Re: Positive - Comparative - Superlative

On Tue, 20 Mar 2001, jesse stephen bangs wrote:

> Mangiat sikayal:
> > Latin had prae-:
> >
> > clarus
> > praeclarus = clarissimus
>
> Oh! Well that explains the Romanian prefix pre- that I've always wondered
> about.  You see it mostly in prayers: 'Presfântul Tatã' = Most Holy
> Father, and stuff like that.
That could also be from Church Slavonic; many explicitly Orthodox
Romanian terms are Slavonic borrowings (I wrote a paper about that
once, when I was studying Romanian, but didn't keep it, worse luck).
For instance when commemorating the Mother of God: "presvyatuyu,
prec^istuyu, preblagoslovennuyu vladic^itsu nas^u..." "to our most
holy, most chaste, most blessed Queen..." (pardon my transcription,
I can do it in Cyrillic and Dutch but I've never tried in English
before; the ^ after a consonant stands in for a hac^ek above it)

   Irina

--
           Varsinen an laynynay, saraz no arlet rastynay.
irina@valdyas.org (myself)     http://www.valdyas.org/irina/valdyas