Re: OT: Spanish "me da feliz"

>ROGER MILLS <rfmilly@...> wrote:
>...place names like Madrid, I don't know the origin.)
From Wikipedia:
"...it is now commonly believed that the origin of the current name
of the city comes from the 2nd century B.C., the Roman Empire
established a settlement on the banks of the Manzanares river. The
name of this first village was "Matrice" (a reference to the river
that crossed the settlement). Following the invasions of the Sueves,
Vandals and Alans during the fifth century A.D., the Roman Empire
could not defend its territories on the Iberian Peninsula, and were
therefore overrun by the Visigoths. The barbarian tribes subsequently
took control of "Matrice." In the 7th century the Islamic conquest of
the Iberian Peninsula saw the name changed to "Mayrit", from the
Arabic term "Mayra" (referencing water as a "trees" or "giver of
life") and the Ibero-Roman suffix "-it" that means "place". The
modern "Madrid" evolved from the Mozarabic "Matrit", which is still
in the Madrilenian gentilic."

This demonstrates that the final vowel (-e) was dropped leaving the
accent, originally on the penultimate, on the ultimate.  The question
for me now is: whence the -l- in madrileño?

I suspect that the -s,-n exception is simply because, in Latin these
final consonants were not followed by another sound and the accent
remained on the penultimate.

As indicator of the 2nd person singular (amas) it would be final.
Latin plurals didn't end in -s, and so the accent for the -s plural
would be treated by analogy.

The 3rd person plural -nt ending simply dropped the -t leaving the
accent on the penultimate, amant > aman.

The "true" 2nd person plural is often forgotten when discussing this,
amatis > amais.  But "amais" has three syllables and so a written
accent is necessary, amáis.

Charlie

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