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Re: USAGE: Catalan (was: Romance demonstratives)

From:FFlores <fflores@...>
Date:Wednesday, April 14, 1999, 2:15
John Cowan <cowan@...> wrote:
>=20 > A vocabulary study by J. Llobera in 1968 showed that of 800 basic > words, 155 (19%) were not cognate with their Spanish translations --- > which does not mean there is no cognate anywhere in Spanish, > but rather that it has a restricted, expanded, or simply > different meaning. > =20 > Here are 52 of the 155, which are also distinct from their > translations in Occitan, French, and Italian as well: >=20 > ampolla 'bottle' llavor 'seed'
Sp. _ampolla_ 'blister'
> aviat 'soon' menjador 'dining room'
Could it be _menjador_ from same origin as Fr. _manger_? Colloquial Sp. has _manyar_ 'eat' from It. _mangiare_.
> barret 'hat' mitj=F3 'sock'
Fr. > Eng. _beret_?
> butxaca 'pocket' oi '(tag question element)'
Sp. _buchaca_ 'bag' is really rare. I've heard it used as a technical term for the holes in a pool table.
> enraonar 'talk' tancar 'shut'
Must be a coincidence, but Sp. has _(a)trancar_ 'lock'.
> ganivet 'knife' vermell 'red'
Sp. _bermell=F3n_ 'red, carmin' is rare (mostly used for lipstick colours :)
> On the other hand, there are a large number of undoubted > catalanisms in standard Spanish, of which the following > is a sampling: >=20
[snip quite representative list] I would never imagine such quantity of catalanisms. Most of them are indeed standard and very common. The Iberic Peninsula was/is really a boiling language stew :) and I wouldn't want the job to separate the ingredients -- reconstructing "pure" Old Spanish must have been (be?) a nightmare, with all those langs and dialects borrowing from each other. --Pablo Flores * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * The Universe is not user friendly. Kelvin Throop