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Portuguese Vocabulary
Most of the Portuguese vocabulary comes from Latin because Portuguese is a Romance language. However, other languages that came into contact with it have also left their mark. In the thirteenth century, the lexicon of Portuguese had about 80% words of Latin origin and 20% of pre-Roman Gallaecian and Celtiberian, Germanic, Greek and Arabic origin. Pre-Roman languages of Portugal Traces of the languages from native peoples of western Iberia (Gallaeci, Lusitanians, Celtici or Conii) persist in Portuguese, as shown below. Most of the pre-Roman placenames or rivers in Portugal originate from the Hispano-Celtic Gallaecian and Celtiberian languages. There are also a few Iberian, Basque and Tartessian components in Portuguese. List of Portuguese words of Iberian and Basque origin Iberian-Basque * ''manteiga'' "butter" ***Uncertain origin, possibly Lat. ''mantica'' Projections on Iberian vocabulary, toponyms and derivations in Portuguese, indicate just a few dozen words in to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Latin Language
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the Roman Republic it became the dominant language in the Italy (geographical region), Italian region and subsequently throughout the Roman Empire. Even after the Fall of the Western Roman Empire, fall of Western Rome, Latin remained the common language of international communication, science, scholarship and academia in Europe until well into the 18th century, when other regional vernaculars (including its own descendants, the Romance languages) supplanted it in common academic and political usage, and it eventually became a dead language in the modern linguistic definition. Latin is a fusional language, highly inflected language, with three distinct grammatical gender, genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter), six or seven ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
