The Origins of the Definite Article in the Romance Languages

[9zreed]

in french the masculine is pronounced "luh" which isnt even right but closer than what you said

[ViquezBonicheSanJose]

You might find interesting that in the Sardinian language(Sardu) the definite article did not evolve from ILLE but instead it evolved from the latin IPSE which means something similar to ILLE. I speak spanish and in our language we also have a word derived from IPSE which is "eso" and we use it to say "that" in the way latin used ILLE for example, Ese hombre, esa casa or eso esta bien. In sardinian ïnstead of saying "la lengua Sarda" they say "sa limba sarda".

[themafia306]

@ViquezBonicheSanJose Ah, very nice comments, thank you!

You're right about ahi and aun, except the latin phrase is "ad hunc" but you were close enough :)

Ipse in Latin means something along the lines of "one's own". I guess it's another example of "this" and "that/there" being switched in the transition from Latin to Spanish.

I haven't seen or heard much of Sardinian. Sounds like "sa" means our and comes from "ipsa" in Latin which means "our own." Who knows? This is interesting now :D

[neffyh]

Actually the masculine form in Portuguese is " O " and the feminine form is " A "

[themafia306]

@neffyh Is this referring to the definite article (translated as "the")? Or is this just the endings of nouns?

[neffyh]

@themafia306

This is actually the definite articles like "the"

[themafia306]

@neffyh Hm...interesting....

Maybe it derived from the Latin words "hoc"/"hac" which mean "this" depending on whether it's masculine or feminine. I'll have to look into that!

[ViquezBonicheSanJose]

@themafia306 In spanish the latin word "hic" evolved to mean somthing like "there" instead of "this" for example, the spanish word for "there¨ is "ahí" which comes from the latin AD HIC. Another interesting example is the latin word ADHUC which it evolved into the spanish "aún".

[soybean42]

@themafia306

The Portuguese articles derived from ille and illa as well. In Portuguese they have gotten rid of a lot of intervocalic l's that the Latin had, so you get words like sair and voar (salir and volar in Spanish) as well.

[getreallanguage]

Cool video. By the way, it's CAtalan, not CaTAlan (CataLÁN in Spanish). I'd put my money on the emergence of these forms having happened _before_ the 12th century. They are attested in the Lay of the Cid which dates from approximately that date, so they had to have been common before that.

[themafia306]

@getreallanguage Thanks for watching and thanks for correcting my pronunciation!

I'm not familiar with the Lay of the Cid, I'll definitely have to look that up!