I’m creating this thread to hopefully promote a bit more activity in the community.
If you want to talk about something Linguistics-related, but for some reason you don’t want to create a new post just for that, feel free to post it here instead.
Removed by mod
But no one hears the m 🤡
Curiously that “m” always loses one leg!
The association with ants is still transparent in a few Romance languages - like, in Spanish hormiga = ant, hormigazón = formication. Sadly Spanish loses the association with “fornigación” (fornication), as this sort of posh word used by the clergy often avoided the /f/→/h/→Ø shift. (It still almost works in Portuguese or in Italian.)
I’ll start with weird etymology trivia, just for fun.
Etymological doublets? Triplets? What about sextuplets, to make the Nakano sisters jealous? Latin ⟨macula⟩ /'ma:kula/ “stain” yielded at least the following words in Portuguese:
⟨mancha⟩ /'maN.ʃa/ (stain)
Inherited word, for what you’d use when you drop ketchup on your white shirt. Likely the result of
- /'ma:kula/→
- */'ma.kla/ (Vulgar Latin)→
- */'ma.gla/→
- */'ma.tʎa/ (likely areal change, as Spanish also underwent it)→
- */'maN.tʎa/ (progressive nasalisation; /N/ stands for the vowel nasalisation, often the language handles it as its own thing) →
- /'maN.tʃa/ (Galician-Portuguese times, with a few Portuguese dialects like Trasmontano still keeping /tʃ/) →
- /'maN.ʃa/ (phonemic form for most modern speakers)
⟨malha⟩ /'ma.ʎa/ (fur stain/spot)
It’s how you’d call those “stains” on a spotted cow (vaca malhada) or a dog (cachorro malhado).
The progressive nasalisation that I mentioned for ⟨mancha⟩ is highly erratic in Portuguese, even if it’s still productive for some people. That likely allowed the forms */'ma.tʎa/ and */'maN.tʎa/ to coexist for until outliving that odd Ibero-Romance */tʎ/.
However, the outcome of /tʎ/ depends on the environment - it affricates to /tʃ/ after consonant (as in ⟨mancha⟩), but simplifies to /ʎ/ in intervocalic position (as in ⟨malha⟩).
⟨mangra⟩ /'maN.gɾa/ (archaic word for mildew)
This word is clearly related to both above, but I’m not sure if it’s an extremely early reborrowing or a dialectal form. Either way, it shows the same /kul/→*/kl/→*/gl/ sequence of sound changes as both above, and then instead of /Cl/→/tʎ/ it goes with /Cl/→/Cɾ/ - rhotacism, historically common in the language, and still productive for some speakers.
⟨mágoa⟩ /'ma.go.a/~/'ma.gwa/ (grief, sorrow)
Semi-erudite borrowing, for things that stain your feelings.
The word was reborrowed late enough to not undergo /kul/→*/gl/, but early enough to see Portuguese intervocalic lenition of /l/→Ø; see ⟨colorem⟩→⟨cor⟩ colour, ⟨calentem⟩→⟨caente⟩→⟨quente⟩ hot for examples of the same phenomenon.
⟨mácula⟩ /'ma.ku.la/ (stain, character flaw)
Erudite borrowing, pronounced somewhat the same as in Latin… well, if you disregard the lack of vowel length and that the vowel qualities are a bit off.
It’s a bit of a posh word. Mostly used for abstract “stains”, or in medical terms.
⟨malha⟩ /'ma.ʎa/ (mesh, [chain]mail)
No, I didn’t list this word twice - it’s likely an etymological doublet with its own homonym.
Likely borrowed laterally from French ⟨maille⟩. Likely old, since French eventually underwent /ʎ/→/j/.