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

Mark J. Reed wrote:


> My Band-Aid box says that the bandages therein are sterile unless the
> paper around them is damaged.  This handy-dandy bit of obviosity
> is helpfully translated into French, and the equivalent of the English
> "unless" is apparently "sauf si".  Since I know that "si" means "if",
> I gather that "sauf" by itself means "except", and I was wondering if this
were
> related to the identical (somewhat outdated) meaning of English "save".
> This is purely idle speculation on my part, and I have done no research;
> I just thought someone here might already know the answer.
>
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??).

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.)

BTW Spanish also has _salvo_ 'unless, except'

ObConlang:  I've had trouble figuring out how to say "except" or "unless" in
Kash. Latin _nisi_ suggests a compd. of not+if.  I could also use "provided
that...not" I think.  Any other suggestions?

Translate:  "This bandage* is sterile unless the wrapper has been damaged."
(*word does not yet exist in Kash)

[bandage] tayu yawuwakalap yangeti re andipetni trakunjo tramace
[...] this 3s-sterile with-provision THAT wrapper/covering-its (is) whole
undamaged

uwakalap /uakalap/ < uhañ clean + halap 'pure, virginal' ['uxaN + 'xalap]
prob. with colloq. pronunciation [wa'kalap]
tra/kunjo whole, lit. un-divided
tra/mace un-damaged
yangeti < yam 'with' keti 'provision, condition'

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