Re: Pseudo-assimilation, Latin to Spanish

Christian Weisgerber wrote:
Harlan Messinger <hmessinger.removethis@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I came across the expression "in fraganti" in a Spanish newspaper article the other day in a context in which the Latin "in flagrante [delicto]" = "in the act", "red-handed" would have made sense. A Google search shows that this is a very common expression. An interesting metathesis, made more interesting to me by the fact that it was left looking as though it were meant to be Latin. It wasn't just Hispanicized altogether, as "en fraganti" or "infragante", as occurred with Italian "eccetera" from Latin "et cetera". Also, the change of the final "-e" to "-i" is interesting.

Are you sure the -i isn't from the original Latin?

Hey, you're right. I didn't realize that the ablative for third declension adjectives was at variance with the ablative for third declension nouns in this respect. As with the dative, the ending is -i. So it's English that has it wrong. Or maybe it has been shortened to "in flagranti" and then some smart-aleck thought it was being used as a noun and miscorrected it to "flagrante", and it caught on.

Anyway, "in flagrante delicto" gets 101,000 Google hits, while "in flagranti delicto" only gets 536.
.

Loading