Re: Droppin' D's Revisited

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