Computers (was Re: Stress marking)
From: | Carlos Eugenio Thompson (EDC) <edccet@...> |
Date: | Friday, October 20, 2000, 15:23 |
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