Re: CHAT: Worse Greek 102 (was: Bad Latin 101)

> > Date:         Mon, 5 Feb 2001 20:53:31 -0000
> > From: Lars Henrik Mathiesen <thorinn@...>
>
> > But how deep should one dig for Latinis originales to inflectere, when
> > the English forma isn't realiter the same as any Latina one anyway?
>
>By the way, this reminds me of something that Danish does (possibly
>after a German pattern):
>
>Latin 2nd/3rd conjunction infinitives are perfectly acceptable as
>Danish infinitives, where everything except the final -e is taken as
>the stem of a weak verb. So "it functions" is "det fungerer" in
>Danish.
>
>The Latin 1st and 4th conjunctions get folded in, with the stem vowel
>changed to <e>, and deponents get a fake active infinitive.
>
>And of course there's a totally regular (passive) past participle
>formed for all these words, making for a sometimes fairly obscure
>connection with the English or Romance forms:
>
>   Danish           English
>
>   funderet         founded
>   fungeret         functioned
>   genereret        generated
>   grasseret        run wild
>   interveneret     intervened
>   regeret          reigned
>
>However, there's also a pattern whereby -ere can be tacked onto
>Latin-sounding nouns to form a verb --- so we get 'funktionere'
>instead of 'fungere' in illiterate computer ads. (Late Latin may have
>had functionare too, there were lots of secondary 1st conj. verbs).
>
>And on the other hand, there are cases where the traditional method
>breaks down because the form would be too strange. In principle, the
>Latinate form corresponding to English 'restricted' should be
>'restringeret' in Danish, but noone would recognize that.
>
>Lars Mathiesen (U of Copenhagen CS Dep) <thorinn@...> (Humour NOT
>marked)
Swedish does the same thing, except that the _-ere_ becomes _-era_ (the vast
majority of Swedish infinitives end in _-a_).  Both forms of Norwegian also
do pretty much the same.

                                                      Andreas
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