Sorry that i haven’t been posting much, everyone; life hit me right after i created this community, and now i’m just keeping it alive till someone helps roll the ball with me.
Just found this community. I would like to deeply thank you for posting, wish these posts were more popular or more easy to find.
Thank you, that means a lot ❤️ growing this community is hard, but worth it :)
Latin/Romance fondness of diminutives hitting again…
What happened with the French word is a dime a dozen in Romance philology. Other cases like this are:
- IT orecchia, PT orelha “ear” ← Lat. auricula “little ear”; cf auris “ear”
- IT ginocchio, PT joelho “knee” ← Lat. geniculum “little knee”; cf genu “knee”
- PT ovelha “sheep” ← ouicula “little sheep”; cf ouis “sheep”
- IT muscolo “muscle” ← musculus “little mouse/rat”; cf mus “mouse/rat”
- Lat. stella “star” ← Proto-Italic *stēr-la “little star”; cf Greek astḗr “star”
- Lat. oculus “eye” ← PIE *h₃ókʷ-e-lós “little seer”, “little sighter”; cf Greek ṓps “eye”
I’m listing Italian and Portuguese examples for my own convenience, but they pop up in almost every Romance language.)
Your comments on these posts are always great, i wish i could pin them :)
interesting! French uses the same word for both, “lentille”, and German too, “Linse”
Lente for lens and lenteja for lentil in Spanish
Huh. weirdly enough, lens and linse both have unknown roots (old church slavonic too). They could be from a PIE root, or a complete coincidence.
Who knew lentils are so weird?
Related: Video is the latin verb “video”. “To see”.
Including the term “audio” which means “to hear”
You’re a champion. Subscribed 5eva.
