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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| The Spanish diminutive -illa seems to come from the Arabic diminutive suffix -iyya |
And so it might. Or the other way around. Or both from somewhere else. Or warrior was mistaken for or rationalised as the diminutive of guerra. We use guerrilla, not guerrillero, so these things do get mucked about with.
The point was that 'guerra/guerre' are not just cognates for 'war' but could (near enough) be pronounced "war". (Ditto avispa, guêpe, wasp.)
Do the scholars agree?
(Warrior/guerrilla also serves to illustrate the role of 'consonants' as true vowels; which, certainly in the case of R in English, is explained away as some sort of recent affectation.)
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I still think "warrior" is just "war" with a standard -or agent noun suffix on the end. For once we still have the whole family in the written record. Modern French "guerroyeur", mediaeval French (so as not to call it Old French) "guerreieor", Old Norman French "werreieor" or "werrieur". Since "wyrre" first appeared in the English written record in the 12th Century (presumably from Norman French "werre"), with "weorre" appearing in the 13th. "Guerilla" wasn't adopted into English until the 19th Century (thanks to the future Duke of Wellington).
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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Quite so. Quite so. But what does orthodoxy have to say about GU being pronounced "W"?
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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| Since "wyrre" first appeared in the English written record in the 12th Century (presumably from Norman French "werre"), with "weorre" appearing in the 13th. |
There's an awful lot of "war" prefixes in the places around here, though it might be a form of "ware"; English as we know it wasn't written down so no-one can tell how war would have been spelt or spoken prior to the A-S period (though the A-S gar might be related). In Spanish 'gu' is always pronounced 'gw', as you say it's a mightily consistent language.
| "castle", "castillo" and "chester" are all supposed to come from Latin castrum - castro in gallego |
There's also alcazar or al-qasr, the Moors being rather proficient in constructing cities and forts.
It was the Greeks who named Spain 'Iberia' after the Ebro I thought, wasn't it 'Hispania' under the Romans? Possible link with Hesperides, being the westernmost part of the empire (Pliny the Elder wrote about a city called Eburobrittium on the Portuguese coast which no-one has ever found, it may be Evora or Obidos but names are often misleading).
However, retournons a nos moutons, out of interest it appears that Andalucia had a variety of sheep with golden fleeces whose wool was greatly prized in Roman times, one writer going so far as to state that the Golden Apples of the Hesperides were sheep and goats, brought over from North Africa. These mysterious golden sheep didn't outlast the Roman occupation, though it is true that the Moors imported sheep and sheep farming flourished despite the vicissitudes of the Reconquista, the drovers' routes remained in use regardless of who was fighting whom.
The word ibex, a mountain goat with large curving horns, is said to be derived from Latin, "borrowed from" Iberian. Maybe I should separate my sheep from my goats. The Spanish wool industry depended on merino wool from the 12th century onwards, virtually monopolising the market in fine wool for several centuries; merino may owe its name to the Beni-Merines, a tribe of Arabic Moors.
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Sorry to be pedantic (again!) but gu- isn't always pronounced /gw/ in Spanish. Just think of guepardo (= cheetah) or indeed our friend guerra. Before -i- or -e- gu- needs a dierisis (= gü-) to be pronounced /gw/ (e.g. ambigüedad). This was not known to the Monty Python team who ruined one of their sketches by talking about Che Güevara all the time rather than Guevara. Do you know who set up the Mesta in northern Spain? Was it the Romans? They seemed to have transformed the Spanish economy orienting it towards providing them with olive oil and wine; it was a bit of an ecological disaster too.
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BTW, Mick, C.T. Onions gives castle as coming from the diminutive of castro - castellum - via Norman French castel. But I imagine you don't have much time for Onions.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I don't have much time for anybody except myself. A trait all good AEists should strive for. It's the intellectual version of "Do what thou willst shall be the whole of the law."
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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| Just think of guepardo (= cheetah) or indeed our friend guerra |
"Guepardo" is a borrowed word surely, do you happen to know what cheetah is called in South America (cf. Guevara)? My admittedly inadequate dictionary just says 'leopardo' for cheetah, doesn't seem that the Spanish differentiate between the two generally. In Spanish 'hue' is pronounced 'w', it's sometimes an alternative spelling to 'gue'.
The Romans, like the Greeks and Phoenicians, were drawn to Spain's mineral resources, the tin trade made the country's fortune; olives and wine are found throughout the Med. The Mesta was set up in 1273 and lasted for nearly six hundred years till 1836, it was immensely wealthy and its members' privileges were jealously upheld, more like the mainstay of the economy than a disaster by the sound of it. The lack of a middle or mercantile class by getting rid of the Moors and Jews was far more damaging than sheep grazing in the long run. Not to mention the lack of an industrial revolution.
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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My admittedly inadequate dictionary just says 'leopardo' for cheetah |
Well, we've seen an L = U rule before {not to mention L = R and R = WR = W}, but I didn't expect to see it here!
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The Spanish for "whisk(e)y" is "güisqui" - so the güi- does appear in borrowed words. However, it also appears in words like "guitarra" (= guitar) and you can't get much more Spanish than that!* "Leopardo" exists in Spanish but really just means tan (i.e. light brown) lion. My Encyclopaedic Espasa Dictionary insists that "cheetah" is "guepardo", though it does offer the synonym "chita" (which I've never heard used).
* Yes, I know that "guitarra" supposedly comes from Ancient Greek kitharra and is related to Sanskrit and Hindi words such as citar. But, in the final analysis all words supposedly come from somewhere else. I simply mean that "guitarra" has been in Spanish for a long time and is highly naturalized.
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Pulp History
In: Wales
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On the note of Portugal being the Port of the Gauls...... Port also has the meaning 'gate' or 'gateway' - hence could it be the
'gateway to the Gauls'??
_________________
Question everything!
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Just to widen this out there's also Donegal, which my Brewer's Dictionary of Names says comes from Don na nGall (= fort of the foreigners). They claim that the foreigners in question were the Danes who took possession of a primitive fort here in the 10th Century. (I thought it was the Norwegians who "did" Ireland and Lancashire, though - as always - I could be r-r-wrong). Anyway, it sounds like a bit of a defeatist attitude. "OK, so they've taken our fort; it's their fort now...". They also tell me that Galloway in Scotland means "Stranger Gaels" (from Gall-Ghaidil); the name suggesting that the settlers were of mixed Irish and Norse descent. None of which - 'parently - has aught to do with Galway, Ireland, where Gal- (really gall) means "stony". But Argyll means "land of Gaels", so Gal- and Gal-can mean two completely different things but Gal- and -gyl mean the same. Were the Gaels and the Scotti the same lot or different tribes?
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| Hatty wrote: | | "Guepardo" is a borrowed word surely |
Hello. French orthodoxy (dictionnaire Le Robert) says about leopardo/guepardo:
LEOPARD (1314, leupart 1080, Chanson de Roland; borrowed from late Latin leopardus, comp. of leo, lion, and pardus, male panther.
GUEPARD (1765, Buffon, from gapar 11637, sc. Lat.gapardus 1622; adapted from Ital. gatto-pardo "leopard-cat", comp. of gatto, from the Lat. cattus, and pardo from the Lat. pardus.
Pardus is borrowed from the Greek pardalis "panther, leopard", itself of oriental origin.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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A lot of this came out when we were discussing the English coat-of-arms ie was it "three lions on their chest" or three leopards? It turned out, as far as I can recall, that basically nobody then quite knew the differences between lions, leopards, panthers and a few other mythical or near-mythical beasts (camelopards, anyone?)
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You are right. I thought I'd got the -pard part from somewhere but checking found I simply made a false analogy with Spanish "pardo".
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