Translation of city names
Cristina
translated whereas others are not? For instance in Italian we translate
London into Londra, Paris into Parigi, Berlin into Berlino, Wien into
Vienna, as well as Baltimore into Baltimora, but leave the original
name to Oxford, Cambridge, New York, Washington, Boston, Amsterdam,
etc.. It seems to me that there are no apparent connections to the
importance or international relevance of the city. For example we do
not translate all the capitals. We leave Madrid, Bruxelles, Buenos
Aires, Tokyo, Camberra/Sydney, etc. And I don't see even the hystorical
connection. Italian cities are also called with English names: Rome for
Roma, Venice for Venezia, Milan-Milano, Florence-FIrenze, Padua-Padova
but then Verona that inspired Sheakspeare reamains untranslated
Can anybody help to work it out????
Thank you
Cristina - Vicenza (untranslated) - Italy
Salvatore Volatile
I can't explain the rules in other languages, and I can't explain the
rules in English either, since there are no rules as such. But for
English I think it does have a lot to do with the factors you mentioned.
I'd say that the more important the city (whether now or in the past), and
the longer-established its importance, the more likely it is to have a
distinct English name. (Incidentally, I see "Paris" as a distinct
English name for French "Paris". Some of this has to do with
pronunciation that seems to go beyond mere Anglicization, or derives from
some pronunciation that predates the current pronunciation of the place
in the other language, if you follow me.) For a city it generally has to
have established its importance for, say, at least four or five hundred
years.
There's also a bit of a discernible <sp> trend in the other direction. One
good example is "Torino", which seems to have become at least as
common as "Turin" in ordinary English-language texts, particularly those
that specifically refer to the modern city.
This all applies to country names too, of course.
BTW, how did the Romance language names of "London" get that "r" towards
the end, given that the Latin name was Londinium? EMWTK.
--
Salvatore Volatile
Don Phillipson
news:1149075076.0...@i39g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> Does anybody know the rule according which some city names are being
> translated whereas others are not? For instance in Italian we translate
> London into Londra, Paris into Parigi, Berlin into Berlino, Wien into
> Vienna, as well as Baltimore into Baltimora, but leave the original
> name to Oxford, Cambridge, New York, Washington, Boston, Amsterdam,
No linguistic rule governs current practice (in English: I do not
know whether Italian maintains such a rule.) English customary
names may have something to do with long familiarity and
ancient uses, e.g. Leghorn for Livorno. An oddity is English's
use of (plural?) Marseilles for Marseille, Lyons for Lyon, etc.
--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)
Arcadian Rises
Cristina wrote:
> Does anybody know the rule according which some city names are being
> translated whereas others are not? For instance in Italian we translate
> London into Londra, Paris into Parigi, Berlin into Berlino, Wien into
> Vienna, as well as Baltimore into Baltimora, but leave the original
> name to Oxford, Cambridge, New York, Washington, Boston, Amsterdam,
> etc..
> Cristina - Vicenza (untranslated) - Italy
What about people's names?
Is it true that "Louis Armstrong" in Italian is "Luigi Fortebraccio"?
I know for sure that Serghey Essenin is called "Sergio".
Cristina
very funny translated.
Cris
Raymond S. Wise
Not a plural, but a hangover from the inflectional system of Old
French.
Interesting bit of trivia: French "Il a" ( = "He has" ) becomes
"A-t-il?" ( = "Has he?" ) as a question. The "t" is from the previous
ending to the third-person form of "avoir," "at." At some point, the
[t] dropped out of pronunciation except during a question inversion,
and the spelling "at" was changed to simply "a."
--
Raymond S. Wise
Minneapolis, Minnesota USA
E-mail: mplsray @ yahoo . com
Mark Brader
> >
> > Is it true that "Louis Armstrong" in Italian is "Luigi Fortebraccio"?
> Luis Armstrong is the same, in Italian, for sure ! As it would sound
> very funny translated.
You say same, but you use a different spelling of Louis.
--
Mark Brader | "Follow my posts and choose the opposite
m...@vex.net | of what I use. That generally works here."
Toronto | --Tony Cooper
Mike Lyle
> Arcadian Rises wrote:
[...]
> > Is it true that "Louis Armstrong" in Italian is "Luigi Fortebraccio"?
> >
announcers don't lose the idea that it's funny to call Verdi "Joe
Green".
--
Mike.
Mike Lyle
Salvatore Volatile wrote:
[...]
> There's also a bit of a discernible <sp> trend in the other direction. One
> good example is "Torino", which seems to have become at least as
> common as "Turin" in ordinary English-language texts, particularly those
> that specifically refer to the modern city.
Over here at least, I think it's from a combination of football and
international holiday-making.
--
Mike
Isabelle Cecchini
[...]
>
> Interesting bit of trivia: French "Il a" ( = "He has" ) becomes
> "A-t-il?" ( = "Has he?" ) as a question. The "t" is from the previous
> ending to the third-person form of "avoir," "at." At some point, the
> [t] dropped out of pronunciation except during a question inversion,
> and the spelling "at" was changed to simply "a."
Are you sure about that? My understanding was that the "t", which was a
leftover from Latin, had disappeared as an ending for verb forms which
now end in "e" and "a" by the end of the 11th century. The "t" was kept
--at least in the spelling, if not in the pronunciation-- for the
imperfect and conditional forms. It was only in the 16th century that it
made its come-back in interrogative forms in question-forms such as
"a-t-il..." or "aime-t-il...", by analogy with forms of the type
"est-il..." and "aimait-il...". Grammarians of the time strongly
objected to that new fashion, according to Grevisse.
--
Isabelle Cecchini
Default User
[Pronounciation of foreign city names]
> There's also a bit of a discernible <sp> trend in the other
> direction. One good example is "Torino", which seems to have become
> at least as common as "Turin" in ordinary English-language texts,
> particularly those that specifically refer to the modern city.
This came up quite a bit during the recent Winter Olympics. NBC decided
to go with "Torino", some of the on-line news sites stayed with
"Turin", as did our local newspaper, which ran an article explaining
the decision.
Brian
--
If televison's a babysitter, the Internet is a drunk librarian who
won't shut up.
-- Dorothy Gambrell (http://catandgirl.com)
Aaron J. Dinkin
> BTW, how did the Romance language names of "London" get that "r" towards
> the end, given that the Latin name was Londinium?
I don't know specifically, but offhand I'd guess regular sound change.
Note Latin -> Spanish:
homin- hombre
nomin- nombre
femin- hembra
So Londin- -> Londre(s) fits the same pattern.
-Aaron J. Dinkin
Dr. Whom
Jonathan Morton
And a very difficult problem for modern use. Personally, I would stick
with the anglicised "Paris", "Florence", "Turin" etc, but would regard
"Marseilles" and "Lyons" as affected. Equally I'd regard "Firenze" as
affected (unless the speaker was fluent in Italian), so I accept I'm
illogical.
It's a very long time since I heard "Leghorn", except for poultry. The
accent is on the second syllable, of course.
Regards
Jonathan
Evan Kirshenbaum
> Salvatore Volatile <m...@privacy.net> wrote:
>
>> BTW, how did the Romance language names of "London" get that "r" towards
>> the end, given that the Latin name was Londinium?
>
> I don't know specifically, but offhand I'd guess regular sound change.
> Note Latin -> Spanish:
> homin- hombre
> nomin- nombre
> femin- hembra
Also, according to the DRAE
costumen costumbre
culmen cumbre
famen hambre
> So Londin- -> Londre(s) fits the same pattern.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |The mystery of government is not how
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |Washington works, but how to make it
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |stop.
| P.J. O'Rourke
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com
(650)857-7572
R H Draney
Cow orker of mine is Nisei with the surname "Imada"...he tells me that "ima" is
Hiroshima dialect for the kanji usually pronounced "hito", meaning "person", and
"da" is the usual "rice paddy" character...we decided some time ago that his
name in English is therefore "Mansfield"....r
--
It's the crack on the wall and the stain on the cup that gets to you
in the very end...every cat has its fall when it runs out of luck,
so you can do with a touch of zen...cause when you're screwed,
you're screwed...and when it's blue, it's blue.
Arcadian Rises
By the same token, Graham Greene would be Frumentointero Verdi.
mUs1Ka
Only to Italian-Americans.
--
Ray.
UK.
Peter Moylan
> ancient uses, e.g. Leghorn for Livorno. An oddity is English's use
> of (plural?) Marseilles for Marseille, Lyons for Lyon, etc.
That's simple confusion. France has so many towns ending in "s" that
it's difficult to remember the exceptions.
Besides, any English speaker learning French soon learns the rule "the
final letter is usually silent".
The OP mentioned Torino. I discovered that after a visit to Torino it
was difficult for me to revert back to Turin. And the pronunciation of
"Kaboul" used to be a way to distinguish those who had visited the place
from those who hadn't, although by now it's been in the news often
enough that we all have it right.
--
Peter Moylan http://www.pmoylan.org
Please note the changed e-mail and web addresses. The domain
eepjm.newcastle.edu.au no longer exists, and I can no longer
reliably receive mail at my newcastle.edu.au addresses.
The optusnet address still has about 2 months of life left.
Jordan Abel
> Don Phillipson wrote:
>
>> ancient uses, e.g. Leghorn for Livorno. An oddity is English's use
>> of (plural?) Marseilles for Marseille, Lyons for Lyon, etc.
>
> That's simple confusion. France has so many towns ending in "s" that
> it's difficult to remember the exceptions.
>
> Besides, any English speaker learning French soon learns the rule "the
> final letter is usually silent".
>
> The OP mentioned Torino. I discovered that after a visit to Torino it
> was difficult for me to revert back to Turin.
Isn't it "Turin" in Piedmontese?
Wayne Brown
> Does anybody know the rule according which some city names are
> being
> translated whereas others are not?
[...]
There's no rule. Foreign city names in English are a hodgepodge.
"Translated" is probably not the right word. Some languages have
applied their own pronunciation and spelling criteria when
adopting the name of a foreign city, especially in past
centuries, because of a need to have city names correspond to
their own rules. Later, however, some languages seemed to drop
their opposition to incorporating a city name as it was in the
original. In order to find out, you have to study city names one
by one in English, or any other language, and try to dig out
etymological information on them.
To give you an idea of how complicated the search becomes, let's
look at just two examples from Italy, Milano and Mantova, which
are known as Milan and Mantua in English. Mantua is almost a
household word to some English speakers who have read
Shakespeare's _Romeo and Juliet_ over and over again and know it
almost by heart. Both cities are in a region of Italy called
Lombardy in English. The people of Lombardy called their towns
Milán and Mantoa in their local dialect, and it was these forms
that entered the English language long ago and were never
changed to the modern standard Italian forms Milano and Mantova.
Regards, ----- WB.
Wayne Brown
[...]
> Equally I'd regard "Firenze" as affected (unless the speaker
> was fluent in Italian), so I accept I'm illogical.
Fluent in Italian? The English speakers I know wouldn't care if
a native speaker of English was fluent in Italian or not. They
are generally sensitive to affectation in English, and in their
midst you'd have to have a lisp and hold your little finger up
high and inclined at a sharp angle away from your hand when
drinking your tea in order to pull off the use of "Firenze" in
English in all seriousness.
Regards, ----- WB.
athel...@yahoo
for Alger, Tangiers for Tanger, even Brussels for Brussel (though there
I'm not sure whether French Bruxelles or Dutch Brussel is the
original). And it's not just an English habit -- French has Londres,
Douvres and Cornouailles for three of the only four English place names
I can think of that are different in French (the fourth is
Cantorbéry), not to mention examples from other countries, like Gènes
for Genova, and the standard French names for places originally named
in regional languages, like Arles and Nîmes for Arle and Nime. Spanish
has Marruecos for Morocco. Note also that Parigi is plural in form
also, though maybe Paris was once regarded as plural, so perhaps it
doesn't count. We also sometimes go in the other direction: Antwerpen
is, I think, plural in the original Dutch, and Anvers could be regarded
as plural in French, but Antwerp doesn't look plural at all.
A very high proportion of the cities that have specifically English
names are in Italy. I have always thought (albeit without any special
knowledge) that that derived from the era of the Grand Tour that
wealthy young Englishman used to take in the 18th Century.
athel
Peter Moylan
> doesn't count. We also sometimes go in the other direction: Antwerpen
> is, I think, plural in the original Dutch, and Anvers could be
> regarded as plural in French, but Antwerp doesn't look plural at all.
Your other examples are good, but the "werpen" part of Antwerpen is a
verb, not a plural noun. It means "throw the hand", and is derived from
a David-and-Goliath story where the local hero cuts off the hand of a
troublesome giant.
athel...@yahoo
Peter Moylan wrote:
> athel...@yahoo wrote:
>
> > doesn't count. We also sometimes go in the other direction: Antwerpen
> > is, I think, plural in the original Dutch, and Anvers could be
> > regarded as plural in French, but Antwerp doesn't look plural at all.
>
> Your other examples are good, but the "werpen" part of Antwerpen is a
> verb, not a plural noun. It means "throw the hand", and is derived from
> a David-and-Goliath story where the local hero cuts off the hand of a
> troublesome giant.
>
Anvers has a plural look about it, anyway).
a.
athel...@yahoo
Cristina wrote:
> Luis Armstrong is the same, in Italian, for sure ! As it would sound
> very funny translated.
> Cris
>
athel
athel...@yahoo
Cristina wrote:
> Luis Armstrong is the same, in Italian, for sure ! As it would sound
> very funny translated.
> Cris
>
mb
athel...@yahoo wrote:
> Don Phillipson wrote:
> > An oddity is English's
> > use of (plural?) Marseilles for Marseille, Lyons for Lyon, etc.
> >
> Not just those two -- we do it for quite a few others, such as Algiers
> for Alger, Tangiers for Tanger, even Brussels for Brussel (though there
> I'm not sure whether French Bruxelles or Dutch Brussel is the
> original). And it's not just an English habit -- French has Londres,
> Douvres and Cornouailles for three of the only four English place names
> I can think of that are different in French (the fourth is
> Cantorbéry), not to mention examples from other countries, like Gènes
> as plural in French, but Antwerp doesn't look plural at all.
>
Most of those have nothing to do with a plural, but an inflexion in the
old language.
Jonathan Morton
> Don Phillipson wrote:
>> "Cristina" <cris....@virgilio.it> wrote in message
>> news:1149075076.0...@i39g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>>
>>> Does anybody know the rule according which some city names are being
>>> translated whereas others are not? For instance in Italian we translate
>>> London into Londra, Paris into Parigi, Berlin into Berlino, Wien into
>>> Vienna, as well as Baltimore into Baltimora, but leave the original
>>> name to Oxford, Cambridge, New York, Washington, Boston, Amsterdam,
>> No linguistic rule governs current practice (in English: I do not
>> know whether Italian maintains such a rule.) English customary
>> names may have something to do with long familiarity and
>> ancient uses, e.g. Leghorn for Livorno. An oddity is English's
>> use of (plural?) Marseilles for Marseille, Lyons for Lyon, etc.
>>
> Not just those two -- we do it for quite a few others, such as Algiers
> for Alger, Tangiers for Tanger
Tangier (no "s") surely.
, even Brussels for Brussel (though there
> I'm not sure whether French Bruxelles or Dutch Brussel is the
> original). And it's not just an English habit -- French has Londres,
> Douvres and Cornouailles for three of the only four English place names
> I can think of that are different in French (the fourth is
> Cantorbéry), not to mention examples from other countries, like Gčnes
> for Genova
That's with a circumflex rather than a grave accent.
> A very high proportion of the cities that have specifically English
> names are in Italy. I have always thought (albeit without any special
> knowledge) that that derived from the era of the Grand Tour that
> wealthy young Englishman used to take in the 18th Century.
A very reasonable assumption IMO.
Regards
Jonathan
Dick Chambers
> Does anybody know the rule according which some city names are being
> translated whereas others are not? For instance in Italian we translate
> London into Londra, Paris into Parigi, Berlin into Berlino, Wien into
> Vienna, as well as Baltimore into Baltimora, but leave the original
> name to Oxford, Cambridge, New York, Washington, Boston, Amsterdam,
> etc.. It seems to me that there are no apparent connections to the
> importance or international relevance of the city. For example we do
> not translate all the capitals. We leave Madrid, Bruxelles, Buenos
> Aires, Tokyo, Camberra/Sydney, etc. And I don't see even the hystorical
> connection. Italian cities are also called with English names: Rome for
> Roma, Venice for Venezia, Milan-Milano, Florence-FIrenze, Padua-Padova
> but then Verona that inspired Sheakspeare reamains untranslated
> Can anybody help to work it out????
You might leave Madrid with the same spelling as that used by the Spanish,
but do you use the same pronunciation? Or do you do what English speakers do
to Paris, changing its pronunciation from Paree to Paris. The French do this
to Manchester (Mon-shestair) and Birmingham (Birming-'ám).
A little story is relevant here. Under British law, a school excursion is
required to have a certain ratio of adults to children. When my son was 13
years old, I volunteered as a parent helper on his school trip to France, to
make up the adult numbers. The teacher I was working with was called Mr
Burgin. Easy to pronounce in English, but I found it very difficult indeed
to pronounce his name the English way when I wanted to use it in the middle
of a French sentence. So I would pronounce his name the way a Frenchman
would, whenever I was speaking French. This intensely amused the teachers at
the French school, where we were guests. (Nous sommes enchantés par votre
francisation de M. Burgin!). French requires a different set of the mouth,
into a more nasal position, different from that required for speaking
English. It slows up speech to have to alter that mouth-set every time you
want to say "Burgin". That is why I had to frenchify his name, and it is
also the reason why I frenchify my own name (becoming Monsieur Shombairs)
when in France. I suspect that this is also the reason why we alter the
pronunciation of foreign cities. It is difficult to say Paris the French
way, with its gutteral "r", in the middle of an English sentence. Even more
difficult is Munchen, which becomes Munich. Some of these changes of
pronunciation are sufficiently severe to require a re-spelling (such as
Munich), while others (such as Paris) continue with the original spelling
but an anglicised pronunciation. But the fact is that they all change, if
not in pronunciation, then at least in intonation. Bologna is an example of
a different intonation in English from that of the original language.
Cordova is another such example, as I found out by practical experience when
there. Even though you may pronounce the word correctly in all other
respects, an incorrect positioning of the stress onto the second "o",
Cordóva, as is natural to an English speaker, is sufficient to make
Spaniards completely unable to understand what you are talking about. They
understand you only if you place the stress on the first "o", Córdova.
Richard Chambers Leeds UK.
Richard Chambers Leeds UK.
Dick Chambers
Skitt
> It is difficult to say Paris the French way, with its
> gutteral "r", in the middle of an English sentence.
Let's keep things out of the gutter, m'kay?
(I skipped remarking this on your duplicate post.)
--
Skitt (in Hayward, California)
http://www.geocities.com/opus731/
HVS
> Cristina wrote
>
>> Does anybody know the rule according which some city names
>> are being translated whereas others are not?
-snip-
> You might leave Madrid with the same spelling as that used by
> the Spanish, but do you use the same pronunciation? Or do you
> do what English speakers do to Paris, changing its
> pronunciation from Paree to Paris. The French do this to
> Manchester (Mon-shestair) and Birmingham (Birming-'ám).
>
> A little story is relevant here.
(I've snipped your perceptive discussion about nativising of
pronunciations; apologies if I should have quoted your comments
in full for this reply.)
I find this quite interesting; I think your surmise that it has
to do with relating the foreign name to the general
sound/pronunciation of the surrounding base language sounds has a
lot to be said for it.
I've certainly altered my name to Hervé in France and would, I
think, change my first given name (William) to the appropriate
forms in, say, Italian and Dutch.
That said, I don't think I've radically changed the anglicised
pronunciation of my Dutch/Flemish-looking surname when I've been
in the Netherlands.
Is there perhaps something in this about changing for Latin
languages -- where the framework of pronunciation changes
dramatically -- but not Teutonic (where it changes less)?
Do you think you'd have completely nativised your pronunciation
of "Richard" to the German if the school trip had been to
Germany?
--
Cheers, Harvey
Canadian and British English, indiscriminately mixed
For e-mail, change harvey.news to harvey.van
J. J. Lodder
'Anvers' is clearly a French adaptation on basis of sound only,
Jan
Alan
"Jonathan Morton" wrote
> athel...@yahoo wrote:
>> Not just those two -- we do it for quite a few others, such as Algiers
>> for Alger, Tangiers for Tanger
>
> Tangier (no "s") surely.
[ ... ]
No offense meant, but I just felt the need for some clarification. Since
the discussion appears to be dealing with foreign versions of place-names,
it should be pointed out that Arabic, not French, is the official language
of Algeria. "Algiers" or "Alger" is actually "al-jaza'ir" (al-jaza:'ir) and
"Tangier" or "Tanger" is actually "Tanja".
Robert Bannister
> way, with its gutteral "r", in the middle of an English sentence. Even more
> difficult is Munchen, which becomes Munich. Some of these changes of
> pronunciation are sufficiently severe to require a re-spelling (such as
> Munich),
You could argue that "Munich" is slightly closer to the original name of
the place than the modern German form.
I do like the German for Milan: Mailand (= May country; forever Spring).
--
Rob Bannister
Raymond S. Wise
Isabelle Cecchini wrote:
> Raymond S. Wise a écrit :
> [...]
> >
> > Interesting bit of trivia: French "Il a" ( = "He has" ) becomes
> > "A-t-il?" ( = "Has he?" ) as a question. The "t" is from the previous
> > ending to the third-person form of "avoir," "at." At some point, the
> > [t] dropped out of pronunciation except during a question inversion,
> > and the spelling "at" was changed to simply "a."
>
> Are you sure about that? My understanding was that the "t", which was a
> leftover from Latin, had disappeared as an ending for verb forms which
> now end in "e" and "a" by the end of the 11th century. The "t" was kept
> --at least in the spelling, if not in the pronunciation-- for the
> imperfect and conditional forms. It was only in the 16th century that it
> made its come-back in interrogative forms in question-forms such as
> "a-t-il..." or "aime-t-il...", by analogy with forms of the type
> "est-il..." and "aimait-il...". Grammarians of the time strongly
> objected to that new fashion, according to Grevisse.
I could have sworn I'd read in Henriette Walter's *French Inside Out*
(an English translation of *Le français dans tous les sens*) the
explanation which I gave above. So today I checked the book out again
from of the library of the local Alliance Française and tried to find
a reference to it, but I was unable to do so.
I can add something, however, to what I wrote in mid-May concerning the
"chaise" of "chaise longue" being related to our "chair." The following
is from page 63 of Walter's book:
"*An aborted phonetic change*
"Another tendency that was repressed [...] was the trend at this time
[the sixteenth century] towards pronouncing a single _r_ between two
vowels as a _z._ If Erasmus is to be believed, the 'petites dames' of
those days said _mazi_ for _mari,_ and _Pazi_ for _Paris._
"There are those who believe that this was no more than a passing fad
started by high-society ladies in Paris, but the pronunciation has also
been observed in the dialects of the south and of the north-east of
Paris. It must have been fairly rapidly rejected, since, by the
beginning of the seventeenth century, only two words remained in which
_r_ was pronounced as _z,_ words which have survived in that
pronunciation today: _chaise_ from its doublet _chaire_ (both derived
from the Latin cathedra), and _bésicles,_ formed from _béryl_ (German
Brille 'glasses') and with an end component influenced by that of
_escarboucle_ and _binocle._"
--
Raymond S. Wise
Minneapolis, Minnesota USA
E-mail: mplsray @ yahoo . com
Peter Moylan
> francisation de M. Burgin!). French requires a different set of the mouth,
> into a more nasal position, different from that required for speaking
> English.
I used to claim that I could recognise a native francophone by the
muscle tension around the mouth, even when that person is not speaking;
but I had to give it up because nobody ever believed me.
> It slows up speech to have to alter that mouth-set every time you
> want to say "Burgin". That is why I had to frenchify his name, and it is
> also the reason why I frenchify my own name (becoming Monsieur Shombairs)
> when in France.
Surely "M Chambres" would do less violence to your name.
I don't mind hearing a francisation of my surname (Moi lent), but I
really hate when someone calls me "Péteur".
Oleg Lego
>Besides, any English speaker learning French soon learns the rule "the
>final letter is usually silent".
My reading of the rule is "Throw away about half the letters, hold
your nose, and mumble whatever's left."
Oleg Lego
Citizenship is required to know this?
Oleg Lego
>athel...@yahoo wrote:
>
>> doesn't count. We also sometimes go in the other direction: Antwerpen
>> is, I think, plural in the original Dutch, and Anvers could be
>> regarded as plural in French, but Antwerp doesn't look plural at all.
>
>Your other examples are good, but the "werpen" part of Antwerpen is a
>verb, not a plural noun. It means "throw the hand", and is derived from
>a David-and-Goliath story where the local hero cuts off the hand of a
>troublesome giant.
Maybe the David-like character was a twerp.
mb
Isabelle Cecchini wrote:
> Raymond S. Wise a écrit :
> [...]
> >
> > Interesting bit of trivia: French "Il a" ( = "He has" ) becomes
> > "A-t-il?" ( = "Has he?" ) as a question. The "t" is from the previous
> > ending to the third-person form of "avoir," "at." At some point, the
> > [t] dropped out of pronunciation except during a question inversion,
> > and the spelling "at" was changed to simply "a."
>
> Are you sure about that? My understanding was that the "t", which was a
> leftover from Latin, had disappeared as an ending for verb forms which
> now end in "e" and "a" by the end of the 11th century. The "t" was kept
> --at least in the spelling, if not in the pronunciation-- for the
> imperfect and conditional forms. It was only in the 16th century that it
> made its come-back in interrogative forms in question-forms such as
> "a-t-il..." or "aime-t-il...", by analogy with forms of the type
> "est-il..." and "aimait-il...". Grammarians of the time strongly
> objected to that new fashion, according to Grevisse.
The disappearance of the -t of "habet" is definitely way earlier than
the 11th C. Buck shows that the disappearance of final -t in the 3rd
pers. sing. is already attested in Imperial Latin, except in Sardinia
and Northern Gaul. But at the start of written Romance, both Northern
and Southern paradigms were clearly ai, as, a, etc; all t-less as in
the related Romance areas. Also, there is of course no doubt that the
introduction of euphonic -t- is a late thing, so speaking of any
"comeback" would be misleading.
T.H. Entity
<richard....@ntlworld.com> wrought:
I preserve most of the Anglicised Spanish placenames when editing in
English -- Seville, Castile, Majorca, Navarre, Andalusia, Catalonia,
Basque Country, Canary and Balearic Islands, and no accents on Malaga,
Leon, San Sebastian, etc. -- but I get the impression that two of them
are a bit outdated now: the "v" spelling of Córdoba and Zaragoza as
"Saragossa".
I also seldom hear "caw-DOE-vuh" from most Brits visiting, either,
even the ones who speak no Spanish: it's usually "CAW-duh-buh". This
could be because it's usually spelled with a "b" in English these
days, so the temptation to allow Martina Navratilova to interfere has
been minimised:
cordoba spain site.uk 165,000
cordova spain site:.uk 11,000
zaragoza spain site:.uk 143,000
saragossa spain site:.uk 631
But (and why I still use it and the other still common ones mentioned
above):
sevilla spain site:.uk 134,000
seville spain site:.uk 295,000
--
THE
Peter Moylan
If you throw away more than half the letters, it's Gaelic. If you throw
away about a third of the letters, it's Gallic.
Wayne Brown
[...]
> Do you think you'd have completely nativised your
> pronunciation
> of "Richard" to the German if the school trip had been to
> Germany?
Culture and language are interesting bedfellows. If you had a
given name like Migeabadulramaganorgleputlogajin or even one
that was shorter like Migelogajin and you went, for example, to
the United States, Americans would think nothing of honoring you
by calling you Mike or some other acceptable English name.
Germans, however, are a completely different kettle of fish. In
olden days, names were Germanized as the names of popes still
are to this day (Johannes Paul II), but names of mortals today
certainly are not. English is the top priority foreign language
in Germany, and many a German would probably bite off his tongue
before pronouncing the English name Richard any other way than
the Richard is called in his own country. If the Richard himself
pronounced his name as in German, he could count on Germans
finding that amusing.
Regards, ----- WB.
Wayne Brown
[...]
> I do like the German for Milan:
> Mailand (= May country; forever Spring).
The explanation is more complicated than that. The German name
is very old and goes back to what the local people in
present-day Milano themselves called their town in their
dialect. In ancient times Celts who settled the area in northern
Italy are said to have called it "Medelhan," meaning "in the
middle of the plain." The Romans who conquered it rendered the
meaning into Latin as "Mediolanum." Very early in history
Germans heard the local dialectal name "Milan," and that name
can be traced back to manuscripts in Middle High German in which
the town is called "Milân." From that form and its
pronunciation, linguists believe, developed "Mailand" in modern
German. The explanation in folk etymology with the month of May
is probably sexier.
Apropos folk etymology, many Germans think the word for an
animal called a mole, "Maulwurf;" has something to do with the
modern word they hear, "Maul," which is used for the mouth of
animals and in insults to humans as in "shut your yap." So it
sounds today as if the animal uses its yap to dig. But "Maul"
here comes from an ancient word meaning, among other things, a
"mound." So the name indicates the animal builds up a mound
(around the hole it digs).
Folk etymology may be more fun!
Regards, ----- WB.
Mike Lyle
Wayne Brown wrote:
[...]
> Apropos folk etymology, many Germans think the word for an
> animal called a mole, "Maulwurf;" has something to do with the
> modern word they hear, "Maul," which is used for the mouth of
> animals and in insults to humans as in "shut your yap." So it
> sounds today as if the animal uses its yap to dig. But "Maul"
> here comes from an ancient word meaning, among other things, a
> "mound." So the name indicates the animal builds up a mound
> (around the hole it digs).
>
> Folk etymology may be more fun!
Nice. An English dialect word for the mole is "mouldiwarp" (in various
forms): "earth-turner". There was a children's book in which a mole was
called "Mr Moodiwarp", which I suppose reflects a common dialectal
darkening of "l" to total eclipse.
--
Mike.
JF
"m.j.m...@bradford.ac.uk" <m.j.m...@bradford.ac.uk> writes
>x-no-archive: yes
>
>Mike Lyle wrote:
>> > Arcadian Rises wrote:
>> [...]
>> > > Is it true that "Louis Armstrong" in Italian is "Luigi Fortebraccio"?
>> > >
>> I'm going to throw a heavy object at the radio some day soon if Radio 3
>> announcers don't lose the idea that it's funny to call Verdi "Joe
>> Green".
>>
>
>Mick".
And Giuseppe Verdi could have a posh name like Joe Green.
T.H. Entity
wrought:
>
>Wayne Brown wrote:
>[...]
>> Apropos folk etymology, many Germans think the word for an
>> animal called a mole, "Maulwurf;" has something to do with the
>> modern word they hear, "Maul," which is used for the mouth of
>> animals and in insults to humans as in "shut your yap." So it
>> sounds today as if the animal uses its yap to dig. But "Maul"
>> here comes from an ancient word meaning, among other things, a
>> "mound." So the name indicates the animal builds up a mound
>> (around the hole it digs).
>>
>> Folk etymology may be more fun!
>
>Nice. An English dialect word for the mole is "mouldiwarp"
A mouldiwarp at Cameybridget's Cirkibold? Tinky Taily Soljy Joy!
--
THE
Prai Jei
<1149178289.9...@h76g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>:
He is sometimes so referred to by opera buffs.
Mozart's adopted middle name Amadeus is a sort of Latinisation of his *real*
middle name Gottlieb. Such translation is considered more or less legit
even into modern times e.g. Johan Sibelius universally known as *Jean*
Sibelius.
--
Warning: keel away from child for hot bulb
Interchange the alphabetic letter groups to reply
Prai Jei
<448023fe$0$2600$afc3...@news.optusnet.com.au>:
> Oleg Lego wrote:
>> The Peter Moylan entity posted thusly:
>>
>>> Besides, any English speaker learning French soon learns the rule
>>> "the final letter is usually silent".
>>
>> My reading of the rule is "Throw away about half the letters, hold
>> your nose, and mumble whatever's left."
>
> If you throw away more than half the letters, it's Gaelic. If you throw
> away about a third of the letters, it's Gallic.
And if you don't throw any away but combine a few pairs into single letters
it's Welsh like the 51 (not 58) letters of
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiligogogoch, all pronounced.
(What's French, German or Piedmontese for that?)
Mark Brader
> (What's French, German or Piedmontese for that?)
Well, Wikipedia contributors have provided "l'église de sainte Marie dans
le creux du noisetier blanc près d'un tourbillon rapide et l'église de
saint Tysilio près de la grotte rouge" and "Marienkirche in einer Mulde
weißer Haseln in der Nähe eines schnellen Wirbels und in der Gegend
der Thysiliokirche, die bei einer roten Höhle liegt", but there isn't
a Piedmontese version of the page.
--
Mark Brader, Toronto | "The E-Mail of the species is more deadly
m...@vex.net | than the Mail." -- Peter Neumann
Mike Lyle
> >Nice. An English dialect word for the mole is "mouldiwarp"
>
> A mouldiwarp at Cameybridget's Cirkibold? Tinky Taily Soljy Joy!
>
temptrilobold, elsie brinking onammonye ternies unstonedilode!
--
Mike.
Robert Bannister
I think you're thinking of Gaelic.
--
Rob Bannister
Oleg Lego
Heh!
Regina (SK, Canada) has a sort of a festival known as Mosaic. It's
probably the best deal ever; ten bucks buys you a 'passport' to about
16 'pavilions', each representing a country. Each offers entertainment
and food representing the country, with the only 'extra' charge being
for food. Earlier tonight we visited the Ethiopian, Hungarian,
Ukrainian, Austrian and Irish pavilions. Tomorrow evening we plan on
visiting the Indian, Philippines, and Scottish pavilions. I always
make sure to get to the Philippine pavilion to see their dance
featuring the bamboo poles.
While at the Irish pavilion, I was purchasing a soft drink, and
noticed the name tag on the young lady serving me. Her first name was
"Kaileigh". I asked if she pronounced it 'kay-lee', and she said yes.
I then asked her why it wasn't spelled 'Celidh'.
Robin Bignall
wrote:
A brief aside while we're on the subject of "Tinker Tailor". Milicent
Bagot, who might have been the inspiration for Le Carré's Connie
"Mother Russia" Sachs, has died aged 99.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2208401,00.html
She was played in the two most important Smiley films by the
delightful Beryl Reid.
--
Robin
Hertfordshire, England
John Holmes
>
> Nice. An English dialect word for the mole is "mouldiwarp" (in various
> forms): "earth-turner". There was a children's book in which a mole
> was called "Mr Moodiwarp", which I suppose reflects a common dialectal
> darkening of "l" to total eclipse.
Do you remember which book? There must be a few.
The one I recall was a Moldywarp connected with Fuzzypeg the hedgehog in
this book by Alison Uttley:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0434969265/026-0823421-9382838
(Googling on 'Moodiwarp', Google asks 'Do you mean ModiWrap'.
ModiWrap is a scriptable , configurable , paranoid setuid wrapper for
CGI)
--
Regards
John
for mail: my initials plus a u e
at tpg dot com dot au
athel...@yahoo
mb wrote:
> athel...@yahoo wrote:
> > Don Phillipson wrote:
> > > An oddity is English's
> > > use of (plural?) Marseilles for Marseille, Lyons for Lyon, etc.
> > >
> > Not just those two -- we do it for quite a few others, such as Algiers
> > I'm not sure whether French Bruxelles or Dutch Brussel is the
> > original). And it's not just an English habit -- French has Londres,
> > Douvres and Cornouailles for three of the only four English place names
> > I can think of that are different in French (the fourth is
> > Cantorbéry), not to mention examples from other countries, like Gènes
> .......... and Anvers could be regarded
> > as plural in French, but Antwerp doesn't look plural at all.
> >
>
> old language.
When I first read this I thought maybe you knew something about this,
but the more I think about it the more it seems like speculation. Which
"old language"? Which inflexions? As far as I remember inflexion in -s
in English never meant anything except plural or possessive, and why
would we want to write any of these places as possessives? In any case,
were Tangiers and Algiers adopted in English such a long time ago that
old inflexions have any relevance? How do you account for the fact that
Nîmes/Nime and Arles/Arle correspond so well with the usual plural
inflexion in French and lack of plural inflexion in Provençal? (In
this case, however, the Provençal spellings may be modern: I don't
know how they were spelt before Frédéric Mistral systematized the
writing of Provençal in the 19th Century). To these we can add
Aix-en-Provence/Aigue-en-Prouvènço and Aigues Mortes/Aigue Morte, and
there the meanings ("waters") were certainly originally intended to be
understood as plural: you go to Bath or Baden-Baden to take the waters,
not to take the water.
How do you account for the fact that in Naples and Athens the
plural-looking endings in English and French correspond with the
plural-looking (but s-less) spelling in Italian (Napoli) and Greek
(Athinai)?
In any case, why would old and no longer understood inflexions be
preserved? In at least one example that I can think of the tendency was
in the other direction: Istanbul was originally "stin Polin" ("to the
City"), but Turkish had no use for the Greek accusative -n and it has
disappeared.
athel
athel...@yahoo
Prai Jei wrote:
> athel...@yahoo (or somebody else of the same name) wrote thusly in message
> <1149178289.9...@h76g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>:
>
> >
> > Cristina wrote:
> >> Luis Armstrong is the same, in Italian, for sure ! As it would sound
> >> very funny translated.
> >> Cris
> >>
> > Giuseppe Verdi would look pretty odd if we translated him to Joe Green.
>
> He is sometimes so referred to by opera buffs.
Indeed, but not usually by other people. (Probably I should have
written my sentence in the indicative rather than in the conditional.)
>
> Mozart's adopted middle name Amadeus is a sort of Latinisation of his *real*
> middle name Gottlieb.
I believe on his birth certificate it was written as Theophilus (Johann
Chrysostom Wolfgang Theophilus).
a.
athel...@yahoo
Alan wrote:
> "Jonathan Morton" wrote
> > athel...@yahoo wrote:
>
> >> Not just those two -- we do it for quite a few others, such as Algiers
> >> for Alger, Tangiers for Tanger
> >
Nowadays, yes, but not in the early 20th Century, when it was Tangiers.
The spellings in -s are disappearing in other cases as well -- few
people still write Lyons with an s, and Marseilles with an s is
declining. On the boards at Gatwick the British Airways flight appears
as Marseille.
>
> [ ... ]
>
> No offense meant, but I just felt the need for some clarification. Since
> the discussion appears to be dealing with foreign versions of place-names,
> it should be pointed out that Arabic, not French, is the official language
> of Algeria. "Algiers" or "Alger" is actually "al-jaza'ir" (al-jaza:'ir) and
> "Tangier" or "Tanger" is actually "Tanja".
True, but relevant only if these names were adopted into English from
Arabic, rather than from French. The official language of independent
Algeria is indeed Arabic, but when it was a French Département its
official language was French. In any case, Tangier is not in Algeria.
athel
T.H. Entity
wrought:
Does anyone know where we get "Morocco" from, if in the two languages
it was a protectorate of, French and Spanish, it's called "Maroc" and
"Marruecos"?
--
THE
Isabelle Cecchini
La Chanson de Roland still has a final dental, in spelling at least, at
the end of the 3rd person singular of "avoir":
First lines:
Carles li reis, nostre emper[er]e magnes
Set anz tuz pleins *ad* estet en Espaigne:
Tresqu'en la mer cunquist la tere altaigne.
N'i *ad* castel ki devant lui remaigne;
We also find a final "t" at the end of future verb forms, in lines
155-156, for instance:
"La *vuldrat* il chrestiens devenir."
Charles respunt: "Uncore *purrat* guarir."
http://www.fh-augsburg.de/~harsch/gallica/Chronologie/11siecle/Roland/rol_ch01.html
Zink, in his /Phonétique historique du français/ dates the softening,
followed by the disappearance of final "t" in French, to a period going
from the 9th to the 11th century.
He surmises that that final "t" might have gone through a th-like stage,
before disappearing completely.
Final "t" was more resistant in Gallo-Roman than in other languages, he
says, because it was a mark of inflexion.
The final dental also had a longer shelf-life when it was found before a
word beginning with a vowel (liaison): the emperor with the flowery
beard "ad-estet-en-Espaigne", I think (I used "-" to mark the liaison).
As for E. and J. Bourciez, in their /Phonétique française/, they mention
the beginning of the 12th century as the time when forms such as
"chantet" had definitely become "chante".
> Also, there is of course no doubt that the
> introduction of euphonic -t- is a late thing, so speaking of any
> "comeback" would be misleading.
The word "comeback" is indeed totally unappropriate. I don't know what
came over me. It was a totally unforgivable access of levity.
I'll try and find some barbed wire and flagellate myself.
--
Isabelle Cecchini
Mike Lyle
I could well be misremembering, of course. But I associate "Mr
Moodiwarp" with some sort of picture-book or cartoon strip. No details,
I'm afraid.
--
Mike.
Mike Lyle
T.H. Entity wrote:
[...]
> Does anyone know where we get "Morocco" from, if in the two languages
> it was a protectorate of, French and Spanish, it's called "Maroc" and
> "Marruecos"?
>
with Knights of Malta etc, perhaps.
--
Mike.
Robert Bannister
> As for E. and J. Bourciez, in their /Phonétique française/, they mention
> the beginning of the 12th century as the time when forms such as
> "chantet" had definitely become "chante".
>
I wonder why it mainly happened with -er verbs. There aren't a lot of
verbs like aller and avoir, and the majority of non-er verbs do have
either a -t or -d at the end.
--
Rob Bannister
mb
> mb wrote:
> > athel...@yahoo wrote:
> > > Don Phillipson wrote:
> > > > An oddity is English's
> > > > use of (plural?) Marseilles for Marseille, Lyons for Lyon, etc.
> > Most of those have nothing to do with a plural, but an inflexion in the
> > old language.
>
> When I first read this I thought maybe you knew something about this,
> but the more I think about it the more it seems like speculation. Which
> "old language"? Which inflexions? As far as I remember inflexion in -s
> in English never meant anything except plural or possessive
, and why
> would we want to write any of these places as possessives?
English? Why English, of all languages? These are rather old places in
a French-speaking area. In that language, we had cases, no reference
here to a genitive, but a pronounced nominative -s.
> In any case,
> were Tangiers and Algiers adopted in English such a long time ago that
> old inflexions have any relevance?
Yes, anomaly here. Analogy? No idea.
To these we can add
> Aix-en-Provence/Aigue-en-Prouvènço and Aigues Mortes/Aigue Morte, and
> there the meanings ("waters") were certainly originally intended to be
> understood as plural: you go to Bath or Baden-Baden to take the waters,
> not to take the water.
In these, no doubt about the plural, of course.
> How do you account for the fact that in Naples and Athens the
> plural-looking endings in English and French correspond with the
> plural-looking (but s-less) spelling in Italian (Napoli) and Greek
> (Athinai)?
That's another story again. Athinai is of course a plural name, always
translated as such; as for Neapolis it looks ike it was conserved with
the original ending all along.
> In any case, why would old and no longer understood inflexions be
> preserved? In at least one example that I can think of the tendency was
> in the other direction: Istanbul was originally "stin Polin" ("to the
> City"), but Turkish had no use for the Greek accusative -n and it has
> disappeared.
Disappeared? It is still in "Istanbul", isn't it (even though spelling
never reflected the labialization)?
Isabelle Cecchini
Final "t" first disappeared after "e" and "a", then after "i" (finit)
and "ut" (courut), and finally after diphthongs such as "ai" (fait);
"oi"(soit) and "eu" (eut), and consonants (dort), diphthongs and
consonants providing stronger phonetic support for "t" than vowels.
The last stage is usually considered to have been completed by the 13th
century. Even then, final "t" went on being pronounced in liaisons and
just before a pause. According to Bourciez, grammarians insisted on
sounding the final "t" in "il court", for instance, as late as the 17th
century.
--
Isabelle Cecchini
Robert Bannister
Thank you. I suppose I had better reread the history of the times if I
want to guess at the reasons.
--
Rob Bannister
athel...@yahoo
mb wrote:
> athel...@yahoo wrote:
> > mb wrote:
> > > athel...@yahoo wrote:
> > > > Don Phillipson wrote:
> > > > > An oddity is English's
> > > > > use of (plural?) Marseilles for Marseille, Lyons for Lyon, etc.
>
> > > Most of those have nothing to do with a plural, but an inflexion in the
> > > old language.
> >
> > When I first read this I thought maybe you knew something about this,
> > but the more I think about it the more it seems like speculation. Which
> > "old language"? Which inflexions? As far as I remember inflexion in -s
> > in English never meant anything except plural or possessive
>
> , and why
> > would we want to write any of these places as possessives?
>
> English? Why English, of all languages?
Because Don Phillipson's point, quoted by you, was specifically about
English.
>These are rather old places in
> a French-speaking area. In that language, we had cases, no reference
> here to a genitive, but a pronounced nominative -s.
Nice try, but it won't work. The Latin name of Marseilles is Massalia
(fem. sing., no s). That of Lyons is (I think) Lugudunum (neuter sing.,
no s).
>
> > In any case,
> > were Tangiers and Algiers adopted in English such a long time ago that
> > old inflexions have any relevance?
>
> Yes, anomaly here. Analogy? No idea.
>
> To these we can add
> > Aix-en-Provence/Aigue-en-Prouvènço and Aigues Mortes/Aigue Morte, and
> > there the meanings ("waters") were certainly originally intended to be
> > understood as plural: you go to Bath or Baden-Baden to take the waters,
> > not to take the water.
>
> In these, no doubt about the plural, of course.
>
> > How do you account for the fact that in Naples and Athens the
> > plural-looking endings in English and French correspond with the
> > plural-looking (but s-less) spelling in Italian (Napoli) and Greek
> > (Athinai)?
>
> That's another story again. Athinai is of course a plural name, always
> translated as such; as for Neapolis it looks ike it was conserved with
> the original ending all along.
>
> > In any case, why would old and no longer understood inflexions be
> > preserved? In at least one example that I can think of the tendency was
> > in the other direction: Istanbul was originally "stin Polin" ("to the
> > City"), but Turkish had no use for the Greek accusative -n and it has
> > disappeared.
>
> Disappeared? It is still in "Istanbul", isn't it (even though spelling
> never reflected the labialization)?
In the middle, yes, where no one would immediately think it was an
inflexion, but the final n has disappeared. Neither we nor the Turks
say Istanbulin.
a.
athel...@yahoo
J. J. Lodder wrote:
> athel...@yahoo <athe...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>
> > Peter Moylan wrote:
> > > athel...@yahoo wrote:
> > >
> > > > doesn't count. We also sometimes go in the other direction: Antwerpen
> > > > is, I think, plural in the original Dutch, and Anvers could be
> > > > regarded as plural in French, but Antwerp doesn't look plural at all.
> > >
> > > verb, not a plural noun. It means "throw the hand", and is derived from
> > > a David-and-Goliath story where the local hero cuts off the hand of a
> > > troublesome giant.
> > >
> > Thanks for educating me: I'd often wondered about that. (But the French
> > Anvers has a plural look about it, anyway).
>
> 'Anvers' is clearly a French adaptation on basis of sound only,
>
No doubt you are right, but it doesn't seem to be part of a general
rule for French and Dutch forms of place names -- Luik doesn't sound
much like Liège, Mons doesn't sound at all like Bergen, Rijsel doesn't
sound at all like Lille. Bruges (another "plural", incidentally) for
Brugge looks OK, though.
a.
J. J. Lodder
> J. J. Lodder wrote:
> > athel...@yahoo <athe...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> >
> > > Peter Moylan wrote:
> > > > athel...@yahoo wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > doesn't count. We also sometimes go in the other direction: Antwerpen
> > > > > is, I think, plural in the original Dutch, and Anvers could be
> > > > > regarded as plural in French, but Antwerp doesn't look plural at all.
> > > >
> > > > Your other examples are good, but the "werpen" part of Antwerpen is a
> > > > verb, not a plural noun. It means "throw the hand", and is derived from
> > > > a David-and-Goliath story where the local hero cuts off the hand of a
> > > > troublesome giant.
> > > >
> > > Thanks for educating me: I'd often wondered about that. (But the French
> > > Anvers has a plural look about it, anyway).
> >
> > 'Anvers' is clearly a French adaptation on basis of sound only,
> >
> No doubt you are right, but it doesn't seem to be part of a general
> rule for French and Dutch forms of place names --
It ocurs very often in Belgium,
even though it is not always easy to spot.
Would you for example recognise Braine Wautier as Woutersbrakel?
> Luik doesn't sound
> much like Liège, Mons doesn't sound at all like Bergen,
Indeed, that translates the meaning of the name,
which probably goes back to Roman times.
> Rijsel doesn't
> sound at all like Lille.
It does, if you know the derivation.
There is a little river the place is on,
called the IJsel in Dutch, l'Ille in French. (or Isle long ago)
(Dutch IJ was pronounced as IE, in some dialects,
about like modern English 'ee'.
The place was called Ter IJsel, which became Rijsel,
or Sur l'Ille, which became Lille.
Supposedly from a Celtic root.
> Bruges (another "plural", incidentally) for
> Brugge looks OK, though.
In Flanders the French adapted mostly by sound,
in the south the Flemish did the same.
Best,
Jan
athel...@yahoo
> > Rijsel doesn't
> > sound at all like Lille.
>
> It does, if you know the derivation.
> There is a little river the place is on,
> called the IJsel in Dutch, l'Ille in French. (or Isle long ago)
> (Dutch IJ was pronounced as IE, in some dialects,
> about like modern English 'ee'.
>
> The place was called Ter IJsel, which became Rijsel,
> or Sur l'Ille, which became Lille.
> Supposedly from a Celtic root.
>
That's a nice explanation. Thank you. Next time I'll remember what the
Flemish form of Lille is without having to look it up -- until now I
only remembered that it didn't look much like "Lille".
a.
Robert Bannister
All the same, I'd still like to know more about Liège, Luik, Lüttich,
which don't seem to have much more in common than the L.
--
Rob Bannister
mb
> mb wrote:
> > > > > > An oddity is English's
> > > > > > use of (plural?) Marseilles for Marseille, Lyons for Lyon, etc.
> >
> > > > Most of those have nothing to do with a plural, but an inflexion in the
> > > > old language.
> > >
> > > When I first read this I thought maybe you knew something about this,
> > > but the more I think about it the more it seems like speculation. Which
> > > "old language"? Which inflexions? As far as I remember inflexion in -s
> > > in English never meant anything except plural or possessive
> > English? Why English, of all languages?
>
> Because Don Phillipson's point, quoted by you, was specifically about
> English.
Of all the logical disconnects, this one takes the cherry.
1. The places are not in England. Their names passed to English from
the locals, who happened to be French-speaking. Any objection on this?
2. In those times when the name was passed, the language of said locals
happened to have audible terminal -s in the nominative (repeat).
So what the hell has any of this got to do with English?
> >These are rather old places in
> > a French-speaking area. In that language, we had cases, no reference
> > here to a genitive, but a pronounced nominative -s.
>
> Nice try, but it won't work. The Latin name of Marseilles is Massalia
> (fem. sing., no s). That of Lyons is (I think) Lugudunum (neuter sing.,
> no s).
More, and more severe, disconnect. What has the Latin name got to do
with it? If the Saxons had the name from the Celts, who would have had
it from the Romans, who had it unmodified from the Greeks, and then all
of a sudden some internal development in English had later produced a
replica of the medieval French place names, and if that development was
documented and if my granma had wheels, then you could introduce it in
the discussion.
> > > In any case, why would old and no longer understood inflexions be
> > > preserved? In at least one example that I can think of the tendency was
> > > in the other direction: Istanbul was originally "stin Polin" ("to the
> > > City"), but Turkish had no use for the Greek accusative -n and it has
> > > disappeared.
> >
> > Disappeared? It is still in "Istanbul", isn't it (even though spelling
> > never reflected the labialization)?
>
> In the middle, yes, where no one would immediately think it was an
> inflexion, but the final n has disappeared. Neither we nor the Turks
> say Istanbulin.
Now I get that you were intending the second accusative -n.
a. Orthographic only: The final -n was on its way out in spoken
Byzantine Greek by that time (except before vowels, as in today's Gk).
b. In Turkish, the final consonants in many paradigms of borrowing from
Gk will drop anyway. Depending on stress pattern, the whole desinence
may drop as in this case ([erGátis] -> Irgat, [apóstolos] -> Apostol,
etc. A final vowel would be kept in place-names (which are exceptional
in Turkish by having non-final stress) if the Greek original had
pro-paroxytone stress ([Kallípoli](s) -> Gelíbolu), but not with
parox. [(i)stimbóli](n) -> Istá/m/bul.
c. The whole thing remains totally irrelevant to Lyon(s) anyway.
Isabelle Cecchini
>
> All the same, I'd still like to know more about Liège, Luik, Lüttich,
> which don't seem to have much more in common than the L.
At the time of the Romans, the area was known as a "terra laetica" -land
of the laeti, the laeti being Germanic natives who were friendly to
Rome, and who could be employed by Rome to fight against other, not so
friendly Germanic natives.
Laetica > *ledica >*lediga >*ledya > French Liège/Wallon Lidje
We now come to another category of people, the "leudes", in French. The
"leudes" were free and noble men who were vassals to Merovingian kings.
The word "leudes" is akin to German "Leute", according to the Petit Robert.
From "leudes" we get
Leudicum, Leodicum, Leodium.
The Leudic- root produced German Lüttich and Flemish Luik (Luydijck in
the 16th century).
The fact that Liège and Luik both begin with an "l" thus reflects the
fact that "laeti" and "leudes" also both begin with an "l", but that's
as far as that relationship goes.
Source: Dictionnaire des noms de lieux, Les usuels Robert.
--
Isabelle Cecchini
athel...@yahoo
mb wrote:
> athel...@yahoo wrote:
> > mb wrote:
> > > > > > > An oddity is English's
> > > > > > > use of (plural?) Marseilles for Marseille, Lyons for Lyon, etc.
> > >
> > > > > Most of those have nothing to do with a plural, but an inflexion in the
> > > > > old language.
> > > >
> > > > When I first read this I thought maybe you knew something about this,
> > > > but the more I think about it the more it seems like speculation. Which
> > > > "old language"? Which inflexions? As far as I remember inflexion in -s
> > > > in English never meant anything except plural or possessive
>
> > > English? Why English, of all languages?
> >
> > Because Don Phillipson's point, quoted by you, was specifically about
> > English.
>
> Of all the logical disconnects, this one takes the cherry.
>
> 1. The places are not in England. Their names passed to English from
> the locals, who happened to be French-speaking. Any objection on this?
No, but I referred to several examples, of which three, Cornwall, Dover
and London, are certainly in England, and you talked about "most of
these examples", which cannot be understood to mean just Marseilles and
Lyons.
>
> 2. In those times when the name was passed, the language of said locals
> happened to have audible terminal -s in the nominative (repeat).
>
> So what the hell has any of this got to do with English?
Well, maybe you haven't noticed, but this group is interested in
English, and Don Phillipson's point was about English. In any case,
regardless of your claim that a lost French inflexion explains the
English spelling of Marseilles, in saying that "most of these examples
have nothing to do with a plural" you were referring to several other
examples that were not English renderings of French names, but, for
example, French renderings of English names (Cornouailles, etc.) or
Spanish names such as Marruecos. Presumably in the case of Cornouailles
the "old language" in question was English, so what inflexion are you
referring to there? Or maybe the "old language" was Cornish, in which
case how do you explain how the w in Kernow became s in French?
>
> > >These are rather old places in
> > > a French-speaking area. In that language, we had cases, no reference
> > > here to a genitive, but a pronounced nominative -s.
> >
> > Nice try, but it won't work. The Latin name of Marseilles is Massalia
> > (fem. sing., no s). That of Lyons is (I think) Lugudunum (neuter sing.,
> > no s).
>
> More, and more severe, disconnect. What has the Latin name got to do
> with it?
One might have thought that your vague reference to "the old language"
was a reference to the language, Latin, from which the names Lyons and
Marseilles derive.
>
> > > > In any case, why would old and no longer understood inflexions be
> > > > preserved? In at least one example that I can think of the tendency was
> > > > in the other direction: Istanbul was originally "stin Polin" ("to the
> > > > City"), but Turkish had no use for the Greek accusative -n and it has
> > > > disappeared.
> > >
> > > Disappeared? It is still in "Istanbul", isn't it (even though spelling
> > > never reflected the labialization)?
> >
> > In the middle, yes, where no one would immediately think it was an
> > inflexion, but the final n has disappeared. Neither we nor the Turks
> > say Istanbulin.
>
> Now I get that you were intending the second accusative -n.
Of course. That seemed so obvious that it was hardly worth spelling
out. We were, after all, discussing the endings of words, not the
middles.
>
> a. Orthographic only: The final -n was on its way out in spoken
> Byzantine Greek by that time (except before vowels, as in today's Gk).
>
> b. In Turkish, the final consonants in many paradigms of borrowing from
> Gk will drop anyway. Depending on stress pattern, the whole desinence
> may drop as in this case ([erGátis] -> Irgat, [apóstolos] -> Apostol,
> etc. A final vowel would be kept in place-names (which are exceptional
> in Turkish by having non-final stress) if the Greek original had
> pro-paroxytone stress ([Kallípoli](s) -> Gelíbolu), but not with
> parox. [(i)stimbóli](n) -> Istá/m/bul.
>
> c. The whole thing remains totally irrelevant to Lyon(s) anyway.
Of course, but not to your suggestion that there is a general (I took
it to be general, but now realize that it referred specifically to your
unspecified "old language", now understood to be French) tendency to
preserve inflexions that are no longer understood as inflexions. But I
agree, we don't need to look as far afield as Turkish. Once the plural
in s ceased to be pronounced in Provençal it ceased to be written.
This hasn't happened in French, but that's just conservatism. The
principal way to tell by ear whether a French noun is singular or
plural is to listen for what article accompanies it, and that works
perfectly well for reading as well, so not much is gained by writing
the suffix.
a.
Robert Bannister
Thank very much for all of that. This looks like a books I should buy.
--
Rob Bannister
mb
athel...@yahoo wrote:
> mb wrote:
> > 1. The places are not in England. Their names passed to English from
> > the locals, who happened to be French-speaking. Any objection on this?
>
> No, but I referred to several examples, of which three, Cornwall, Dover
> and London, are certainly in England, and you talked about "most of
> these examples", which cannot be understood to mean just Marseilles and
> Lyons.
> >
> > 2. In those times when the name was passed, the language of said locals
> > happened to have audible terminal -s in the nominative (repeat).
> >
> > So what the hell has any of this got to do with English?
>
> Well, maybe you haven't noticed, but this group is interested in
> English, and Don Phillipson's point was about English. In any case,
> regardless of your claim that a lost French inflexion explains the
> English spelling of Marseilles, in saying that "most of these examples
> have nothing to do with a plural" you were referring to several other
> examples that were not English renderings of French names, but, for
> example, French renderings of English names (Cornouailles, etc.) or
Mea culpa: One should remember that one man's self-evident truth is
another's surprise, and be careful to avoid too much ellipsis. The
"obvious" part here being that borrowings from different backgrounds
and different circumstances cannot be thrown together and only a
relatively consistent fraction of the hodgepodge is being considered.
....
> > > > > In any case, why would old and no longer understood inflexions be
> > > > > preserved? In at least one example that I can think of the tendency was
> > > > > in the other direction: Istanbul was originally "stin Polin" ("to the
> > > > > City"), but Turkish had no use for the Greek accusative -n and it has
> > > > > disappeared.
> > > >
> > > > Disappeared? It is still in "Istanbul", isn't it (even though spelling
> > > > never reflected the labialization)?
> > >
> > > In the middle, yes, where no one would immediately think it was an
> > > inflexion, but the final n has disappeared. Neither we nor the Turks
> > > say Istanbulin.
> >
> > Now I get that you were intending the second accusative -n.
>
> Of course. That seemed so obvious that it was hardly worth spelling
> out. We were, after all, discussing the endings of words, not the
> middles.
Again, what's obvious to one is different from what's obvious to
another. This time you were the elliptic one. Given the below, only one
accusative, the one in the middle, could be considered:
> > a. Orthographic only: The final -n was on its way out in spoken
> > Byzantine Greek by that time (except before vowels, as in today's Gk).
> >
> > b. In Turkish, the final consonants in many paradigms of borrowing from
> > Gk will drop anyway. .....