wouldn't want the job to separate the
> ingredients -- reconstructing "pure" Old Spanish
> must have been (be?) a nightmare, with all those
> langs and dialects borrowing from each other.
When you figure out the sound changes from Vulgar Latin
to Spanish proper, you then have to be able to account
for the exceptions, and when they follow the general pattern
of another Romance language, the case is pretty clear.
In addition, food names are often borrowed (Eng. "zucchini" < It.,
for example), and it is hardly surprising that Catalans
should contribute most of the nautical words: correspondingly,
English has borrowed many from Dutch and Low German.

The most striking borrowing IMHO is "espa~nol", where
pure Spanish would be "espa~non"; this is thought to be
from Occitan.

--=20
John Cowan                                      cowan@ccil.org
                e'osai ko sarji la lojban.