Re: [tied] Re: Romanian Swadesh list

On Tue, 09 Dec 2003 00:17:45 +0100, g <george.st@...> wrote:

>>But a Swadesh list by convention must be restricted to one dialect (in this
>>case standard Romanian),
>
>Well, then in standard (i.e. ... artificial :-)) Romanian, <femeie> is the
>most common word; otherwise rather <muiere> and... <fumeie> + <fimeie>.
>
>>and give only one form (the most common, "normal" one) per entry.
>
>Yeah, but look at <odorare, annusare>; <craindre, avoir peur>;
><frukta, rädas>; <dividere, separare>; <scindere, partiri>;
><asciutto, secco>; <aguzzo, afillato>; <agudo, afilato>.

"There can be only one..." Ideally, one's choice should not be influenced
by what one is trying to prove with the Swadesh list in the first place.

>> >>person om
>> >
>> >?!?
>>
>>I'm not a native speaker. In Spanish, <hombre> is the general term for man
>>and human being.
>
>That's <om> in Romanian. But Engl. <person> is Rum. <persoana>. (And
><male> is <barbat> in Romanian; <om> gets this meaning only in certain
>cases, yet hardly in the stiffest standard style. :-))

For a non-PC-English Swadesh list, I would choose "man" and "man" over
"man" and "person". For Romanian, I would now choose <bãrbat> and <om>.

>[I mean that these Swadesh lists cannot take into consideration various
>semantic shifts & style (i.e. social & regional aspects), but which are very
>important for showing closeness.

Swadesh lists are just for generating rough statistics (in this case, a
rough statistic that core Romanian is ~95% Romance). They are no
substitute for the real thing.


=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...