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Re: Interactions between languages & loan words

From:ROGER MILLS <rfmilly@...>
Date:Thursday, March 20, 2008, 5:17
Scotto Hlad wrote:
> >Well, I'm not sure if the subject is clear enough so let's see if I can >explain my question. With my new language Pilovian being surrounded by many >other Romance languages, I'm sure that I can develop the Romance part of it >quite well which will be evident, (I hope) when I post the Babel text. My >concern is that in the area of the Pyrenees mountains there is also the >Basque language. In my design, I'd like to have some interaction between >Basque and Pilovian but I'm not sure how. I'd like to have words enter >Pilovian from Basque, but I have no idea what parameters to set. According >to Wikipedia, the Basques are historically great mariners and so I would >certainly want to borrow heavily from Basque to influence any maritime >vocabulary. > >Any suggestions?
Perhaps if the Basques inhabited the region first (as would be likely), there will be toponyms-- mountains, rivers, maybe even towns and regions, etc.-- that would be Basque names. This is the case IIRC in Spain. Trask's _History of Basque_ might have a listing of Basque > Spanish loans and/or place names; plus vocab. items from which you could create your own and work sound-change magic :-)))) The only Basque loans in Spanish I can think of offhand are _izquierdo_ 'left' < esker or sim. and IIRC cachorro 'puppy' and the province of Navarra. I've always thought it odd that they'd borrow "left", but who knows why...........