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

> Of course in Vulgar Latin it is quite clear that there was a drift of
> commonly used 3rd neuters to the second declension, e.g.
>
> LATIN      FRENCH  SPANISH   PORT.   ITALIAN   ROMANIAN
> tempus,     temps   tiempo   tempo    tempo     tempu
> temporis
>
> corpus,     corps   cuerpo   corpo    corpo     ??
> corporis
>
> Fraid I don't know the Romanian for "body".
Romanian for "time" is actually 'timp', and "body" is 'corp'.  I'm not
sure where you saw 'tempu,' although it's a plausible form for very
archaic Old Romanian.

Interestingly, Romanian preserved the neuter gender and generalized from
these nouns to create its neuter plural ending -uri.  The process began
with the replacement of the neuter plural endings with feminine plural
endings, so that the plural of 'corpus' was something like 'corpores'
instead of the proper Latin 'corpora.'  Normal sound changes working on
'corpores' turned it into 'corpuri,' and the resulting pairs
'corp/corpuri' and 'timp/timpuri' were generalized.  This has become the
productive class for monosyllabic neuter nouns and foreign words, so the
modern Romanian plural of 'taxi' is 'taxiuri'!

Jesse Bangs