Linguistic Miscellany Thread

[Linguoboy]

Does anyone here happen to know whether there is any kind of etymological relation between

1) some dialects of German "Bulette" "a type of ground meat patty", and

2) English "bullet"?

I think they are both from French boulet 'little ball', but I am not sure.

Close; they actually derive from the feminine diminutive (boule being a feminine noun). The contemporary French for "meatballs" is boulettes de viande. Bullet goes back much further, to a Middle or even Old French diminutive form.

[Travis B.]

What I said might have not been precisely accurate, but what is true is that Catalan originated from a small area to the immediate south of Occitania, and then over the following centuries expanded southward into the remainder of present-day Catalonia and into present-day Valencia.

...which pretty well invalidates your speculations about Occitan dialect mixing.

Catalonia wasn't populated from further north; it had been thoroughly latinised in the Roman period. The local romance variety developed in what was and is still Catalan-speaking territory (so-called "Old Catalonia", now divided between France and Spain) and was carried south during the Reconquista in exactly the same way as its sister varieties Aragonese, Castilian, Astur-Leonese, and Galaico-Portuguese.

We do have evidence for large-scale migration from Occitania into Catalonia, but eight centuries later, when the standard form was fixed (and had already incorporated these divergent lexemes).

My point was that Catalan descends from Romance varieties in close contact with what became Occitan, and only later spread south with the Reconquista. Yes, more southerly parts of what became Catalonia and Valencia were Romance-speaking, but they did not speak what became Catalan initially, because the Romance that was spoken there was displaced by Old Catalan, just like it was displaced by other northerly Romance varieties in other parts of Iberia. Old Catalan and Old Navarro-Aragonese had a closer relationship with Old Occitan than did Ibero-Romance.

[jal]

Does anyone here happen to know whether there is any kind of etymological relation between
1) some dialects of German "Bulette" "a type of ground meat patty", and
2) English "bullet"?

I don't happen to know it, but a bit of googling goes a long way...

Etymonline ("bullet"):
"1550s, "cannonball" (a sense now obsolete), from French boulette "cannonball, small ball," diminutive of boule "a ball" (13c.), from Latin bulla "round thing, knob" (see bull (n.2)). The meaning "small ball," specifically a metal projectile meant to be discharged from a firearm, is from 1570s."

German Wiktionary ("Bulette"):
"übernommen vom französischen boulette → fr (Fleischbällchen), der Verkleinerungsform von boule → fr (Kugel); das Wort Bulette wurde von den aus Frankreich stammenden Hugenotten in Berlin und der Mark Brandenburg eingeführt"

So they're both from "small ball" in French. The French must've had pretty big balls to call cannonballs "small".

EDIT: I see that Linguoboy had already answered.


JAL

[jal]

My point was that Catalan descends from Romance varieties in close contact with what became Occitan, and only later spread south with the Reconquista.

I would figure that before reconquistas and whatnot, the Romance languages formed just one big dialect continuum?


JAL

[Raholeun]

some dialects of German "Bulette" "a type of ground meat patty"

As a sidenote, there's also the delectable expression "jemandem eine Bulette ans Knie labern" ("to talk someone's ears off", source) of which I'd like to know the provenance.

[jal]

As a sidenote, there's also the delectable expression "jemandem eine Bulette ans Knie labern" ("to talk someone's ears off", source) of which I'd like to know the provenance.

It seems to be a variation of the general template [meat dish + body part].


JAL

[Raholeun]

It seems to be a variation of the general template [meat dish + body part].

Nice. I will import that idiomatic template and coin "наговорить кому-то котлету на колено" and "iemand een kroket aan de knie kletsen ~ iemand een Kwekkeboom aan de neus kwekken."

[Raphael]

Thank you, everyone!

[jal]

Nice. I will import that idiomatic template and coin "наговорить кому-то котлету на колено" and "iemand een kroket aan de knie kletsen ~ iemand een Kwekkeboom aan de neus kwekken."

Lol, I'm going vegetarion: iemand een kaassoufflé het oor kletsen :D


JAL

[Travis B.]

My point was that Catalan descends from Romance varieties in close contact with what became Occitan, and only later spread south with the Reconquista.

I would figure that before reconquistas and whatnot, the Romance languages formed just one big dialect continuum?

One thing to remember is that Catalan and Occitan have always been very close together, with Catalan being closer to Occitan than to Ibero-Romance; even up to the 19th century Catalan and Occitan were seen as being varieties of the same language. The idea that Catalan ought to be grouped with Ibero-Romance is more just geopolitics than actual linguistics.

[Linguoboy]

My point was that Catalan descends from Romance varieties in close contact with what became Occitan, and only later spread south with the Reconquista.

I would figure that before reconquistas and whatnot, the Romance languages formed just one big dialect continuum?

One thing to remember is that Catalan and Occitan have always been very close together, with Catalan being closer to Occitan than to Ibero-Romance; even up to the 19th century Catalan and Occitan were seen as being varieties of the same language. The idea that Catalan ought to be grouped with Ibero-Romance is more just geopolitics than actual linguistics.

The idea that Catalan and Occitan were "varieties of the same language" is also based more on geopolitics than actual linguistic fact. 19th-century Catalan nationalism romaniticised the Middle Ages, emphasised Catalan literary achievements of the Troubadour era, and played up the closeness of Catalan and Occitan language and culture as a counterbalance to Spanish centralism. The "dialect continuum" model is a more accurate representation of the linguistic reality--or was until the relatively recent loss of dialect diversity due to Castilian cultural hegemony. The main reason why Catalan contrasts so strongly with Castilian is that the intermediate variety, Navarro-Aragonese, has been all but extinguished.

One thing that's striking to me about the model of "Ibero-Romance" is that attempts to define it end up highlighting how divergent Castilian is among Western Romance varieties. Catalan and Portuguese actually share a lot of phonological similarities in contrast to the progressive nature of Spanish (with its diphthongisation, backing of shibilants, lack of falling diphthongs, universal retention of coda /n/, etc.).

[Travis B.]

From doing a bit of reading, apparently Aragonese (the last surviving dialects descended from the medieval Navarro-Aragonese) also groups closer with Catalan and Occitan in many ways than it does with Castilian, and the common idea that it is a "Spanish dialect" is akin to the idea that Low Saxon is a set of "German dialects". But yes, characterizing "Ibero-Romance" is skewed by that the most prominent Ibero-Romance language, Castilian, is probably the most atypical of them all.

[Linguoboy]

From doing a bit of reading, apparently Aragonese (the last surviving dialects descended from the medieval Navarro-Aragonese) also groups closer with Catalan and Occitan in many ways than it does with Castilian

But you know damn well how arbitrary this is. Any sorting of varieties into greater abstractions invariably involves attaching more importance to some features than others. Most of the phonological commonalities between Aragonese and Catalan, for instance, are shared retentions rather than shared innovations, and many of those are common to Portuguese as well (e.g. inherited initial /f/, preservation of /dʒ/).

[Raphael]

This discussion makes me wonder: is Catalan, on the whole, closer to Castilian or closer to standard French?

[Darren]

This discussion makes me wonder: is Catalan, on the whole, closer to Castilian or closer to standard French?

Impressionistically, closer to Castillian. Genetically probably closer to French - it fits within a very very wide definition of Gallo-Romance.

[MacAnDàil]

In between Catalan and French, there is Occitan, which is probably the language Catalan is closest to.

[Travis B.]

This discussion makes me wonder: is Catalan, on the whole, closer to Castilian or closer to standard French?

Impressionistically, closer to Castillian. Genetically probably closer to French - it fits within a very very wide definition of Gallo-Romance.

This is probably because while Castilian is divergent within western Romance, French (and Oïl in general) is even more divergent overall, obscuring any genetic closeness.

[jal]

Of course, "Occitan" isn't a single language, nor is "French", nor is "Catalan" if not narrowly defined. Like I said, they were a language continuum, but standardization and active discouragement of use have killed off a lot of dialects. So I think this whole discussion is a bit moot.


JAL

[Travis B.]

Of course, "Occitan" isn't a single language, nor is "French", nor is "Catalan" if not narrowly defined. Like I said, they were a language continuum, but standardization and active discouragement of use have killed off a lot of dialects. So I think this whole discussion is a bit moot.

One thing to remember is that "French" is more splitter-oriented and was historically subject to the use of "dialect" in an almost pejorative fashion, hence why we now refer to "Oïl languages", while "Occitan" is more lumper-oriented and a similarly wide range of variation has been included within "Occitan". (The term "dialect" appears to be less pejorative in the context of Occitan than in the context of Oïl.) Of course, this is all politics.

In the case of "Catalan" we get supporters of the use of Catalan favoring lumping dialects in Catalonia, Valencia, and the Balearic Islands all under the label of "Catalan" while we get supporters of the use of Castilian claiming that, say, dialects in Valencia are a separate language "Valencian" from the "Catalan" spoken in Catalonia in an effort to undermine the use of Catalan as a language. Again, this is politics rather than linguistics.

[Linguoboy]

This discussion makes me wonder: is Catalan, on the whole, closer to Castilian or closer to standard French?

Impressionistically, closer to Castillian. Genetically probably closer to French - it fits within a very very wide definition of Gallo-Romance.

As someone who speaks all three languages, I have to say that contemporary Standard Catalan is definitely more similar to Castilian. Phonologically, there are no front rounded or nasal vowels, medial voiced stops are approximated, /v/ and /b/ merge in Central dialects, and word stress is distinctive. Morphologically, Catalan is pro-drop, lacks disjunctive pronouns, and maintains a robust distinction between a (periphrastic) simple past and a perfect. Lexically it's closer, too, which you can tell at a glance.

Let's illustrate this with the old UDHR Article 1:

Tous les êtres humains naissent libres et égaux en dignité et en droits. Ils sont doués de raison et de conscience et doivent agir les uns envers les autres dans un esprit de fraternité.

Tots els éssers humans neixen lliures i iguals en dignitat i en drets. Són dotats de raó i de consciència, i han de comportar-se fraternalment els uns amb els altres.

Todos los seres humanos nacen libres e iguales en dignidad y derechos y, dotados como están de razón y conciencia, deben comportarse fraternalmente los unos con los otros.