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Re: OT: French/English etymology question: "sauf"/"save"

From:Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>
Date:Saturday, December 6, 2003, 18:07
En réponse à Roger Mills :

> > >According to Onions, both "save" (vb.) and "save" 'except etc' ult. derive >from Latin salvare/salvus (the 'except' mng. from an ablative adverbial >salvo: ~salva: --- >Both apparently in Middle Eng. from XIII C. via Old French salver ~sauver >and related sauf~sauve (when did /l/ vocalize in French??).
Extremely early. It had already begun in the Vulgar Latin spoken in Gaule in the 2nd century.
>IMO the non-correspondence of the vowels [-al- ~ aw] vs. [a:]? modern [ej] >is odd, however. But maybe not--- cf. OF palme :: Eng. palm usually >pronounced without /l/ [pA:m] ???? (The Engl. |l| may even be an early >spelling hypercorrection?? The Fr. word also appears to be "learned" since >it lacks the l-vocalization in modern Fr.)
Not really. The outcome of "palme" is "paume". "palme" in Modern French is indeed a learned borrowing referring only to the tree. For the hand's anatomy, the correct word is "paume". Christophe Grandsire. http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr You need a straight mind to invent a twisted conlang.

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Roger Mills <romilly@...>