On Sat, 19 Jul 2003 15:15:47 +0200, alex <
alxmoeller@...> wrote:
>Did ever Latin speakers used "verus" for meaning cousin with?
>And it cannot be the same meaning. In the same manner the horse of you
>is your own horse, very true, this does not means that the horse has to
>be called "verus" just because is true, it is your horse.
Frater in Latin could denote a real brother, but also half brother (same
adoptive parent), cousin (on the mother's side), brother-in-law, friend,
brother-in-arms, lover, colleague or fellow human being. With
Christianity, it also came to mean correligionary and friar. That's why
the Iberian languages came to use <germanus> "true" (short for <frater
germanus> "true bother") instead of <fratre>.
>A "real cousin" is indeed the translation " consobrinus verus", but here
>"verus" means simply "real" and the denomination of "cousin" is the one
>expected, namely "consobrinus".
>Does it mean that just Albanian kept the Latin word "consobrinus" for
>"cousin" and no other Romance kept that word?
Where do you think cousin (Fr.), cosí (Cat.), cugino (Ita.) come from?
Latin *con-sosr-i:nus > (con)sobri:nus gives Spanish sobrino "nephew" and
Gascon coussourí, Rhaeto-Romance (Engadin) cusdrin, Aromanian cusurin, and
Albanian kushäri. Elsewhere, it was replaced by co(n)sobrinu primu ("first
cousin"). In Castilian and Portuguese this gives <primo> "cousin". In
Abruzzian <kontsuprim&>, Calabrian/Neapolitan <kuntsuprinu>, Basilicata
<k&sprün&>, etc. we have various reductions of *cu(n)su(br)inprímu. In
French, Catalan and standard Italian, these reductions resulted in
*cosinprim(o), besides *cosinsegond(o), out of which a form *cosin(o)
"cousin" was abstracted (> Fr. cousin, Cat. cosí [cosí prim, cosí segon],
Ita. cugino).
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...