Pedants' Paradise

[french frank]

... so you wd ectually say "Saze Laze" - or "Saze Lez" [ ?? ] rather than "Sez Lez"???

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/oct/28/english-pronunciation-controversy

https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/355762/does-anyone-really-say-says-rather-than-sez

The only point is that, objectively, different people speak with different accents and are not, for that reason, pronouncing words 'wrongly'.

If you want to speak/imitate RP, you will say sez and Wenzday. If you don't want to, don't. But don't say RP is 'incorrect'.

[vinteuil]

But we're equus and caballus in any way related.

.

... I don't think so. Equus is certainly related to Greek hippos, but caballus totes different -

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

.

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

.

[french frank]

But we're equus and caballus in any way related.

I don't think so. I can't see a connection. Canis/chien/Hund/hound are from the same stable, or kennel, I think ('dog' is an outsider).

[vinteuil]

... 'dog' is an outsider.

... yes, it seems unrelated to the other main IE languages -

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

.

[jean]

But were equus and caballus in any way related.

No, caballus originally meant an inferior sort of riding- or pack-horse, or nag. Lewis & Short think it may be Celtic in origin.

It may be soldiers' slang like many words taken up in Romance languages but not found in classical Latin - except for Catullus, who rather liked to use downmarket language such as basium (which may be related to English buss) for osculum.

[vinteuil]

It may be soldiers' slang like many words taken up in Romance languages but not found in classical Latin - except for Catullus, who rather liked to use downmarket language such as basium (which may be related to English buss) for osculum.

... I wonder if the use of caballus by classical Latin poets (in prose caballus only being found in vulgar / late Latin) was because poets found it useful to have an alternative to equus which might sometimes have been awkward in Latin prosody?


.

[french frank]

Just looking at horse and Pferd. Interesting to see that German Pferd is related to English palfrey, both deriving from a Latin paraveredus [palaveredus], a light, travelling horse, a word seemingly(?) coming from Greek.

Horse, Germanic hros, is conjecturally from a pre-German *kurs- (cf courser, battle horse?, which OED connects with 'Latin-type' *cursarius).

[french frank]

an alternative to equus.

Or possibly, again, phonetics, where in spoken Latin it might develop into something like ewwo which wouldn't be a form likely to survive.

[vinteuil]

J Interesting to see that German Pferd is related to English palfrey, both deriving from a Latin paraveredus [palaveredus], a light, travelling horse, a word seemingly(?) coming from Greek.

.

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

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Celtic/u%C9%B8or%C4%93dos

.

[vinteuil]

Or possibly, again, phonetics, where in spoken Latin it might develop into something like ewwo which wouldn't be a form likely to survive.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/h%E2%82%81%C3%A9%E1%B8%B1wos

.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I would like to apologise unreservedly for the insertion of an apostrophe into the word "were" in a recent post. Maybe it was the iPhone's predictive text.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Or possibly, again, phonetics, where in spoken Latin it might develop into something like ewwo which wouldn't be a form likely to survive.

I don't know enough about Latin to make any suppositions, but there are English things with many different names, often from different origins. Whinberry, whortleberry, blaeberry and bilberry all refer to the same fruit, but with at least two derivations.

[french frank]

I don't know enough about Latin to make any suppositions, but there are English things with many different names, often from different origins. Whinberry, whortleberry, blaeberry and bilberry all refer to the same fruit, but with at least two derivations.

I think it was the question of why derivatives of equus more or less disappeared, whereas caballus, the more usual spoken Latin form survived. That said, I think Spanish yegua is from equa, meaning a mare. The Chanson de Roland also has a form like ive or iwe for mare, if I remember it correctly.

On the other hand there are different forms which derive from the same word, so-called 'doublets' like abbreviate and abridge, both from the same Latin word, but entering the language at different times.

[vinteuil]

Or possibly, again, phonetics, where in spoken Latin it might develop into something like ewwo which wouldn't be a form likely to survive.

... I wonder if this is where Swift got his Yahoo from -

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/ehwaz

.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/eoh#Old_English

,


.

[Lat-Literal]

Thank you for the posts which confirm "sez" is RP - and that "St" before a name should be pronounced "Snt" except where it is pronounced "Sin".

Am happy with the outcome.