Re: [tied] Re: family ( it was a question...)

Richard Wordingham wrote:

> Classical Latin barely has a word for such a concept. I look
> up 'family' in my pocket dictionary, and I find _domus_ and _gens_.
> _gens_ is the wider family, formally everyone with the same second
> name. The primary meanings of _domus_ are 'house' and 'home'.

thw notion which exprime a wider family in Rom. is "neam" which has a
controversal etymology. Some scholars see it as comming from a Hungarian
word "nyem" with I don't know what a meaning and I very doubt about such
a Hungarian influence.

>
> The original meaning of Latin 'familia' was that which was subject
> to the paterfamilias, thus I find the translation: 'domestics,
> slaves of a household; family property, estate; family, house;
> school, sect'.
>
> As to its usage by Vlachs, _I_ can only speculate. The following
> wild thought has occurred to me. Perhaps Vlach males were expected
> to be able to look after themselves, so when one thought about one's
> family, one was only concerned about one's womenfolk? What's the
> official line?
>
> Richard.

None. There is just the phonetical explanation and the semantical change
is a one showed by Mr Iacomi. For the phonetical explanation they looked
a lot until they found out the Aromanian form "fumealã"; of course "u"
was no problem , important was the "l" in Aromanian for explaining then
familia > femeie in Rom. Actually one need *femeella for getting the
Rom. word from Latin and the "e" should be considered as reconstructed
as analogy of something.

Alex