Re: Scandinavia and the Germanic tribes such as Goths, Vandals, Angl

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Rick McCallister <gabaroo6958@...> wrote:

>
> --- On Tue, 11/4/08, Brian M. Scott <BMScott@...> wrote:
> . . .
> Note too that we sometimes
> > underestimate the percentage of loans in some other
> > languages. French, for instance, borrowed quite
> > extensively
> > from Latin at various times, but because it's a Romance
> > language, we tend not to notice this.
> >
> . . .
> >
> > Brian
>
> Is there a term for this intra-family borrowing that has made modern

Spanish and Portuguese look closer than their medieval ancestors?

> Both Spanish and Portuguese have flor "flower" but Medieval

Portuguese was fror and chor /Sor/, common in Medieval Spanish and
modern rural Spanish is jlor /hlor/. Spanish and Portuguese borrowed
from one another but also from Catalan, Italian, French and Latin to
such a large degree that lexico-chronology has them splitting c. 1500.
In American Spanish and Portuguese, things got even more muddied
between Spanish and Portuguese to the extent that regional, slang and
rural terms in one language are often the standard terms in the other.

> Slavic languages, I am told, do the same.
> And I imagine Scandinavian problably does the same as well.

Danish/Swedish and Spanish/Portuguese have a trait in commin in their
history: they were for a considerable time part of one political
entity. Hence the partial convergence, and later divergence.


Torsten