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Re: Ladino Proverbs and Sayings (Waaay long!)

From:Padraic Brown <pbrown@...>
Date:Friday, December 10, 1999, 14:46
On Thu, 9 Dec 1999, FFlores wrote:

>> > 19. La hambre y el frio traen a la puerta del enemigo. >> > Cold and hunger bring one to the enemy's door. >> >> Hmm, I'd thought that Ladino kept the initial /f/'s that Spanish has >> lost, but _hambre_ here seems to disprove that. > >I have a question here: I know that _hombre_ somehow came from >_homo_ (in some inflected form, I guess), and I think _hambre_ >is cognate with 'famine' (is it _fame_ in Italian?). Do you know >how -br- got in there? (I assume hom-r >> hom-br as usual, but >why the -r?)
It's a regular development from hominem. The sounds change like this: -min- -> -mn- -> -mr- -> -mbr-. The b is a "glide consonant". Compare: famine hambre homine hombre stamine estambre ferrumine herrumbre consuetumine costumbre multitumine muchedumbre Padraic.
> >BTW _hambre_ is masculine in Spanish. _La_ becomes _el_ before >/a/, but we say _los hambres_. > > > >--Pablo Flores > http://draseleq.conlang.org/ >