Re: michelle bachelet -- how does she pronounce her name?

On Fri, 28 Oct 2005 01:25:35 GMT, John Atkinson
<johnacko@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
<news:j6f8f.2547$Hj2.2044@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> in
sci.lang:

[...]

> "Miguel Carrasquer" <mcv@xxxxxx> wrote...

>> "Fig" is <higo> < Lat. ficum.

> As a gardener, I know the tree is Ficus. I suppose ficum
> was the fruit of the ficus, no?

The fruit was also ficus. (The tree was distinguished as
<arbor ficaria>, whence Sp. <higuera>.) Late Latin sound
changes reduced Latin to a two-case system; here the
nominative would have been something like *ficos or *figos,
and the oblique would have been *fico or *figo. (I'm too
lazy to try to sort out the timing.) As with French, the
modern noun comes from the oblique case, which is most
easily (and conventionally) derived from the Latin
accusative.

Brian
.