Re: French <chez>

From:    Roger Mills <romilly@...>
> John Quijada wrote:
> > When I travelled in Italy, I saw several small restaurants and shops whose
> > names were the word Ca' followed by a person's name, as in Ca' Giuseppe.
> > I assume it's a colloquial or dialectal shortening of _casa_ used exactly
> > like French _chez_.
>
> My impression has been that that's Venetian, or perhaps just Northern?
It's the Venetian dialect form of _casa_; AFAIK they don't have
_casa_ at all except via diglossia.  A number of the palazzi in
Venice are so prefixed.  Marco Polo's house, part of which still
exists, is IIRC _Ca' del Milion_ "House of the Million (Lies)".

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Thomas Wier            "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally,
Dept. of Linguistics    because our secret police don't get it right
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Chicago, IL 60637

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