Marc says: You mention
French chaud. Dutch
kald>koud (Engl.cold)
changed in parallel with French cald->caud-
(later >chaud). Both words have a common origin, I believe,
but opposite meaning.
They are "false friends".
Chaud is from Latin calidus 'hot, warm',
unrelated to Germanic *kalda-. Cold forms a word-family with chill and
cool. They all seem to be related to Latin gelu:
'frost, cold' and gelidus 'icy, cold' (PIE
*g > Gmc *k by Grimm's Law); hence
jelly, gelid, gelatin and
other Romance loans in English. --Piotr
Of course. I read somewhere that both words had a
common origin, but I should have known. But it's a lot easier to ask you than to
think a bit myself. Thanks. --Marc
---------------
A further question is: why did Portugese & esp. French
have the strongest stress, stronger than in other Romance languages? French
could have got its strong stress from the Franconian invaders, but what about
Portugese? Visigoths?? --Marc
Why not? Or some Iberian substrate (Lusitanian?). Of course
strong stress may be a spontaneous development within Portuguese. There doesn't
have to be an external stimulus for everything.
--Piotr
Not for everything, no, but I have the impression that
contacts between languages (mutually unintelligible) & dialects (mutually
intelligible) are often very important in how languages change. Do you think
languages in isolation can remain relatively unchanged for a long time?
--Marc