Re: [tied] husk

From: m_iacomi
Message: 26491
Date: 2003-10-16

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen wrote:

> If ospa has that meaning in Polish, then that's it. No point
> in prolonging the discussion, but strange how alternatives can
> suggest themselves. I'm sure one can learn from that.

OK. Anyway, it would still be useful I think to clear out some
points from one of your previous messages

> On Thu, 16 Oct 2003, m_iacomi wrote:
>
>>> But if there is a Romanian word hoaspã 'husk, pod', I find it
>>> pretty obvious that it is from Latin hospes, -item 'host'.
>>> The semantic development would be much as in German Patrone
>>> 'cartridge', ultimately some form of Latin patro:nus. The h-
>>> would be a learned restoration.
>>
>> It can't be. Between lost of aspiration (Ist century BC) and
>> reinstance of a similar phoneme supported by Slavic words there
>> are at least some seven centuries, it is fairly impossible that
>> Romance-speaking people have had some vague idea about an initial
>> /h/ over that time and restore it in an unique Latin inherited
>> word
>
> That is no obstacle; many French words have spellings of this
> nature.

With respect to Romanian, French is slightly different. While an
/h/ has been for a short period reinstated in Proto-French (due
to Germanic superstrate, as did the Slavic superstrate in Romanian),
it soon dissapeared from pronunciation. There is no instance in
which written "h" has some phonetical impact (except, of course,
most of newer loanwords which are pronounced without "liaison" -
as in "les hongrois" [le o~grwa], not [lezo~grwa], but the rule
is not very strict).
The main difference between French (and by the same token, all
Western Romance) and Romanian is that there was not a continuous
tradition of writing a correct Latin language in the Eastern part
of the linguistical Romania: for many centuries in a row, Balkan
Romance speakers (north of Jirecek line, having actually taken part
in birth of Romanian people -- not those few making literature in
Constantinople, outnumbered by Greek speakers) were not literate.
And when they started again to write, it was neither in their own
language nor with Latin script; the language of culture was not
Latin but "Slavonic" (that is CS). So they had no contacts with
written Latin for a very long time, the "spelling traditions" were
only related to Cyrillic script used (and they undoubtedly were
present), not to a Language known only by very few among educated
people. You cannot infer a spelling tradition for "hoaspã" from
Latin (with "h") when the word was written up to the mid-1800's
as "xwac..." in Cyrillic script.
Another important difference between Romanian and the other
Romance is its' isolation. While Western Romance formed a kind of
continuous geographical entity, allowing to some extent a lot of
reciprocal influences, the interaction among (Proto-)Romanian and
Western Romania has been essentially inexistent for more than 12
centuries. These features explain the individuality and originality
of Romanian with respect to the other Romances; corollary, they
hint out that one cannot automatically apply general considerations
valid for Western Romances to Romanian and expect to fit at 100%.

> I do not think Latin has been an unknown language in the Balkans
> at any time.

If you speak about upper-class cured Latin, that existed only in
Byzance, for some time. Vernacular Latin turned into Romance and
further into Romanian without interacting with that extinguishing
court Latin.

-----------

Piotr Gasiorowski wrote:

> I've even seen <hospa> as an actual spelling in Old Polish
> (referring to smallpox, to be sure, not to husk, but the
> etymology is the same). A prothetic glottal glide was quite
> common in older Polish; I'm not sure, however, if it can be
> proposed for the hypothetical Slavic source of <hoaspã>.

It could be. Polish prothetic glide is not compulsory, there
are some Romanian words who can get an expressive initial /h/
"just for fun" which can make it in some cases -- see "harap"
for "arap" (`Arabian`, `Black skinned`) < Bulg. arap; also
some discussion I made during the thread on "admissarius". Of
course, having a glide would have strongly favoured realization
of the word in Romanian as "hoaspã".
The diphthongation of stressed /o/ is regular and was pretty
active about a century ago; now it looks slightly deprecated
for new words. So, from this point of view, there is no problem:
phonetics is OK.

... and in answer to Alex:

>> it won't explain Ukarinian "hoska" and Romanian "huSti".
>
> I had no such ambition. I only wanted to explain <hoaspã>.

You don't have to explain also unrelated words. Romanian word
is actually "huscã" ("huSti" is the plural), and is a regional
term meaning `salt extracted by boiling salted water`, then by
extension `salt block`. Case closed.

Regards,
Marius Iacomi