alex wrote:
>I gave these examples just for showing that you cannot derive
>in a regular way the "fãrtat" from "fratris" and "suratã" from
>"sororis"
fârtat (also spelled fîrtat; fãrtat, i.e. with [&] instead
of [I] is a mere variant) and surata aren't directly derived
from the Latin counterparts (BTW accusative fratrem).
These are derived from the Romanian frate (1 frate,
2 fratzi) and sorã (1 sorã, 2 surori) by suffixation
with "-at". It is this suffixation that imposes the slight
modifications (frat- > fVrt; as for sora- > sura-, you see
that even in the plural [o] of sora gets [u]: surori).
To convince yourself that fârtat and surata don't precede
frate & sora, just read some of the oldest texts in Romanian
to see which of them pop up first and which is more frequent
than the other. Various Bible translations into Romanian
will also show you whether "fârtat" and "surata" were used
or not instead of "frate" and "sora", say, prior to 1800.
>this is why I am talking about loans from Latin
Do make a distinction between loans from Latin and
words that are *inherited* from Latin. For example:
des + desime are inherited, while dens + densitate are
neologisms. [dense, density; the 1st one, "des", also
means "frequent/ly, often"]
George
PS: Not everything you find in the vocabulary of the Romanian
peasant can be seen as ancient. Do not neglect the derivation
and word creation mechanisms that are specific to the
Romanian language only -- namely those that virtually have
nothing to do with the Latin language proper.