From: Adam Walker (carrajena@yahoo.com)
Date: Sun May 18 2003 - 21:33:17 EST
I found a nice site some months a go called MAGUS* --
short for Multilingual animal Glossary of Unveiled
Synonyms -- which had long lists of bird and animal
spiecies listed with their names in a bazillion
languages. I only jotted down material that seemed
relevant to my Carrajena project. Today I got it out
and started looking at the bird species to see what
birds I should have. Some names are pretty much
consistant across the Romance langs and obviously
derive directly from the Latin name (or appropriate VL
modiication there of). Other birds are named from a
diffeerent root in every other language. Why on earth
would "duck", for example, derive from so many
different sources while "stork" would be consistant
across every Romlang except Romanian and even appear
in Maltese which isn't a Romlang?
***Duck***
Latin anas
Italian antara
Friulian raze
Ladin anera
Romansh anda
Sardinian craccicciola, pabidoi, anadre, anadi
Romanian rat,a
French canard
Occitan guit, rit
Catalan a\nec
Spanish a/nade
Galician pato
Portuguese marreco
Romany ratsoy, ratsa (cf. Fri., Rom.)
Maltese papra
Greek papia
Where you've got, what?, eight different roots? With
Friulian, Romanian and Occitan? sharing a root with
Romany?
***Stork***
Latin ciconia
Italian cicogna
Friulian cicogne
Ladin zicogna
Romansh cicogna
Sardinian cic?nnia, tziconna
Romanian barza-alba~
French cigogne
Occitan cigohna
Catalan cigonya
Spanish cigu:en~a
Galician cegon~a
Portuguese cegonha
Romany kokosturko
Maltese cikonja
Greek pelargos
Where you have ALL of them from the same source except
the innovation in Romanian, plus a borrowing of the
term into Maltese. What makes this root so much more
robust than anas?
And then there's
***Goose***
Latin anser
Italian oca
Friulian ocje
Ladin aucia
Romansh auca
Sardinian coca, oca
Romanian ga^sca
French oie
Occitan auca
Catalan oca
Spanish a/nsar
Galician ganso
Portuguese ganso
Romany gansako, papin
Maltese wizza
Greek stahtochina
Where almost the whole set shares the same VL root
with only Spanish haveing the CL term and one(?)
borrowing shared by Galician, Portugues and
Romanian(?) and borrowed into Romany.
Is there any empiracle reasoning which can be applied
to htese various cases?
ADam
*Sorry I didn't jott down the URL but I'm sure a quick
google'll find it.
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