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On 2009-09-29 Adam Walker wrote:
But in short not even Meyer-L�bke knew!It should be noted that Romance words for 'child, boy' generally are a bog of slangy dysphemisms for 'rascal, urchin' anyway. (compare English _urchin_ itself!)This is interesting. The C-a word for "youth" is rather odd -- chestu /'tS)eStU/, which derives from caestus, the Latin for "boxing glove," or at least, that's what the C-an philologists claim.
Entirely in character, apparently! I'm still struggling with the words for 'small, child, boy, girl, son, daughter' in Rhodrese. Maybe 'girl' is _pecine_ < *PITTJINA -- originally the feminine of an adjective --, while _pe��u_ 'boy' and _pe�_ 'child' are back-formations from this, while 'small' is _petx_, from the variant *PIKKJUS. 'Daughter' is _fegle_ and 'son' is _fegl�o_ < FILIOLUS. FILIUS was discontinued because the plurals FILIOS and FILIAS merged. Maybe 'daughter' is _fegline_ while _el fegl_ is 'the child (of one's body)', but that's kind of too neat! FWIW there's _enfant_ also, meaning 'baby'. BTW I decided to bloggify my old writeup on the _pik_ words: <http://blog.melroch.se/language/etymology-pequeno-and-cognates/> /BP 8^)> -- Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch atte melroch dotte se ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "C'est en vain que nos Josu�s litt�raires crient � la langue de s'arr�ter; les langues ni le soleil ne s'arr�tent plus. Le jour o� elles se *fixent*, c'est qu'elles meurent." (Victor Hugo)