En réponse à Raymond Brown <ray.brown@...>:
> >
> >Interesting that they kept the Sun and Saturn for Sunday and Saturday.
> >Influence
> >>from English?
>
> No - just that they were taken into British at an early date before the
> Church managed to get Sabbath and the Lord's day widely accepted. The
> Church did, of course, try to get all the pagan deity names dropped and
> have the days numbered as in Greek. But it succeeded to do this only in
> Portuguese.
>
Oh, that's the reason why it's so in Portuguese. I'm wondering if I shouldn't do
that for the official day-names in "Roumant" too, keeping the pagan forms for
the popular names...
[snip]
> >
> >That would explain then the presence of the /m/ in French, But not in
> Romanian
> >(which had sambata, as well as octombrie for October).
>
> It might well explain _sambata_. Romania is not far from the Greek
> speaking world and it falls within the Eastern Orthodox area.
>
> I would guess that the -m- in _octombrie_ is simply by analogy with:
> septembrie, noembrie [which looks very much influenced by Greek:
> noémvrios], decembrie.
>
True, I thought of that, but only after I hit the "send" button. I'm thinking of
having the same analogy in "Roumant".
> >
> >So the German /R/ appeared from influence from French? Then where does
> it come
> >>from in French?
>
> In the salons of 18th century Paris.
>
Strange... So they suddenly decided to gargle instead of tapping their tongues?
:)))
>
> >I thought the contrary was what happened (to explain why French
> >is the only Romance language which didn't keep the trilled apical /r/).
>
> The French were always the most innovative of the Romance nations :)
>
:))) Thanks :) .
> I think the trilled apical /r/ can still be heard in some rural areas of
> France, particularly the south. And (some forms of) Portuguese now uses
> the uvular [R] for the former -rr- (the strongly trilled /r/ of
> Spanish),
> while -r- is still the flap or slight trill used also in Spanish.
>
I don't know for Portuguese, but it's true that the trilled /r/ is the strongest
feature of the Southern "accents" of French.
Christophe.