29.03.26: Level 1; topic (review); pets [4]; derivatives

Learning is a personal thing, and the aim of the group is to look at the learning of Latin from different perspectives:

Post [1] on pets: focus on vocabulary and meaning

Post [2] on pets: step up and look at some grammar features which I divided: 2 matter at this stage

(1)    mihi est … / habeō…

(2)   1^st / 2^nd declension of nouns

… and one you can keep on ice for later:

(3)   3^rd declension nouns i.e. awareness at this stage

Posts [1] and [2] show a gradual, step-by-step approach using listening, visual association, and minimum interference from English (there is no English in the video) but, if you want to know more, then explanations and links are there.

In another FB group, one member warned a new learner of Latin not to focus only on one book, and I would agree with that: a language has to be approached in different ways.

Words are interesting in themselves, not simply because Cicero put them into sentences; words have biographies, origins, and, in post [3], cultural associations. The more you read about a word, the more it sticks in your head and the more you find out about the people who used them 2000 years ago.

This post looks again at derivatives that have frequently come up in previous posts. You can learn a lot of Latin words by that technique and, in fact, some tricky grammar as [i] – [iii] below illustrate:

[i] serpēns, serpentis > serpent; (adj.) serpentine (pertaining to a snake), and that’s not random – there are truckloads of English derivatives which reflect stem changes in Latin nouns albeit some of them are rare:

[ii] testūdō, testūdinis: tortoise

From the Oxford English Dictionary: fewer than 0.01 occurrences per million words in modern written English – but it’s there:

testudinous: characteristic of a tortoise; as slow as a tortoise

The noun ‘tortoise’ itself is derived from Late Latin tortūca, -ae [1/f]: tortoise, turtle i.e. an alternative for testūdō.

[iii] mūs, mūris: mouse > Engl. deriv. murine: characteristic of a mouse [see also the note below on piscis]

[iv] canis: dog > Engl. deriv. canine

[v] fēlēs: cat > Engl. deriv. feline

[vi] sīmia: monkey > Engl. deriv. simian (adj. pertaining to apes / monkeys)

[vii] avis: bird > Engl. deriv. avine (pertaining to birds); aviary; avian influenza (bird flu); aviation

[viii] passer: sparrow > Engl. deriv. passerine (scientific name for the house sparrow); it's rare, but it exists

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/passerine

[ix] cattus: cat; example of a wanderword, the origins of which are unclear, and variations of it crop in many different languages; one theory is that it found its way into Germanic from Late Latin (the jury’s out on that one)

[x] La: piscis [piskis]; Old English: fisċ [fish]

We have Pisces [fish (pl.)] in astrology,

piscine, a rare English adjective meaning ‘characteristic of a fish’

In archaic English ‘piscine’ is also a straight theft from French piscine meaning swimming pool.

The English word ‘fish’ is not derived from Latin but takes us back to the time when there are no written records, i.e. to Indo-European, a reconstructed language based on the premise that most languages in Europe came from a common source including early Germanic (proto-Germanic) and Latin (proto-Italic). That’s a lengthy topic but it’s enough to say that Latin piscis and English fish both come from that source.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fish

This feature also applies to the Latin mūs and Old English mūs (mouse); the English doesn’t come from Latin: they are both from Indo-European, as is the Russian mysh’ (мышь).

The French for ‘mouse’ (souris) – isn’t from La: mūs, but from Late Latin: sōrex, sōricis [3/m]: shrew

Roman parrots never made it into English; there is no derivative of psittacus. ‘Parrot’ is from French perroquet and its origins in French are unclear although I do like the suggestion that it’s from Italian parrocchetto (literally: little priest).

Let’s pause: of the words introduced in the first post on this topic, ten of them exist in some form in English. There are some points to note:

[1] While there are exceptions (cattus > cat; serpēns > serpent) English derivatives mostly do not have the same meaning as the Latin original, but are related to it in meaning. When I was learning French, the teacher would remind us of faux amis (‘false friends’) i.e. words that look the same but the meanings of which have changed.

canis: dog > canine: (pertaining to a dog)

[2] A Latin word can have several meanings – some of them quite different from each other – whereas English tends to ‘narrow’ the meaning to a single idea. A good example of that is La: honestus which, of course, winds up in English as the very specific honest. However, in Latin, that word had a far wider range of meanings to include ‘honourable’, ‘worthy’, ‘respectable’, ‘noble’ i.e. just because there is a derivative does not necessarily mean that the Latin text is expressing the exact equivalent.

[3] The derivatives are most frequently not directly from Latin, but from the French language after the Norman Conquest in 1066 and, in French, underwent spelling changes that were then reflected in English. There are often, however, patterns to those changes which have been discussed in earlier posts and will come up again when necessary.

[4] Purely out of interest – English displays a feature of two words co-existing, one of Germanic origin and one from Latin:

feline / cat¦like (from Late Latin cattus + OE: ġelīċ)

canine / doglike (OE: dogga / docga + ġelīċ)

murine / mouselike; mous(e)y (OE mūs + ġelīċ / + -iġ)

piscine / fishy (from OE: -iġ)

aviary / birdhouse (OE: bridd + hūs)

serpent / snake (OE: snaca)

serpentine / snakelike (OE: snaca + ġelīċ)

What this does is add considerable richness to the English language because they are not synonyms and can reflect sometimes subtle differences:

canine teeth; dog-like nose

feline features; cat-like tread (i.e. walking stealthily)

aviary: the large enclosure for birds in a zoo; birdhouse: the one you have in your back garden

The Serpentine lake / river in Hyde Park, London takes the name from its snakelike curving shape.

Your star sign may be Pisces, but if you’re a deceitful scammer, then you’re very fishy!