Re: Lexical differences between Spanish and Portuguese


"Antonio Marques" <m.ap@xxxxxxx> wrote...

Ruud Harmsen wrote:

That would be possible but very unlikely. (cpf)l > ch is very early, (cpf)l > (cpf)r is pre-literary, (cpf)l unchanged is post-medieval.

Every language with any kind of literary tradition has such words, what's special about it?

That there are so many, and that the (cpf)r words are rather common
and everyday words too.

I only asked because I don't think it is 'worse' than in, say, english. Maybe I'm just accustomed to it and assume it's like that in every language.

English has the same three classes. But the equivalent of the middle class -- the semicultismos -- is the Old French words brought over by the Norman invaders. They are at least as common as their Iberian equivalents, but unlike them they are borrowings, not inherited words which haven't undergone the usual changes, and are rarely very similar to the corresponding words from OE with similar meanings.

Russian might be more like Iberian -- there the semicultismos would be the stuff from Old Church Slavonic via the church -- OCS being closely related to proto-East Slavonic, there are likely pairs like in Spanish and Portuguese, consisting of a popular Russian word and a cognate word from OCS which, perhaps, differs only by not having undergone some simple sound changes. Is this indeed so?

The Indo-Aryan languages, in particular Hindi, might be most like the Iberian ones in this. Popular words that have evolved freely, words influenced by Sanskrit, words recently borrowed from Sanskrit, there's lots of each. Though I suspect the overall situation there is messier.

John.


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