Re: A funny linguistic subway experience + some questions about nouns of days and months

On Mon, 27 Nov 2000 11:56:06 +0100, Christophe Grandsire
<christophe.grandsire@...> wrote:

>Hi everyone,
....

> - that the man was speaking a strange dialect of Spanish I never heard
> before, and I'd like to share with you what I remember of it. Maybe you
> know what kind of dialect it may be.
> First of all, I'm absolutely sure the man was speaking Peninsular Spanish
> (he said himself: "soy español", I think it's clear enough :)) ). But his
> Spanish had variations I didn't know they existed in Peninsular Spanish.
> First, and that's the least strange of his dialect's features, all final
> /s/'s were deleted. Second, he didn't have the /T/ sound but used /s/
> instead (at least I'm sure he wasn't from Castilla. There they tend to
> over-use /T/ where /s/ should be used). Third, s between two vowels was
> voiced /z/ (so he was pronouncing "nosotros": we as /nozotro/). But the
> strangest feature of it all was that instead of using "hacer" /aTEr/ for
> "to do", he was consistently using /fazEr/, which made his Spanish
> dialect sound strangely Portuguese.
> So now I'm wondering where he came from in Spain. From the features I
> described in his speech, I would say, somewhere in the south of Spain,
> near the Portuguese border. But I may be completely wrong. It could be
> anywhere... Do you have any idea? I'm thinking of the Galician dialect,
> but I have no idea what it looks like...
I'm waiting to find out what the answer is! I know very little about
EuroSpanish dialects, but I'm also sure he isn't from Madrid (I once heard
a tour guide there talk about an artist named /belafkef/). When you say
final /s/ was deleted, do you mean syllable-final or word-final?

> Now let's see the second part of my post. I'm currently trying to find
> out what are the names of days and months in "Roumant". But I have a few
> problems with them in other Romance langs (I've collected them in French,
> Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Romanian, Catalan and Occitan, as well as
> the CL forms they are derived from. I don't know the VL forms).
It would be nice to see that table.

> The months names are not a problem, except for Italian luglio (certainly
> pronounced /'lul_jo/, am I right Luca?): July, for which I cannot except
> the initial "l". Does anyone know where it comes from, which phenomenon
> brought it there? Personally, I'm thinking of a process of assimilation
> followed by dissimilation: iulius -> liulio -> luglio, but I'm not sure
> how likely it is (and sorry if I'm using the wrong linguistic terms).
> I'm also wondering how likely it would be that the Latin month names
> (which were originally adjectives) be used with "mens": month so
> consistently that evolution would collapse the whole phrase into one
> word, as it happened with days names in French, Italian, Occitan and
> Catalan (where Lunae/Lunas dies, dies Lunae/Lunas -alternative forms are
> respectively CL and VL- gave lundi, lunedì, diluns and dilluns), while
> Spanish and Romanian got rid of the "dies" (giving lunes and luni). This
> phenomenon, if it occured with days names, didn't occur with months
> names in any Romance language I know, so I'm wondering if it has any
> likeliness.
>
> As for days names, I have no problem with the first five days (Only
> Portuguese changed them to ordinal numbers, in all other Romance
> languages I know they come from the same origin, only the position of
> dies changes sometimes). But the weekend days (Saturday and Sunday) give
> me quite a few troubles. As for Sunday, All the forms seem to come from
> either domínica (French dimanche, Italian domenica, Romanian dominica,
> Catalan diumenge, Occitan dimenge) or domínicus (Spanish and Portuguese
> Domingo). Am I right? In Medieval (Christian) Latin, "dies" could be
> masculine as well as feminine, so it sounds likely to me.
I think <<dia>> is still masculine in Spanish, despite the final <a>.

> Even the strange /i/ vowel in dimanche and dimenge is explained through
> the Catalan diumenge (a sound change /o/ -> /ju/ doesn't sound
> unreasonable to me). As for Saturday, Spanish and Portuguese sábado and
> Italian sabato seem to derive from Medieval Latin sáb(b)atum: S(h)abbat
> (I'm not quite sure of the spelling in English).
Sabbath is the ordinary English spelling. Shabbat is the Jewish version
(evening and morning).

> Romanian sambata, Catalan and Occitan dissabte seem to derive from (dies)
> sábbata (but I thought sábbatum was a noun, so I would have guessed
> (dies) sábbati instead). Then comes the French form samedi /sam'di/. It
> seems completely off this system. Does it derive from, say, sábbata dies,
> or does it have another origin? When I've seen the Romanian form, I've
> realized that a change /b/ -> /m/ is not unlikely, but I would have
> thought that it would be regular, while I cannot find it anywhere else in
> French. So, does anyone know the origin of the French word "samedi"?
I don't have any idea, but isn't Samstag a German word for Saturday?

> Okay, that was a long post, but I think an interesting one, especially
> for other Conromance langs inventors. I'm now waiting for you all's
> replies :) .
>
>Christophe.
Jeff