Re: OT: Two language change questions
| From: | Philip Newton <philip.newton@...> |
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| Date: | Monday, October 20, 2008, 6:21 |
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On Mon, Oct 20, 2008 at 04:42, deinx nxtxr <deinx.nxtxr@...> wrote:
>> [mailto:CONLANG@listserv.brown.edu] On Behalf Of Ph. D.
>
>> There are a lot of French loanwords in Malagasy
>> which retain the initial French le/la even though
>> Malagasy has its own definite article:
>>
>> ny labiera = the beer
>
> I've seen a lot of words like that in Haitian too.
An interesting variation is the word for "aunt": matant (or something similar).
I suppose the French colonisers tended to talk about their own aunts a
lot rather than using the definite article? :)
Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>