Register  Login  Active Topics  Maps  

Greek’s relationship to Romance Languages

 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room Post Reply
22 messages over 3 pages: 1 2
blasius
Newbie
Italy
Joined 4997 days ago

14 posts - 19 votes
Studies: English

 
 Message 17 of 22
22 August 2010 at 8:38pm | IP Logged 
ellasevia wrote:
I'm not entirely sure, but I think that Ancient Greek did have an infinite. With connections to Romanian in specific, I studied Romanian for a month or two last year and I have a Romanian friend and as she was teaching me some words, I was very surprised to learn that quite a few of them were identical or very similar to the Greek counterparts. They're probably just loanwords, but it was still interesting. The only ones I can remember off the top of my head right now are ντουλάπι/dulap, φούστα/fustă, and παλτό/palton, but I remember several others, including one I tried to find just now which was a Romanian word which I thought meant "slipper" and was quite close to the Greek παντόφλα.


Oddly enough, "pantofla" exists in Italian too ("pantofola"), its meaning being the same as in Romanian, slipper.
1 person has voted this message useful



Sennin
Senior Member
Bulgaria
Joined 5823 days ago

1457 posts - 1759 votes 
5 sounds

 
 Message 18 of 22
22 August 2010 at 10:20pm | IP Logged 
blasius wrote:
ellasevia wrote:
I'm not entirely sure, but I think that Ancient Greek did have an infinite. With connections to Romanian in specific, I studied Romanian for a month or two last year and I have a Romanian friend and as she was teaching me some words, I was very surprised to learn that quite a few of them were identical or very similar to the Greek counterparts. They're probably just loanwords, but it was still interesting. The only ones I can remember off the top of my head right now are ντουλάπι/dulap, φούστα/fustă, and παλτό/palton, but I remember several others, including one I tried to find just now which was a Romanian word which I thought meant "slipper" and was quite close to the Greek παντόφλα.


Oddly enough, "pantofla" exists in Italian too ("pantofola"), its meaning being the same as in Romanian, slipper.


Hmm. I suspect a Turkish link here, since all these words also exist in Bulgarian. Modern Greek has as many Turkish loanwords as Bulgarian; dolap (drawer), fusta (skirt), pantof[la] (slipper), all sound distinctly Turkish to my ear. My instinct tells me these are just loanwords in Modern Greek. But that's no proven fact, just my guess :).


1 person has voted this message useful



ellasevia
Super Polyglot
Winner TAC 2011
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 5931 days ago

2150 posts - 3229 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian
Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian

 
 Message 19 of 22
23 August 2010 at 12:39am | IP Logged 
I am also suspecting Turkish here. I come across lots of words in Greek which are unrelated to the Ancient Greek counterparts, and I always suspected Turkish, but my grandmother always denied it. I bet she just doesn't want to admit that the Greeks borrowed anything from the Turks.
1 person has voted this message useful



stelingo
Hexaglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 5621 days ago

722 posts - 1076 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian
Studies: Russian, Czech, Polish, Greek, Mandarin

 
 Message 20 of 22
23 August 2010 at 1:06am | IP Logged 
In Czech the word is pantofle. Pantofla is probably from the French 'pantoufle' which seems to have been derived from Old Italian and possibly Medieval Greek according to this site:

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/pantofle


1 person has voted this message useful



Aquila123
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Norway
mydeltapi.com
Joined 5095 days ago

201 posts - 262 votes 
Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Italian, Spanish
Studies: Finnish, Russian

 
 Message 21 of 22
16 September 2010 at 12:04am | IP Logged 
There are many Greek loanwords in the Romance languages.

In the last 2000 years, Greek has also evolved in parallel ways with the Romance languages.

For example has Greek and all these languages developed fairly complex verbal groups consisting of the main verb preceeded by a string of prefix-like enclitic pronouns, adverbs and auxiliaries - sometimes called verb-conjunctive elements.

However, the Romance languages have mostly lost the neuter gender, but Greek has kept it. (Italian still has neuter gender as a minor category, but it is not called so, Rumenian have the same feature but there it is actually called neuter gender).

And Greek has kept some case inflection in nouns, where the Romance languages have lost it, except Rumenian that have a two-case system (nom/acc - gen/dat).

And Greek has lost the infinitive, but the Romance lamguages have not.


Edited by Aquila123 on 23 September 2010 at 3:39pm

1 person has voted this message useful



Ari
Heptaglot
Senior Member
Norway
Joined 6371 days ago

2314 posts - 5695 votes 
Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese
Studies: Czech, Latin, German

 
 Message 22 of 22
16 September 2010 at 3:33am | IP Logged 
"Slippers" in Swedish is "tofflor". Seems to be a very common loan word. I guess it was a fancy new technology that spread over the world like wildfire!


3 persons have voted this message useful



This discussion contains 22 messages over 3 pages: << Prev 1 2

If you wish to post a reply to this topic you must first login. If you are not already registered you must first register


Post ReplyPost New Topic Printable version Printable version

You cannot post new topics in this forum - You cannot reply to topics in this forum - You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum - You cannot create polls in this forum - You cannot vote in polls in this forum


This page was generated in 0.3320 seconds.


DHTML Menu By Milonic JavaScript
Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved
No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization.