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Why is French using those latines? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Gomorritis Tetraglot Groupie Netherlands Joined 4279 days ago 91 posts - 157 votes  Speaks: Spanish*, English, Catalan, French Studies: Greek, German, Dutch | Message 9 of 10 17 May 2013 at 11:43am | IP Logged | ||
In Spanish, with the very same words: estrella - estelar ventana - defenestración aire - aeropuerto iglesia - eclesiástico 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4640 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 10 of 10 17 May 2013 at 12:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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This is a common feature of all the Romance languages. It might be less obvious in Italian because the phonetic changes from Latin have been less dramatic, but also in this language you have e.g. "chiesa" vs. "ecclesiastico".
When in the late Middle Ages/early Renaissance it became acceptable to write in "volgare", as Dante called it, scholars, in particular theologians, would naturally look to Latin (and to a lesser extent to Greek) to express certain ideas, so hence the use of Latin forms for words that in particular express abstract theological, philosophical or legal concepts. One also finds that these words, coined on the Latin original, may have travelled between the Romance-speaking languages, in the sense that a term first coined in e.g. Italian will then have been adopted by French, slightly adapting the ortography to fit French spelling (like the ending -ico becoming -ique), or from French to Spanish (e.g. words ending in "-age" becoming "-aje", like in "maquillage" giving "maquillaje" in Spanish.) As Cabaire mentions, you see the same phenomenon in English, obviously due to the strong influence of French over English. That is also why English has Anglo-Saxon words for the living animal, e.g. "pig" and "sheep", and French/Latin words for the dead animal on your plate, "pork" and "mutton". 1 person has voted this message useful |
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