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Mar. 28th, 2006 12:06 pm
Ex uno plures
One of my favourite examples of both the commonalities and divergences between the modern Romance languages:
("What about Romanian?" I hear you ask. Ever the copycat, they don't have their own word. They just borrow the French, make one or two orthographic adjustments, and say tirbuşon. Slackers.)
Update #1: And my darlings, the Friulians, just don't know which way to go. Do they want to lamely copy the French, like their kin to the northeast, and use tirebusson? Or do they want their own impenetrable little compound, ğhavestropuj? (From ğhavâ, a cognate to Italian cavare even if it doesn't look it, and the plural of stropul, whose affiliations are anyone's guess.)
Update #2: And what of those precious little Rumontsches? Could they possibly have a different term for each standard dialect in their little canton?
Update #3: Occitan, forever balancing your French heart with your Catalan limbs. Tira-tap. Verb from the former, noun from the latter (but singular, as in French).
Update #4: In Il pendolo di Foucault (Foucault's Pendulum), Belbo introduces the other principles to the Piedmontese expression "Ma gavte la nata" or "Be so kind as to remove the cork." Does this mean that the locals would call a corkscrew at gavanate?
Catalan: llevatapsAll five terms mean the same thing: corkscrew. All five are compounds formed in the same way: finite verb + noun, lit. "it removes corks/caps/plugs". But the actual words are different in each case. Spanish and Portuguese agree on the verb (sacar "take out"), but differ when it comes to the corks. Italian and Catalan agree on what to call the corks (while disagreeing on what the plurals should be), but use different words for removing them (cavare "take out" vs. llevar "lift"). And the French are never happy unless they're doing everything their own way. Not only do they use completely different words for both "take out" and "cork", but they don't put the second in the plural like everyone else. So whereas the other words are invariable, tire-bouchon has the plural tire-bouchons. Of course, since final <s> is silent in French anyway, it ends up being a distinction without a difference. (C'est tout typique, non?)
Spanish: sacacorchos
Portuguese: saca-rolhas
French: tire-bouchon
Italian: cavatappi
("What about Romanian?" I hear you ask. Ever the copycat, they don't have their own word. They just borrow the French, make one or two orthographic adjustments, and say tirbuşon. Slackers.)
Update #1: And my darlings, the Friulians, just don't know which way to go. Do they want to lamely copy the French, like their kin to the northeast, and use tirebusson? Or do they want their own impenetrable little compound, ğhavestropuj? (From ğhavâ, a cognate to Italian cavare even if it doesn't look it, and the plural of stropul, whose affiliations are anyone's guess.)
Update #2: And what of those precious little Rumontsches? Could they possibly have a different term for each standard dialect in their little canton?
Sursilvan: tilastappunsAh, so close, little dudes, but no cigar! (What is this with Vallader piggybacking on Puter all the time?) The newish unified standard, Rumantsch Grischun, figures that two out of five is as good as it gets and goes with tiracucuns.
Sutsilvan: tiraclacùns
Surmiran: teiracucungs
Puter: tiracucuns
Vallader: tiracucuns
Update #3: Occitan, forever balancing your French heart with your Catalan limbs. Tira-tap. Verb from the former, noun from the latter (but singular, as in French).
Update #4: In Il pendolo di Foucault (Foucault's Pendulum), Belbo introduces the other principles to the Piedmontese expression "Ma gavte la nata" or "Be so kind as to remove the cork." Does this mean that the locals would call a corkscrew at gavanate?
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