Comments on: Is There a Philologist in the House?

By: Phil Snead

Phil Snead — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 03:53:40 +0000

Probably same source as “uh,” and “like.”

As in “chercher le . e . e . e . e, er, mot juste.”

By: Angus

Angus — Thu, 08 May 2008 11:53:29 +0000

Thanks, Michael. That was kind of what I figured. I wonder what other syntactic cross-pollination happened between Latin and the barbarian tongues.

By: Michael Bates

Michael Bates — Wed, 07 May 2008 14:01:59 +0000

I seem to recall reading or hearing that Latin's demonstrative pronoun ille, illa, illud (that) was the source for Romance language definite articles. ille becomes il, el, le, illa becomes la. The number one (unus, -a, -um) turned into the indefinite article (e.g., un, une in French). Perhaps the newly-Latin-speaking barbarians were accustomed to articles in their own languages and appropriated ille and unus to fill the gap.