Re: Droppin' D's Revisited

En réponse à Eric Christopherson <raccoon@...>:

>
> Hmm, I like <-(i)ac>. I wonder if it has any relation to Spanish
> <-ez>/<-iz>/<-az> (as in Rodríguez, Ruiz, and Díaz)?
>
Well, I have no idea. Has Spanish been influenced by Celtic languages anyway?
And by Germanic languages? Directly or from French influence?

>
> It's used for some nationalities, e.g. francés, aragonés, leonés,
> portugués,
> inglés, irlandés, milanés, etc. I guess there are quite a few of those,
> now
> that I'm trying to list them, but I don't think it's a productive
> suffix.
I thought that too. Strange, because it's extremely productive in French.

> And it is derived from Vulgar Latin /eze/ / Classical Latin /e:nsem/,
> same
> as the French suffixes and <-ese> in English.
>
Unrelated note: yesterday I was looking at my Latin grammar, were it said that
CL for "month" was "mens, mensis". It made me wonder where the /n/ went, as in
French it has become "mois" /mwa/ and in Spanish "mes" /mEs/ (I don't know in
Italian and Portuguese, it would be nice if they kept the /n/ :) ). But now you
tell me that CL /e:nsem/ was VL /eze/, so I'm wondering now if this deletion is
not a phenomenon that occured elsewhere in Latin and in an early time. Do you
know other examples where CL had /e:n/ but VL only /e/?

Obmyownconlang: In "Roumant", "month" is "meis" /mE/. As far as I know right
now, Latin /e:/ has evolved in "Roumant" in /o/ (generally written "ô") except
in monosyllables where it evolved in /E/ (written "ei"). It's a nice alternative
to French evolution in /wa/ (written "oi") or /E/ (written "ai"), but with
occurences far different.

Christophe.