User talk:Nicodene/Archive 2021–2022

Category:Romance terms inherited from Latin nominatives

Hi. I notice there are a few Spanish terms in Category:Romance terms inherited from Latin nominatives. I'm not sure I believe there are any such Spanish terms in reality. Such terms definitely exist in French, Italian and Occitan (among others) but AFAIK all such terms refer to people, not animals or inanimate objects (or are synthetic adjective comparatives). The few such terms claimed for Spanish also have other explanations. For example, "A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Spanish Language with Families of Words based on Indo-European Roots, Volume II (H - Z and Appendix)" page 542 by Edward A. Roberts [1] (sorry, it may be paywalled) derives sierpe from Late Latin serpem, which is said to be a back-formation from the accusative serpentem. Dios IMO is likely semi-learned, not an inheritance. sastre is a borrowing from Catalan; etc. I also think you have added several terms for French that don't belong, e.g. piètre, lampe, tempête, lis, puits. I think only clear examples should be included in these categories, otherwise they become a dumping ground of random and questionable etymologies. Benwing2 (talk) 03:04, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

@Benwing2 It is true that surviving nominative forms are most often animate nouns, but there are a fair number of counterexamples, such as Italian edima < Latin hebdŏmas ‘week’, Catalan gespa < Latin caespes ‘turf’ (via *caespa), Sardinian sidis < Latin sitis ‘thirst’, etc.

I do appreciate the concern for accuracy. This list was in part inspired by Seidler (1995), a discussion of inherited non-accusative forms in Romance. The author critiques the classic habit, in Spanish philology, of rejecting any apparent nominative in favour of ad-hoc explanations. It is not necessary to propose, for instance, an unattested Vulgar Latin *companius solely to explain Spanish compaño, considering that the attested Late Latin companio survives in the nearby Catalan language as company, alongside companyó < companionem. In Old French compaing and compaignon were the nominative and oblique singular respectively, undoubtedly continuing Latin companio~companionem rather than reflecting a suppletion of the former by an unattested *companius, which would have kept its final /-s/ (*compainz). In light of all this, companio probably survived in Old Spanish as well.

As for Spanish sierpe, it could reflect a Late Latin accusative serpem. In that case the latter would be an analogical form derived from the original nominative serpe(n)s. Hence I would still count it as a (convoluted) inheritance of the original nominative. There is a disclaimer about such cases on the main category page, since they are not limited to Spanish.

Dios 'god' follows the sound changes expected of a native word (cf. Latin mĕum > Sp. mío) and even has a gratuitous /io/ > /jo/. 'God' is, of course, a high-frequency lexical item, unlikely to fall out of common usage. As for the final /-s/, it is there in masculine names such as Marcos, Carlos, and medieval Pablos (cf. French Charles, etc.) so there is no need to posit that learnèd influence intervened to add /-s/ in Dios without latinizing any other part of the word (*Deus, *Deos). Roger Wright, incidentally, delivers an amusing diatribe (Late Latin and Early Romance in Spain and Carolingian France, chapter 1) against unnecessary claims of cultismos in Spanish philology (engendrar < ingenerare has apparently been proposed as one) without mentioning Dios in particular.

Sastre 'tailor' I did not mark as an inherited nominative in Spanish; it is on the list for Catalan.

French piètre is indeed not a clear case, so I have removed it.

Lampe appears to reflect */ˈlampa/, from the Latin or Greek nominative lampas, rather than the accusative lampada. Cf. Old Catalan doma < Latin hebdomas, contrasting with Old French domée < Latin hebdomada. (Were it backwards, we would expect Catalan *domada, Old French *dome.) Judging by this, lampada would have yielded *lampée in French.

Tempête < tempestās seems a fairly clear-cut case; cf. Romanian secetă < Latin siccĭtas ‘drought’. One can posit an intermediate Vulgar Latin *tempesta or *siccita, but these would be nouns derived from the nominative singular of the original Latin forms and hence still eligible for the list. Italian soccida < societās fits into this category as well.

For French lis, I do not see how one could explain the /-s/ except as a survival of a (Vulgar Latin) nominative ending.

Puits was an error, as the Old French oblique also had /-ts/. I have removed it from the list.

Best,

- Nicodene (talk) 06:11, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

@Nicodene You make some good points. I am still not convinced by Dios, however. Note for example cruz, an equally common word, where semi-learned influence is the most reasonable explanation for the u. In general, religious terms are strongly susceptible to semi-learned influence (cf. iglesia, Porutguese igreja). French lampe is easily derivable from Latin lampada or the accusative Latin lampadem, both of which had initial-syllable stress. You do not need to appeal to nominative lampas. More generally, however, we are descending into original research, which is allowed to some extent in Wiktionary but far from ideal. I would really prefer you cite sources and go with the majority conclusion when there are disagreements. If rejecting nominative derivations in Spanish is a "classic habit", that means it's the majority view, so we should go with it. It feels to me like you are picking and choosing etymologies to fill up the categories you have created. Benwing2 (talk) 06:35, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

@Benwing2 Agreed that if a religious term fails to show the expected sound changes, Ecclesiastical influence is likely.

Like lampada, Latin hebdomada (all short vowels) also would have had penultimate stress, per Classical rules at least, yet we have penultimate stress in Old French domée and Old Galician domaa. Either the Greek accentuation (hebdomáda, lampáda) is responsible or there was a change by analogy with native /-ˈada/ (< Latin /-ˈāta/). I will see if I can find additional cases for comparison.

I would not be so sure that there is, nowadays, a majority in favour of a blanket rejection of surviving nominatives in Spanish. As early as 1987, Paul Lloyd (From Latin to Spanish, pp. 275–6) confidently put forth the following, among others, as surviving nominatives: Carlos, dios, Marcos, Pablos, compaño, maestre, tizo, gorgojo. Similarly, Elcock 1960 (The Romance languages, pp. 67–68) for gorgojo, compaño, tizo, etc. and Alkire & Rosen 2011 (Romance languages: A historical introduction, p. 197) for gorgojo, sierpe, and tizo. Not to mention Seidler 1995, linked above.

I think that, so long as two or more reliable sources support a nominative origin, and there is no concrete reason to reject it, the word in question can be added to the list. Nicodene (talk) 08:26, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Heads up, I am planning to rename these categories to something like Category:Romance terms potentially inherited from Latin nominatives, as there is clearly doubt about many or most of these terms. Benwing2 (talk) 07:00, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Sure. Maybe 'plausibly' or 'possibly'. Nicodene (talk) 07:02, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Pronunciation of *werrizō etc.

I have reservations about the idea that /w/ in Germanic borrowings immediately became /ɡʷ~β/ in Late Latin/Proto-Romance. While it seems that the positing of a immediate change to /ɡʷ~β/ can nicely explain most (all?) forms in the present-day Romance languages, it cannot explain why the relevant words retained their /w/ when they were borrowed into Middle English. For instance, Middle English werreyen ultimately goes back to *werrizō. One could posit that the /w/ in this word was merely a nativisation of a /v/ that was incongruous with English speech habits, but this cannot be maintained, given the large quantity of words with initial /v/ that had entered ME from Romance and southern ME dialects (which tended to voice initial fricatives; Modern English vat, vixen are Southernisms); furthermore, most OF dialects of course don't have a labial fricative for earlier */w/. With this in mind, I believe it makes sense to assume that the <w> of *wadanio, werra, *werrizō, etc. represented /w/ in at least some varieties of Late Latin. Hazarasp (parlement · werkis) 03:25, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

@Hazarasp Yes, various Oïl varieties have or had /w/ for Germanic /w/, among them Anglo-Norman (hence English wicket corresponds to Standard French guichet). I suppose then we are forced to have /ɡʷ~w~β/, although the fricative outcomes, prominent in Rhaeto-Romance, could be explained as secondary developments from /w/, meaning that we could make do with /ɡʷ~w/. Safest of all may be to simply remove pronunciations for all such borrowings. I wonder if any source discusses this issue in detail. Nicodene (talk) 03:39, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

Yes, various Oïl varieties have or had /w/ for Germanic /w/, among them Anglo-Norman (hence English wicket corresponds to Standard French guichet).

I know AN/Anglo-French had it (I tend to agree with those who prefer the latter term; "Anglo-Norman" is misleading as the French spoken in medieval England was of heterogenous origin); that's implicit in my comments about ME, which of course acquired the relevant vocabulary from a Anglo-Norman or continental Northern French sources. I chose to discuss things through the lens of Middle English since I have a much greater familiarity with that language than with any Romance variety.

although the fricative outcomes, prominent in Rhaeto-Romance, could be explained as secondary developments from /w/, meaning that we could make do with /ɡʷ~w/.

That is probably the best option. I suppose you couldn't get away with eliminating /ɡʷ/ in the same way, as any change from /w/ to /ɡʷ/ would have to occur in "Latin" given its wide distribution in Romance.

Safest of all may be to simply remove pronunciations for all such borrowings.

I wouldn't be able to agree with such a move; if we're being that cautious, we might as well get rid of all our Latin reconstructions! Hazarasp (parlement · werkis) 05:38, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

@Hazarasp Quite right that Anglo-Norman was, from the very beginning, a mixture of dialects. I may start referring to it as 'Anglo-French' instead- I like that.

As a rule, it is in the Romance varieties situated close to the linguistic frontier with (continental) Germanic where we observe outcomes such as /w-/ or /v-/ in borrowings of words such as *werra, etc. As we move away from the frontier, and into the Romance heartland, this soon turns to a consistent /ɡʷ/ or /ɡ/ (< earlier /ɡʷ/).

If you would like to visualize this in detail, map #626 here will show you how various Gallo-Romance dialects rendered Germanic *wardāną, and map #674 here will show you the same for Italy.

It seems we both approve of /ɡʷ~w/, as a representation of the original situation, so I will implement that, unless some key piece of evidence turns up that would prompt a reevaluation.

I chose to discuss things through the lens of Middle English since I have a much greater familiarity with that language [...]

I may have some questions about that in the future, then, if you won't mind! Nicodene (talk) 06:50, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

What you said all seems good to me, though your comment about the distribution of reflexes of Germanic /w/ isn't really a natural response to what I said; you might've misunderstood my comment about it (not that it really matters). Hazarasp (parlement · werkis) 09:33, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

My intention was to justify a general Proto-Italo-Western Romance /ɡʷ~w/, as opposed to a later peculiarity of one or two dialects. Always good to provide evidence, even if the other person is already in agreement. Nicodene (talk) 09:46, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

Doublets in Romance

Hey. Seeing as you're interested in sorting out Romance inherited vocabulary from borrowed vocabulary, you might want to take a look at these appendices:Appendix:French doublets and Appendix:Italian doublets (and at the corresponding categories: Category:French doublets, Category:Italian doublets, etc.), as well as at Appendix:Romance doublets.

I used to be fascinated by this stuff, but I never took the time to rigorously learn and remember the relevant sound laws (I don't even know which book I should turn to). My work has remained that of an amateur, and I'd be glad to have someone more knowledgeable go through it. PUC – 10:28, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

Hi @PUC, I'll take a look at these pages. If you do want a good book or two on that subject, I have no shortage of recommendations. Did you have a particular Romance language in mind- or a bit of everything? Nicodene (talk) 11:12, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

@PUC On the whole, the list of French doublets is accurate and quite useful. I hope you won't mind if I take some examples for the guide I'm writing on identifying Latin borrowings in French.

I disagree about moule being a borrowing from Latin- even an early one. It reflects an evolution parallel to that of épaule (< */esˈpadola/ < spathula), namely /dVl/ > /dl/ > /ll/ > /u̯l/. It presents no feature attributable to Latin influence.

Émeute cannot reflect an inherited ēmōta for a number of reasons (the expected outcome of the latter being *emeue /əmø/). It rather reflects *exmovita.

For potens/valens/volens (it would be preferable to give the accusatives), the French forms appear to be backwards: it is pouvant/valant/voulant that represent the expected outcomes, while the others are analogical.

There is not anything learnèd or semi-learnèd about aigu. (Latin influence would have resulted in *aicu or *acu.) It may represent Occitan influence, as with aigle.

I question the 'learnèdness' of chœur as well. It represents the regular outcome of /ˈkɔru/, and its attestations are rather early and with precisely the expected diphthong: cuer, cuers. Later attempts to latinize the word seem to have failed, to judge by the extinction of chore. Nicodene (talk) 08:13, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

Hi! Thanks for the comments. Feel free to edit the page, to add things, to remove others, etc. And by all means, don't hesitate to use the information that's in it; I'm glad it can be of use to someone.

As for the books, I'm chiefly interested in French and Italian. If you have some pointers, I'm all ears. PUC – 13:26, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

@PUC I forgot to reply to this earlier. I would recommend Alkire & Rosen's Romance languages: A historical introduction (available through Libgen). It covers all of the main topics and makes for an enjoyable read. Nicodene (talk) 19:30, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

{{bor}}

Re Special:Diff/65600124 (using {{bor}}/{{bor+}} in a Modern French entry for a term borrowed in Old French): see Template:borrowed/documentation § When to use. J3133 (talk) 13:57, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

@J3133 I see. Fair enough. I see how it would cause problems with the auto-generated categories. Nicodene (talk) 20:50, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

-eurice

Re Special:Diff/65599244 (“Intercesseur + -rice would be *intercesseurice.”): eur would be removed; compare accompagnatrice from accompagnat[eur] etc. J3133 (talk) 15:42, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

@J3133 Is there an issue with the breakdown given on the page for accompagnatrice? Namely accompagner + -trice. Or + -atrice. Nicodene (talk) 19:24, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

My point is there is no reason why the eur would be kept, as that is not how feminine forms are formed (you claimed “Intercesseur + -rice would be *intercesseurice.”) J3133 (talk) 19:34, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

Other examples: acuponctrice: acuponcteur +‎ -rice; ambassadrice: ambassadeur + -rice; apparitrice: appariteur +‎ -rice; distillatrice: distillateur +‎ -rice; littératrice: littérateur +‎ -rice; prédécessrice: prédécesseur +‎ -rice; prédicatrice: prédicateur +‎ -rice; procuratrice: procurateur +‎ -rice; restauratrice: restaurateur +‎ -rice; traductrice: traducteur +‎ -rice. As these are not *ambassadeurice, *appariteurice, *distillateurice, *littérateurice, *prédécesseurice, *prédicateurice, *procurateurice, *restaurateurice, *traducteurice, why would intercesseur + -rice be *intercesseurice? J3133 (talk) 19:43, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

@J3133 All of the above are, as far as I can tell, simply stem + -(a)(t)rice, not stem + -eur + -(a)(t)rice. I'm not seeing how -eur- is relevant. Nicodene (talk) 20:11, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

If ambassadrice is ambassad[eur] + -rice etc. then why is intercess[eur] + -rice being intercessrice incorrect? The masculine forms end in -eur and feminine forms in -rice. J3133 (talk) 20:16, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

@J3133 It's just ambassade + -rice, just as the masculine counterpart is ambassade + -eur. Why posit ambassadeur minus -eur plus -rice, or the same with the other words above? I don't see a reason for the extra step, neither diachronic (considering how Latin formed its agent nouns, of which many of the above are direct borrowings) nor synchronic. Nicodene (talk) 20:23, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

Because all these entries state the feminine form is from the masculine form ending in -eur + -rice. J3133 (talk) 20:30, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

According to you ambassadeur + -rice would be *ambassadeurice, not ambassadrice, therefore the entry ambassadrice is wrong (and the other entries)? J3133 (talk) 20:33, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

@J3133 Yes, ambassadeur + -rice would result in *ambassadeurice. That is, without an additional rule stating that -eur- is always deleted in such cases- a rule that would be entirely unnecessary when starting from ambassade plus -(t)rice. Occam's razor and all that. What evidence is there to suggest that -eur is present underlyingly, and then always removed?

Looking through our other entries, I find accumuler + -trice, adulter + -trice, animer + -trice, calculer + -trice, coloniser + -trice, commenter + -trice, compiler + -trice, contempler + -trice, coordiner + -trice, cultiver + -trice, etc. A clear majority, actually. Nicodene (talk) 20:55, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

Are the stated etymologies of all the other entries I listed also wrong? J3133 (talk) 20:59, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

@J3133 Yes, although 'wrong' may be a bit harsh. They're imprecise in that detail. Nicodene (talk) 21:02, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

The entry prédécesseuse states the etymology is prédécesseur + -euse, which would, according to you, be *prédécesseureuse? Or is -eur removed? J3133 (talk) 21:05, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

@J3133 Morphologically, they can be broken down as prédécès + -eur/-euse, as a means of adapting Latin praedecessor. Or, alternatively, one starts from Latin praedecessor and substitutes -or with the French -eur/-euse. Nicodene (talk) 21:21, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

{{lb|la|Vulgar Latin}}

Please don't remove {{lb|la|Vulgar Latin}} from Vulgar Latin entries. It adds them to Category:Vulgar Latin. Thanks. --Gowanw (talk) 05:31, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

Spiegel from speculum

I went to add the German to the descendants of the Latin. Checking the entry for Spiegel I saw that it came via speclum, and there I found Spiegel. So I toyed with discarding my edit but decided to proceed with it. Because of my pause, I thought I might go to the discussion page for speculum but there was none, so I checked the history. And lo, I found your January edit moving some descendants out of speculum and into speclum.

I have a slight problem I guess with how Wiktionary works. I get the argument that each stop along a word’s etymology should be treated explicitly. But for the more lay reader, the fact speculum did give rise to Spiegel is likely to be a cooler, more Aha! discovery than that there was an intermediary term. And such readers might never learn of the speculum-to-Spiegel relationship if its only trace is obscured by the pit stop at speclum. Thoughts?—PaulTanenbaum (talk) 12:09, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

Ok, now I also see your {{see desc}}, which does go some way towards resolving my concern. Guess I should take my whine to the beer parlour.—PaulTanenbaum (talk) 12:21, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

"Ancient borrowings" and "Learnèd borrowings" in descendants

If you want to create "Ancient borrowings" and "Learnèd borrowings" subsections in descendants, please start a discussion first on it in WT:BP. Such sections are not approved in WT:EL. Gowanw (talk) 06:32, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

@Gowanw That's basically this discussion. What's the issue? WT:EL barely says anything about descendants and doesn't forbid organizing them. Nicodene (talk) 07:09, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

That's barely a discussion at all. Organizing does to mean adding new subsections. Such a change would require a pointed discussion and likely a vote to add such subsections. --Gowanw (talk) 07:18, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

@Gowanw Unless you can produce a policy or decision against making descendant categories, you have no grounds for mass-removing them. Nicodene (talk) 07:26, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

The "policy" is that WT:EL contains the only acceptable sections. --Gowanw (talk) 07:45, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

@Gowanw Sorry, no. That is not a policy. It does not say anywhere that "if something is not described here, then it is forbidden".

According to your interpretation, every descendant category should be removed, because none are mentioned on WT:EL. That would mean removing, for instance, the "East/West/South Slavic" categories on all our Proto-Slavic entries. Nicodene (talk) 07:49, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

It says it at the very top of the page, "This includes what sections are allowed and what contents are expected to be found in them." Again, hierarchically organizing languages by language group is not creating sections. --Gowanw (talk) 07:54, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

@Gowanw It says what sections are allowed. "Descendants" is a section, as is "etymology", etc. Subdividing descendants is not the same thing as adding a new section to a Wiktionary entry, sorry.

Again, according to your interpretation, we would have to remove every single descendants category on Wiktionary. Not just the ones that you apparently don't like. Nicodene (talk) 07:59, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

Just at the beggining: "While the information below may represent some kind of “standard” form, it is not a set of rigid rules.". The fact that it doesn't mention it as allowed doesn't imply it's forbidden or bad. Read more carefully what you are using as your only argument. Oigolue (talk) 08:03, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

I would like to add that you (Gowanw) may profit from paying attention to the conventions of individual languages, since they can differ a bit with some flexibility. For example, a lot of our Akkadian entries have a "Cuneiform spellings" section that is not listed in WT:EL, see e.g. erṣetum. (And this is not to say I always like the conventions! I'd love it if our Ancient Greek Wiktionarians stopped simply linking to Wikisource in "quotations", and started adding actual quotations with translations. Alas, I don't know Ancient Greek to do some of this myself.)--Ser be être 是^talk/stalk 11:00, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

@Ser be etre shi: You're right, certain languages have their own guidelines. In the case of the Akkadian "Cuneiform spellings" section, it's a renaming of the Logogram header, which is a supported POS header, and is detailed in WT:AAKK. If you notice on WT:EL, many of the headers have references behind them citing a discussion or vote where the header was agreed upon. "Ancient borrowings" and "Learnèd borrowings" have not be vetted by the community in that way. --Gowanw (talk) 17:05, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

@Gowanw Has mass-deleting categories that you personally dislike been vetted by the community? Nicodene (talk) 18:29, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean by "categories" but the status quo is always the supported standard until otherwise agreed upon. --Gowanw (talk) 18:40, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

@Gowanw Go ahead and cite the policy that states "absolutely nothing new is allowed". And what do you make of the phrase "it is not a set of rigid rules"? Nicodene (talk) 18:43, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

If you want some precedence, see votes like: Wiktionary:Votes/2006-12/POS headers and Wiktionary:Votes/2016-02/Placement of "Usage notes", as well as all the cited pages on WT:EL. This is a community project -- changes, like the ones your proposing, are decided on a community level. --Gowanw (talk) 18:58, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

@Gowanw No, that doesn't work. Those are discussions about changing the rules. None of those discussions support your blanket removal of descendant headers, which are not forbidden by the rules, either explicitly or implicitly. Nicodene (talk) 19:03, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

At this point, you're just being obstinate. Until you start a discussion and/or vote for the approval of these headers, I will continue to remove them. --Gowanw (talk) 19:07, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

@Gowanw What do you think grants you the right to mass-remove content that is not against any policy? Nicodene (talk) 19:10, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

WT:EL does. --Gowanw (talk) 19:13, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

@Gowanw No, it does not. It says what sections are allowed. It does not say that adding headers in those sections is not allowed, nor does it imply any such thing. And it even explicitly states that "it is not a set of rigid rules". You already know this. Nicodene (talk) 19:15, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

To be clear, you would have the right, according to WT:EL, to delete something that goes against the rules that it describes. That is, if I added a 'my favourite cat photos' section under random English entries, you would be justified in immediately removing it, because WT:EL lists 'what sections are allowed', and that is not one of them.

The problem for your case is that WT:EL does not list 'what internal organizations are allowed within descendants sections'. In fact, all it says is that one should:

'List terms in other languages that have borrowed or inherited the word. The etymology of these terms should then link back to the page.'

And nothing that I have done goes against that. Nicodene (talk) 21:17, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

Tagging @Rua, Leasnam, -sche, Mahagaja, Metaknowledge, Surjection, Erutuon some active admins. --Gowanw (talk) 19:23, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

@Nicodene, Oigolue Should it be “learned” or “learnèd”? Refer to this edit to causa by Sarilho1 solely changing “learnèd” to “learned”. J3133 (talk) 09:29, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

Oh, I thought it was a typo. I didn't know learnèd was an actually English word. - Sarilho1 (talk) 09:32, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

@J3133 @Sarilho1 Yeah, just an old spelling habit. If people would prefer ⟨learned⟩, I can use that instead. Nicodene (talk) 09:37, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, I also vote in favour of just "learned"... The spelling "learnèd" seems a bit jocular to me in the context of modern prose.--Ser be être 是^talk/stalk 11:00, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

IPs in wgping

Pings don't work for IPs. All you're doing is adding redlinks to non-existent user pages. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:43, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

Noted. Nicodene (talk) 03:47, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

A Southern Gallo-Romance Language or Two in Spain?

This is just a curious question:

On what grounds is the Aragonese language a Southern Gallo-Romance language? Apisite (talk) 11:10, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

@Apisite Numerous phonological, syntactic, and lexical commonalities with neighbouring Catalan, and to some extent Gascon, all the more so before the intensive Castilianization of the last few centuries. @Oigolue would be able to tell you more, as he is thoroughly familiar with the language. It's often also regarded as a 'bridge', but there isn't an obvious way to represent that. Nicodene (talk) 11:37, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

Using the family branches in Romance languages has suited us just fine. I don't see any reason to change them. @Apisite --Gowanw (talk) 22:11, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

@Gowanw 'Us'? You've barely even edited in the area (except the part where you started stalking me). If you had, perhaps you would have noticed by now that absolutely nobody has been using 'Western Romance/Italo-Dalmatian/Eastern Romance/Sardinian' as their standard grouping set. Nicodene (talk) 22:42, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

1. I've been on en.Wikt since 2007. 2. You are illinformed. In fact, the branches to be used in Romance descendants list are already codified and you can find them here: Category:Proto-Italic_language. --Gowanw (talk) 05:53, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

@Gowanw 1. As far as I can see, no, you haven't. Your oldest edit on en.Wikt dates to November of 2021. Strange that you would lie about something that isn't even relevant. The point is that you've barely participated in Latin or Romance at all, except to chase me around starting frivolous wikilawyer bickering. You're so eager to do it you even butted into a random talkpage conversation that didn't involve you.

2. Where to begin? How about with the fact that the first link you showed had the mega-grouping 'Western Romance', which the second link does not have at all. Are you unaware of the difference or do you just not understand it? I also like how you're trying to imply the existence of some kind of policy, when there isn't one. Not the first time you've tried it. Nicodene (talk) 06:57, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

🤣 I truly couldn't care less that you don't believe me. The fact of the matter is, we have hardcoded family branches for Latin, and if you wish to change them, you should bring it up in WT:BP. @Mahagaja --Gowanw (talk) 07:03, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

@Gowanw It's not a matter of belief- literally anyone can look at your contribution history and see that you're lying. Unless, that is, you've changed accounts. In which case, do show me your old one dating to 2007, I'd love to see it.

I'm not proposing a change to hard code here, so you're going to have to try some other tactic. Nicodene (talk) 07:13, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

Like Nicodene said, many significant characteristics are shared with occitan and catalan, sometimes they are parcial or dialectal but it is due to spanish influence (in either a linguistical o social way); like the use of aver for possession in occidental dialects (even absent in catalan), apocope of -e and less habitually -o, which depends also on the dialect, although most of them always drop it in plural "cordero>corders (pronounced cordés) -anyway, keeping -o isn't strange in Gallo-Romance, as it's the norm in Franco-Provençal and Ligurian-, use of periphrastic past in ribagorçan and chistabín like in catalan and some gascon and alpine occitan dialects, use of pronouns i/bi/ibi and en/ne unlike modern Ibero-Romance and like all Gallo-Romance, use of verb "ser" as auxiliar with intransitive, movement and pronominal verbs (no hi soi estato; soi ito ta'l huerto), concordance of participle and direct object (me soi lavatas las mans), use of future where Ibero-Romance would use present of subjunctive (Aguardo que arribarás bien e no te caciegues), uses of conditional similar to french (Se venibas luego me febas una grita), imperfect in -ava, -eva like nord-occidental catalan and gascon, result of the ending -ates, -itis (acabatz, fetz, pronounced acabaz, fez, same result as occitan and primitive catalan), inchoative conjugaison of verbs in -ir (parteixco/parteixo), result of verbs in -escere (pareixer, pareixco/pareixo), convergence of stare and essere, reinforcement of negation with pas, preservation of initial pl, cl, fl, bl and gl... There are also significant vocabulary and particles like minchar, parlar/parllar, alavetz and entà/tà (both shared with occitan), trobar, guaire, aguaitar, prou, sovent and many more. Some particularities are also shared exclusively with Gascon, like the lack of lenition or intervocalic p, t, k, voicing of the same consonants at the contact of a nasal or liquid consonant (brango for blanco), the evolution of -ll- to /tʃ/ or /t/ (aragonese vetiecho, gascon vetèth) and many more. I'll post on my profile some reads if anyone wants to know more about It. Oigolue (talk) 02:10, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

@Oigolue Feel free to add a list of books and the Aragonese language's features to your user-page. --Apisite (talk) 02:55, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

new params in Template:desc

Hi. I made the changes to {{desc}} in preparation for it accepting multiple terms. Please use |t= in place of |4= (the gloss/definition), and |alt= in place of |3= (the display/alternative form). Thanks! Benwing2 (talk) 02:51, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

Will do. Nicodene (talk) 02:54, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

Etymology format in Romance verbs (Latin infinitive and lemma)

Are we now not writing out [infinitive], present active infinitive of [main (first-person) lemma] for Latin etymologies anymore? For example on șerbi you changed it. Word dewd544 (talk) 21:14, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

@Word dewd544 Ah I was meaning to leave you a comment about that.

I made a proposal a while back for changing the Latin citation forms to infinitives. People were split about 50-50 on that idea, so I've left it in the dustbin. However a consensus apparently emerged, both there and on the Discord server, in favour of de-cluttering Romance etymologies by doing away with the 'present active infinitive' part. Fayfreak and -sche suggested displaying the Latin infinitive while still linking directly to the citation form, e.g. {{inh|fr|la|amo|amāre}} shows up as '[from] Latin amāre'. What do you think? Nicodene (talk) 21:32, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

Hmm, I'm on the fence about it. Do people really think it's that cluttered? We would need to change a lot of etymologies then. Plus, for people new to this all, it may be confusing to click on one word and end up at another; they would need to actively search for the infinitive displayed in that lemma to identify it. Also, if that is the case, are we doing the same for the accusative of most nouns? Like for example, 'from partem'? This is further complicated by the fact that the Romance terms came through a hypothetical Vulgar Latin simplified form *parte, probably resulting from a blend of genitive and accusative... But that may be too much info in the etymology for casual viewers. This brings up the general argument about having detailed etymologies or simple ones, and what audience we're aiming at (or if we should hide some extra facts for linguistic nerds under a drop down or something). Also, I'm a bit surprised you of all people are proposing this, since usually you like to add extra info, like in Descendants sections. Word dewd544 (talk) 21:52, 29 June 2022 (UTC)

@Word dewd544 For me the difference lies in whether the information is trivial. For Romance verbs, the 'present active infinitive' part is trivial if one is at all familiar with the subject. For someone unfamiliar with the subject, it's not trivial, yes, but it is misleading, in that it gives the impression that Romance lost the Latin citation form and perhaps rebuilt all of its verbs based on Latin infinitives. At least that's the impression that I'd get from reading similar etymologies in languages that I know nothing about.

Agreed that it's a bit odd to click a link showing one form and end up on a page named after another, which is one reason why I'd have preferred the Latin verb lemmas to be infinitives. For me though this discrepancy is outweighed by the other factors, such as the clutter issue, which can get rather out of hand when Vulgar Latin forms are involved. There's something to be said for concision and focusing on the evolution of one form rather than a pair.

If we want a quick way to change the bulk of our Romance verb etymologies in the way that I/Fay Freak/-sche described, we could have bots do it, as there is a predictable structure for them to identify in most cases.

Speaking of nouns, yes, there are many etymologies of the '[Italian parte comes] from Latin partem, accusative singular of pars' type, and I'm in favour of simplifying them for more or less the same reasons. Incidentally, I don't think it's inaccurate to provide the accusative, as there is clear evidence, for instance, that the Italo-Western branch inherited the Latin accusative singular, as opposed to any other case-form, in virtually all class 2 masculines. (Granted, that form had usurped the functions of others.) I'm prone to rambling about this, so I'll cut myself short unless you want to hear more.

Of course there is no need to provide Latin accusatives in all or even most Romance etymologies. I haven't seen anyone provide, for instance, Latin amicam alongside amica, and there really isn't any reason to, since the Romance descendants can equally reflect either form, and the two had merged in spoken Latin already by the time of Pompeii. Our etymologies also don't really bother with differences of the amicus/amicum type either, but they do care about differences of the pars/partem, cívitas/civitátem, and látro/latrónem type. I agree with the 'silent consensus' in all of these cases. Nicodene (talk) 00:45, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

Yes, I've been wondering about how to handle the amica/amicam thing with consistency, vis-a-vis words that differ more morphologically between the nominative and accusative. I guess I agree that we don't need to take it that far and use the accusative -m forms for every word just to be hyper accurate. I know the accusative later sort of merged with the remnants of the ablative, but was it already by Pompeii that this was beginning to happen? Anyway, I guess if you want to start with the bots sometime, we can do that. Also, there's a Discord server for Wiktionary? Word dewd544 (talk) 16:05, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

@Word dewd544 There is, yes, the link is provided on this page: https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Discord_server

I should've made it clearer that I meant the merger of amică with amicam, rather than amicā. A merger of all of these would have to wait for the total collapse of contrastive vowel length, which indeed came later, by about 2–3 centuries. Or the collapse of the ablative, which is harder to detect for words of that type, but more evident with amicum vs. amicō and such. If I recall correctly, that also occurred in the same time frame. Certainly by the sixth century we find, in the most 'vulgar' texts, almost free alternation of ablatives with accusatives after prepositions.

Before any robots get involved, I'll have to start a new discussion on the Beer Parlour and ping everyone active in Romance etymologies, so that they have a chance to voice reservations or alternate proposals. There's no rush though. Nicodene (talk) 23:51, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

A few questions

Regarding words like floronc, are we not having inherited from Latin anymore in the etymology if it came through Vulgar Latin, with the root of that VL word still found in Latin? I recall in an earlier discussion we agreed that having the inherited Latin forms all available in one category (whether they came via a Vulgar Latin intermediate), is still useful. The other thing I wanted to ask about: should we recreate the *padule VL. reconstruction page here https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=Reconstruction:Latin/padule&action=edit&redlink=1? It was deleted in the past by Rua because they thought we shouldn't have VL. reconstructions at all. Word dewd544 (talk) 15:47, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

Hi @Word dewd544. I agree regarding floronc: metathesis alone is not sufficient reason to break the chain of {{inh}}'s. On the other hand, I think switching to {{der}} makes sense for cases where the 'Vulgar' form involves a significant morphological change, as with *flecticō < flectō.

As regards the 'Vulgar' etymon of Romanian pădure and so on - yes, it certainly deserves an entry. It is apparently attested in a document written 'by Spanish Visigoths [...] about or after the year 800', where we find one instance of ⟨padulis⟩ and four of ⟨padules⟩. That is just about early enough to make a reconstructed entry unnecessary, and an even older attestation may yet be found. I can make a regular entry for it.

Speaking of *padule, perhaps we should discuss how to lemmatize such forms. I opted for accusatives in *nocem and *nevem, because faux-Classical nominatives seemed a bit ridiculous (*nox, *nex), while parisyllabic 'Vulgar' nominatives (*nocis, *nevis) seemed too adventurous. Although, now that I think about it, perhaps a nominative like neus (“snow”) really did exist in Old Occitan. I'll have to look. Nicodene (talk) 18:28, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

I don't know if I agree with not using the inh tag in flectico < flecto. Are we implying the use of the Latin language (with attested entries) as it is here as basically meaning only Classical Latin (because we have Late Latin and Medieval Latin as labels for entries for specific senses)? If the Romance word comes from some form of Latin it should be visible in a category. That way you can eventually get all the inherited words in a Romance language listed. The distinction between simple metathesis and addition of extra morphemes seems a bit arbitrary to me in deciding whether to use 'inh' or 'der', but I sort of see what you're getting at still. But technically they all would have come through a "Vulgar Latin", even if the term in many cases is not different enough to warrant creating a separate entry on here, like amicus/a. And I think we should use inh especially if all the elements of the word come from something found in Classical Latin, even if heavily modified. It gets a bit more iffy when it comes to Germanic, Gaulish, etc borrowings that made their way into VL and weren't attested in written.

As for the lemmatization of forms like *padule (even if that one won't be made as a reconstruction per se), I'd rather drop the final -m and have *noce and *neve, but I'm not necessarily attached to that idea. Definitely not *nocis or *nox. Maybe including the 'm' in parentheses? But that may not look great. When do you think the final -m was dropped in spoken Latin? I guess I'm thinking in terms of a Proto-Romance phase for Vulgar Latin, maybe around the 5th-6th century (though some exceptions may need to be made for the early breakoff Sardinian). Brings me to a general question: what is the rough time period you are looking at for these Vulgar Latin reconstructions, since I want to be consistent across them? Also, as a bit of a tangent, when are we considering the breakoff of Eastern Romance to have happened? This gets into a sometimes touchy and contentious debate about the formation of the Romanian language (and hence people), since I don't think the evidence fits as neatly into the idea that the East Romance speakers just broke off in the late 3rd century when the legions retreated from the largely abandoned Dacia colony. There are still visible common changes shared with the rest of Romance that would've happened a bit later than that, not to mention the presence of inherited core Christian terms that would've been dubious to have existed popularly among the people in the 3rd century, when Christianity was not even legal, let alone official state religion. I think what more likely happened is either more prolonged contact was maintained with Latin speakers south of the Danube in "Moesia" after that or else they actually developed there, north of the Jirecek Line, to begin with (where Latin was likely generally spoken at least up to the late 6th or early 7th century- more in line with the rest of the timeline) and only moved up north later in the Middle Ages, or perhaps a mixed 'ad-migration' kind of situation. This would also explain the close parallels maintained with other East Romance languages like Aromanian and Megleno-Romanian, which were almost certainly from the south, and the fact that East Romance seems to have only split up not much earlier than a thousand years ago (and have a similar stratum of old Slavic borrowings); added to this is the interesting parallels and possibly borrowings from Albanian in Romanian, and Byzantine Greek borrowings into East Romance. Then there's the place of Dalmatian and Istriot in all this, which are clearly mostly closer to Italian, and there are also the Romance elements in Albanian from Vulgar Latin to think about. Bit of a digression, but interesting to consider this when placing the timespan of the evolution of VL. and Proto-Romance. I feel like Western Romance is a bit easier to handle. I do like that there are distinctions made in the reconstructions for the major subtypes of Romance, though. Word dewd544 (talk) 23:49, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

@Word dewd544 I see your point about it being useful to have all such words show up in the 'inherited from Latin' categories. That could also be done by having these categories automatically include Late and Vulgar Latin, which would have the benefit of including descendants of later terms with no clear Classical precedent, like cabanna.

To me 'inherited from' implies 'passed down to the descendant through sound changes'. (I do make an exception for entirely predictable morphological changes, as with Latin légĕre > Spanish leér.) It seems you're working with a different interpretation. I don't have a strong opinion either way here.

Final /m/ in polysyllabic words was dropped already by the time of Pompeii, at least in the vernacular, and this is certainly reflected in Proto-Romance. It's just a matter of convention to use etymological (faux-Classical) spellings, whatever the actual pronunciation would have been when the term originated. Hence ⟨*linguāticum⟩ for a Proto-Gallo-Romance */lenˈɡʷadʒo/. For *nocem and *nevem, we probably shouldn't give purely Classical spellings (*nucem, *nivem), because the entire point of these reconstructions is to indicate that the first vowel changed in an unpredictable way. But that doesn't mean that the Classicizing convention has to be entirely abandoned by dropping final ⟨m⟩ from the lemmas. The entries do include pronunciations (*/ˈnɔdze/, */ˈnɛβe/) that make it clear that there is no actual /m/.

Incidentally, I was able to find several examples of a nominative singular neus in Old Occitan. For instance:

can lo glatz e·l frechs e la neus / s'en vai e torna la chalors

'when the ice, cold, and snow / leave and warmth returns'

It seems, then, that *nevis and presumably *nocis can indeed be lemmatized, although all of the modern Romance forms reflect the accusatives anyway, so I'd still prefer to lemmatize the latter. Then again, the same considerations apply to practically all of our reconstructed nouns. Perhaps here too we can ignore the amicus/amicum type and focus on the various pars/partem types, which would allow for a convenient symmetry in our Romance etymology sections.

As for the chronology, our 'Vulgar Latin' is a catch-all for anything reconstructable to Proto-Romance or any subsequent stage. I personally would estimate ca. 300 for Proto-Romance, ca. 600 for Proto-Italo-Western Romance, and ca. 750 for Proto-Gallo-Romance and Proto-Ibero-Romance, but none of that is set in stone, and the validity of the reconstructions themselves is not unquestionable. Still, they provide a good excuse for adding pronunciations reflecting the latest common form of Romance cognates.

I see Balkan Romance as having decisively split off with the Slavic invasions, so towards the end of the sixth century. I don't know enough about that branch to add reconstructed Proto-Balkan-Romance pronunciations, but I may once I do. Other than the obvious front vowel merger (/ɪ, e/ > /e/), I think there was also intervocalic /l/ > /r/, degemination, /β/ > /v/ (lost in intervocalic position), and a second wave of palatalization (as with Latin quid > */ked/ > Proto-BR */tʃe/). Your expertise would be helpful for establishing the full picture. Nicodene (talk) 09:53, 6 July 2022 (UTC)

Ah, interesting find with the Old Occitan neus there. It seems these retained nominative reflecting forms are found mostly in Gallo-Romance (see most of the examples in Old Occitan or Old French), and a few in Italian, but not many at all in Ibero-Romance. And yes, I see that the Classical spelling for the VL. recons is simply a convention now, although one that may confuse more casual viewers since the spelling is different. But we have to settle on something, and there is of course no perfect solution, so it's as good as any I suppose. I just hope we don't get too much resistance from others in the policy discussions.

As for the Proto-Romance dating, you mean 300 to include the situation with so-called "Island Romance / Sardinian", right? I also agree something in the late 6th century would make sense for the split of Balkan Romance, whether it happened north or south of the Danube and in Roman territory. I guess that's not as important to this particular question. Brought it up since the other Romance languages all had the benefit of being geographically contiguous with each other and thus experienced common innovations and developments in their features for a longer time. The Slavic (along with other migratory people like Bulgars/Avars) invasions probably eroded the Latin presence in the rest of the Balkans and caused that geographical gap. Anyway I'd be glad to help where necessary; I was bringing more of a historical perspective on things there, rather than a purely linguistic one. I'm aware of the phonological shifts in BR but am uncertain as to the timing, since Romanian is only first attested in the early 16th century, after most of those already happened.

Finally, I guess I was thinking of inherited as something in Romance that came from any form of spoken Latin via a popular and organic route (oral transmission), but I can see the usefulness of viewing it as just the passing down of actual words through sound changes over time, and distinguishing VL. innovations and creations from Classical Latin attested forms. If we can indeed have all the Latin category include the Late and Vulgar Latin ones, that would be great and I would be all for it. I think I mentioned this before and people agreed, but nothing was done about it. I'm not the most technical when it comes to modifying the code and creating templates and such, so I would need help on that from others. Word dewd544 (talk) 18:03, 6 July 2022 (UTC)

@Word dewd544 I have yet to see, or write, a comprehensive proposal to this effect, but yes, roughly 300 CE is the date one arrives at when comparing the timing of sound changes reflected in Proto-Romance (loss of phonemic vowel length, assibilation of /tj/, etc.) to the timing of ones not reflected in it (complete merger of /ɪ/ with /e/, assibilation of /k, ɡ/ before front vowels, etc.). That fits more or less with what Mensching & Remberger found, namely that it 'seems that the Latin of Sardinia was not significantly different from that spoken elsewhere until at least the end of the third century AD' (Oxford guide to the Romance languages, p. 270).

----

It is unfortunate for our purposes that Latin literacy was lost in the interior of the Balkans for the better part of a millennium.

----

In theory that distinction is something relevant to any language with a known ancestor, so perhaps a general Beer Parlour discussion is in order. Nicodene (talk) 10:13, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

"Padanian" Romance Grouping

Hi, so I see that it can be tricky to group Romance languages, particularly the Italian ones, in a consistent way since there are different views on where each belongs or which family even exists. I'm talking about Venetian, Gallo-Italian, Rhaeto-Romance, Italo-Dalmatian, etc. on the Descendants pages. Is Padanian an actual linguistic term, or rather more of a regional term (it's something I've heard mostly in the context of Northern Italian nationalism and separatism)? It looks like the grouping is more of an areal one than strictly based on linguistic characteristics, although of course some notable features are shared among the members you're listing. I'm not against it per se but I can see how some people may eventually object to this if it becomes used more widely in entries. As you know, there's never any perfect solution for these things. Word dewd544 (talk) 17:06, 16 July 2022 (UTC)

Hi @Word dewd544.

Yes it is unfortunate that the name is also used by a political movement. I happened to use it because it was chosen by Geoffrey Hull (author of The Linguistic Unity of Northern Italy and Rhaetia, 2 vols). I am not particularly attached to it and am open to any alternative, even a simple 'North Italian' or such.

There is actually a discussion on Romance classification at the Information Desk, so perhaps we can continue there.

Best,

Nicodene (talk) 17:16, 16 July 2022 (UTC)

Diaereses on Old French titles

I saw -ëiz and derivates (nice work btw). I thought we treated them as alt spellings of the diaeresis-less pages, or at least with {{U:fro:diaeresis}} at the end (WT:AFRO). IMO the best option is to just have them on the headword and not have to deal with alt forms (like in jeun) and then ask people to make the templates strip the diaereses away in the links.

Unrelated question, wouldn't the archaic pronuciation be /aˈðits/? I think I read somewhere that the /a/ became /ə/ because of the hiatus, so after the fall of /ð/. Catonif (talk) 10:52, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

Hi @Catonif

Thank you. I'll see if I can change the entries that I have created accordingly.

As for the pronunciation of the ending, by 'archaic' I mean the pronunciation indicated by the spelling ⟨ediz⟩, which I have also labelled 'archaic'. I am not aware of ⟨e⟩ ever standing for /a/ in Old French, except before /n/. That said, your /aˈðits/ certainly represents the immediate preceding stage (pre-literary). Nicodene (talk) 05:35, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

For instance, Robert Hall provides /petʃәˈðour/ for the descendant of Latin peccātōrem in 'Old Northern French', as he calls it (in Proto Romance Phonology, p. 246).

Mildred K. Pope provides several examples, for instance /armәˈðyrә/ < armātūra (in From Latin to French, p. 122).

Scholars are often at odds regarding details of Old French pronunciation, but this is not one of the points of disagreement.

What I think you are remembering is ëage < äage < *aetāticum, where the hiatus resulting from a loss of /ð/ did in fact result in the first /a/ turning to /ә/, presumably via dissimilation. Nicodene (talk) 06:12, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

So /a/ becomes /ə/ even while /ð/ is still there, that's interesting. You seem to know a lot and have a lot of sources, do you think you can (maybe, one day...) put up something at AP:Old French pronunciation? For now the ^(key) thingy just links to Wikipedia. About diaereses, WT:AFRO#Spellings and AP:Old French spellings could also be revised, I'm not sure altforms are the best way to deal with them. Anyways, those are long term problems we can ignore for now. From the /petʃәˈðour/ I see the /e/ remains intact, while on secherece and pescherez it's /ɛ/, is it because there's a later lowering? Catonif (talk) 12:00, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

@Catonif I might, yes. Incidentally, the archaic/classical/late division that I set up for -eiz could work for our other entries as well, with the 'classical' spellings serving as lemmas, the others as alt-forms, per a suggestion once made by @Ser be etre shi.

As for the pronunciation, a consistent archaic/classical/late division requires having a clear idea of what each label means. For instance, should 'classical' reflect a point when /en/ had already shifted to /an/? (I would say yes.) Pope provides a detailed chronology of sound changes by period (From Latin to French, pp. 152–177), and Einhorn provides a rough sketch as well (Old French: A concise handbook, pp. 3–10), which we may use for reference. The latter author takes the central Old French of the late twelfth century as 'standard', which fits well with the 'classical' that I had in mind.

As for the lowering of /e/ to /ɛ/ in closed syllables, it appears to have happened 'in the course of the twelfth century' (Pope, p. 209). Granted, Pope specifies that this applies to 'tonic' /e/, i.e. stressed, but I imagine that secondary stress (ˌpescheˈrez, ˌsecheˈrez), plus analogy with pesche 'fishing' and seche 'dry', would have made it apply to the words in question as well. I will have to investigate this further, along with other questions. Nicodene (talk) 23:10, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for taking the time to explain these things to me! I will be looking forward to your fruitful contributions then. Catonif (talk) 06:50, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

Edit-warring

Greetings, intraday edit-warring such as that at pluo is unproductive. Both parties keep on reverting, edit history gets dirty and nothing gets solved. --Dan Polansky (talk) 17:04, 25 September 2022 (UTC)

Deleted reconstructions

Can you fix the incoming links at Reconstruction:Latin/eo, Reconstruction:Latin/ioco, Reconstruction:Latin/minare, Reconstruction:Latin/mino, and Reconstruction:Latin/morio? Ultimateria (talk) 04:00, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

Also Reconstruction:Latin/plovere and Reconstruction:Latin/plovo. Ultimateria (talk) 04:11, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

@Ultimateria Done, except that I have left the links from Appendix:Vulgar Latin Swadesh list. That page is riddled with errors, to the point that it may be best to just scrap it. Nicodene (talk) 09:56, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

Schwa

Hi, please be careful to use the IPA schwa "ə", not the Cyrillic letter "ә", in IPA transcriptions. Thanks! —Mahāgaja · talk 09:11, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

Romance descendants of Latin fetus

Do you think the Romance substantive descendants of 'fetus', many of them pertaining to sheep, actually derive from a nominalized VL form of the adjective, meaning "pregnant, productive, fruitful, or having recently given birth" as we have currently them listed? Or do they instead come straight from the nominative meaning "young, offspring, progeny"? I think at least the Balkan Romance group seems to come more directly from that. Which is why I want to move the descendants to that section rather than the adjective. Obviously the more recent borrowings of "fetus" come from the noun as well, but we can keep those separated. Word dewd544 (talk) 15:52, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

Hi @Word dewd544.

Thank you for bringing this up- I'm not sure why I'd moved all the (inherited) Romance masculine nouns under the Latin adjective. Agreed that Romanian făt, etc. derive directly from the Latin noun.

Incidentally, the feminine noun fēta is apparently attested in Latin, so that'll need an entry. So too will *fētōnem, which has descendants all across France. I'll sort this out soon. Nicodene (talk) 14:30, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Is niru even a Sicilian word?

Hi, I saw that you added niru among the Sicilian variants of "black". May I ask the source of this variant? --Scorpios90 (talk) 05:43, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

Hi @Scorpios90,

I didn't.

Best,

- Nicodene (talk) 09:37, 16 December 2022 (UTC)