Why do so many French words end in a silent x? Cheveux, voix, paix, deux, mieux, faux, doux – the list is endless. There’s a fascinating story behind this x’s – or actually two stories. Click and zoom in on my new graphic to read about medieval abbreviations and imitating Latin:
In step 5 of voix, I tell about latinised spellings. Here you can watch a video I made a few years ago. It features a number of French words that had their spelling latinised in Middle French – including some that luckily didn’t preserve these silent letter additions.
La parola “easy” potrebbe sembrare originariamente inglese, ma, in realtà… deriva dal francese antico aisie, che altro non è che il nostro agevole. Semplicemente, in easy, una grafia piuttosto opaca (com’è uso dell’inglese) rende difficile ad un occhio non esperto risalire all’etimo della parola, che sembrerebbe appunto pienamente germanica, ma che in realtà è romanza (o neolatina, che dir si voglia). Easy fa infatti parte dell’interminabile lista di parole francesi antiche imposte, con tre secoli di dominazione sull’Inghilterra, sull’inglese. Proprio grazie a questo influsso estremamente pervasivo da parte del francese, l’inglese ci risulta oggi, se non altro sul piano lessicale, nettamente più accessibile di altre lingue germaniche come il tedesco o le lingue scandinave. Queste ultime infatti usano da sempre – per motivi di purismo linguistico – materiale pressoché interamente germanico, e quindi interno, per formare il proprio vocabolario, rendendocelo più distante, e quindi harder. Ecco, hard è invece una parola di origine interamente germanica.
Col cavolo che il tedesco o lo svedese hanno qualcosa di simile al difficult dell’inglese. Basta imbattersi in un testo in inglese antico per rimpiangere tutto questo arsenale lessicale tanto gentilmente elargitoci dall’intermediazione francese!
OKAYY so. I'm not a Linguist tm, but I am taking a class in it, which empowered me to see if i could come up with gender-neutral "niece/nephew" that also follows from the same latin roots, since to my knowledge "nibling" doesn't, so it opens an interesting puzzle.
I'm showing my math under the cut, but based on the way niece/nephew evolved I propose navom (NAY-vum) instead.
Okay. If anyone has critiques on my work in a way that doesn't just get us nephew again, please feel free to discuss.
The way I've laid this out is to trace nephew / niece line to get a sense for how transitions happen, and then I go into how I thought through the neuter version.
Step 1:
Both words come from the proto-indo-european (PIE) "nepōts"
nep - ōt - s -> descendant, noun-ifier, singular masculine
Step 2 (masc):
Moving into classical Latin, we get "nepos."
nep - ot - s -> unchanged root, "t" isn't pronounced due to shortened vowel sound and contact with "s", still singular masculine
Step 3 (masc):
Vulgar Latin, which was the precursor to the romance languages saw the word shift to "nepotem"
nep - ot - em -> same root, "t" is back because no more "s", latin endings were leveled/simplified so we get "-em"
Step 4 (masc):
Old French gives us "neveu," which. Big change.
nev - eu -> the "p" softens to "β" then to "v" as was typical moving into romance languages, the "em" nazalized and combined with the preceding "o" to make the "-eu"
Step 5 (masc):
English borrowed the term and adjusted it to our needs, giving us "nephew"
neph - ew -> "v" sound became "f", spelling was adjusted to English standards
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Step 2 (fem):
Latin gave us "neptis"
nep - t - is -> same root, noun-ifier but modified for the i-stem that follows, singular feminine
Step 3 (fem):
Then we get Vulgar Latin "neptia"
nep - t - ia -> same root, same transition, "ia" ending standardized word with other feminine words
Step 4 (fem):
Another big jump. Old French gives us "niece"
nie - ce -> vowel rose from "eh" to "ee" following trends before palatal consonants, "tia" became "tsia" became "ts" became "s" as it palatized
Step 5 (fem):
English, as before, grabbed the term and ran with it. In this case, no changes. We have "niece"
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Step 2 (neu):
Okay so thing with Latin is that people-nouns are inherently binary. So I had to get a bit creative, and look at singular third person neuter endings that *didn't* imply people-ness, and instead implied "concept."
From there, I got Latin "nepomen"
nep - o - men -> base root, non-morpheme connector sound, neuter singular ending
Step 3 (neu):
Vulgar Latin would likely give us "nepome," due to the way people would likely drop the final "n." This is based on parallel patterns of similar words dropping final the "n" in "-men" endings.
Step 4 (neu):
Like with the Old French in nephew/niece, we get some greater phonological shifts. "nep" will become "nev" and the "e" ending will reduce down to near-silence, if not fully disappearing. Thus we would get something like "nevom(e)"
Step 5 (neu):
Here's where English would borrow from Old French. English tends to put the stress on the penultimate syllable, which would be the first one in a two syllable word, which would emphasize it: the "e" sound would become "ay." We'd also drop any residual schwa on the end of the word. Hence, we'd end up with "nevom"
name/word list: botanical terms of medieval england
these are several tree-related words of the anglo-norman language, the form of french brought by conquests and normalized as its own distinct language over generations. some words, as you'll see, are still used or at least recognized today, particularly in modern french; others, not whatsoever.
if you're looking for inspiration for your characters' surnames, first names, or place names, I hope you can find it in this list:
[source]
acinus - hawthorn
alier - mulberry, service tree
arbreille - shrub
aune - alder tree
banastun - bough
baumer - balm tree
boscain - wooded area
boschel - small wooded area
bremel - blackberry bush
ceneler - hawthorn
cenelle - hawthorn
cedre - cedar
chasteine - chestnut tree
cormer - service tree
espinage - thicket of thorns
fier - fig tree
fresne - ash tree
fresnin - of the ash tree
genevre - juniper
helme - elm
linde - linden, limetree
lorme - elm
lynde - linden, limetree
mure - mulberry
raim - branch
raimaille - small branch
ramier - wild, of the woods, branch
ramus - branch
salha - of the willow genus
sarail - of the willow genus
savin - pine
savine - pine
selve - woodland
tillier - linden, limetree
wythinis - area characterized by a group of willow trees, used as a surname
do you think a modern italian speaker would understand medieval french easier than modern?
Hi !
It's an interesting question, I'm not sure I'm qualified to answer accurately but here are a few thoughts that came to mind:
Some elements point towards yes, because it is true that medieval Italian and medieval French shared more grammatical traits. And as I think Italian has evolved less drastically than French since the middle ages, I guess medieval French is at least approachable. French also got standardised later, beginning in the XVIth century with the Pleiade and the fact that it became the official language of France, basically imposing Paris' French to the entire country. Also of note: ancient "provençal" or occitan shared many linguistic traits with Italian and oïl/French languages, but it's not French per se.
On the other hand, many words came to French from Italian and as much as those borrowings started as early as the XIIth century, many of them came later on, during the Renaissance and especially in the later XVIth century when Italianism was very fashionable at the French court. So the vocabulary of Old to Middle French has less common words with Italian than classical and modern French. The grammar of Old French specifically is also closer to Latin, with two cases and several declension classes.
A comparative linguist would probably be more competent to answer this, but these are the elements I thought of :) Hope this helps!
