Re: No more plural? No, more plural!

Carsten Becker wrote:


><off-topic>
>
>Roger Mills wrote on Tue, 16 Aug 2005, 05:54 MET:
>
> > Maybe not so French, but it looks like Italian, Portuguese
> > or Old Spanish to
> > me....:-))))))
> >
> > i miei amici
> >
> > proteja o nosso bom nome 'protect the our good name'
> >
> > de los sos ojos... 'from the his eyes...' (Cantar del mio
> > Cid)
> > ANADEW strikes again!
>
>FWIW, "miei", "nosso" and "sos" nevertheless remind me of
>the French "miens", "nôtre" and "siens": Les amis, les
>siens; Protège le bonne nom, le nôtre; de ses yeux, les
>siens. I don't know if you still use those forms, though.
>Remi? Max?
>
I don't speak any Italian so it may be hard for me...

All I can say is what my italian-french dictionnary says:

"agg: (il) mio, (la) mia: mon, ma [...] pron: il mio, la mia: le mien, la
mienne [...]" (the cuts are where the plurals should be)

So when "il mio"(or its femine and/or plural equivalent) is before the noun,
it means exactly "my", but when it is a pronoun it means "le mien" and
"mine" like in "li mien est meilleur que le tien" and "mine is better than
yours" that would probably be "il mio è migliore de il tuo"

When used as genitive, the definite article seems to be optionnal since the
indefitnite has its own article "un" and it that situation, "un mio amico" =
"one of my friends", which is logical since it adds indefiniteness to
definite possession...

But you'd better find someone that knows French and Italian to compare the
two.. A dictionnary is very limited

>In German that would be "die meinigen Freunde", "beschütze
>den unsrigen Namen" and "von/aus den seinigen Augen". It
>sounds somewhat awkward because the adjectivized (?!)
>pronouns can stand on their own. The French examples above
>sound weird as well.
>
If you talk about these examples

Les amis, les siens;
Protège le bon nom, le nôtre;
de ses yeux, les siens.


They sound weird because in French "les siens" and "le nôtre" are only
pronouns unless they are at the end to give further informations about one
of the preceding nouns:

"Il est allé vendre un chien, le sien" He is gone selling a dog, his
"Il est allé vendre un chien, le mien" He is gone selling a dog, mine
"Il est allé vendre un chien, le tien" He is gone selling a dog, yours

The information can concern other nouns than the last one

"Un chien m'a mordu, le tien" A dog bited me, yours

But to work, the noun must carry less informations than what tells a final
"le mien/mine", so it is often indefinite but it can be definite if it don't
also carries possession

"Protège le bon nom, le nôtre" works and would also work with an indefinite
article or anything else than a genitive pronoun or noun


I hope having helped.. I can't explain or prove most of the things I said..
Another might help

- Max