Computers (was Re: Stress marking)

Luca Mangyat wabbe:

 That's the problem! The poor English lang had to borrow educated terms from
Romance, and now we should reborrow the same terms from English, when *they*
copied us? 'Computer', indeed, comes from Latin 'computator' (calculator) via
French (**Comput(at)eur?)

Well, I guess English derived _computer_ from the English verb _to compute_ which in
turn comes from Latin (probably via French). It uses English suffix _-er_ like
in _surf_ > _surfer_.

Then in American Spanish the word was calqued: _computar_ > _computador(a)_.

In French they derived the word from adifferent verb: to order (_ordener_?) which
gave _ordenateur_(sp?) claqued in Peninsular Spanish as _ordenador_ <
_ordenar_.

 As for 'Calcolatore', it's a nomen agentis form the verb 'calcolare' (to
calculate, to count...). 'Computatore' would fit but, since the verb
'computare' has a more specific meaning (somehow tied to a boring act of
filling lines of code...), it wouldn't sound good to me.

Was that the meaning of _computare_ before computers?

Carlos Eugenio Thompson Pinzón
Datacom Support Engineer
Ericsson de Colombia (EDC)
Tel:    +571 623 9405
Fax:    +571 623 9314