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Re: Droppin' D's Revisited

From:Eric Christopherson <raccoon@...>
Date:Thursday, November 23, 2000, 5:33
On Thu, Oct 26, 2000 at 03:52:41PM +0200, Christophe Grandsire wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header ----------------------- > Sender: Constructed Languages List <CONLANG@...> > Poster: Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...> > Subject: Re: Droppin' D's Revisited > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > En réponse à Roger Mills <romilly@...>: > > > > > Isn't the common French surname/placename ending -(i)ac supposedly > > of > > Gaulish origin (via Latinate -iacus)? Galhac? (The wines could compete > > with > > Paulliac.) > > "-(i)ac" exists only with proper nouns, it's not a productive ending anymore. > Much more productive is the two forms ending -ais/-ois which derives names of > langs, people and adjectives from places (like France -> français - françois in > Old French -, Angleterre -> anglais, Hollande -> hollandais, Saint-Etienne -> > Stéphanois, Gaule -> gaulois, etc...).
Hmm, I like <-(i)ac>. I wonder if it has any relation to Spanish <-ez>/<-iz>/<-az> (as in Rodríguez, Ruiz, and Díaz)?
> That could be an idea, because through the language changes something like > "Galhesc" would be pronounced /gal'jE/ or /ga'ljEs/. I wonder, is the ending -és > like in Francia -> francés very much used in Spanish? I think it has the same > origin as -ais/-ois in French...
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. And it is derived from Vulgar Latin /eze/ / Classical Latin /e:nsem/, same as the French suffixes and <-ese> in English. ObConLang: In my first conlang, Zaraitian, a common nationality-marking suffix was -/ais/. It actually had no relation to the forms discussed above, but was a back-formation of /za"rais/ "Zaraitian" (resident of Zarait), whereas the noun "Zarait" was /za"reit/. I remember that the reason I decided to make the adjective /za"rais/ was that I spelled the noun as <Zarait> in English but <Zareit> in its own language, and so I wanted a native form with <ai> also. Thus <Zarais>. I have no idea where the <-s> came from. Anyway, to make a long story short, /ais/ then extended to other nationalities. -- Eric Christopherson / *Aiworegs Ghristobhorosyo