# e- in escape,estate and other words



## yakor

Hello,
I wonder which meaning  does the "e-"  has in the words escape, estate? Why "e-" is used here?
Are any words that have preffix "es", also?
Thanks in advance.


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## fdb

Both of these words come from Norman French. _estate _is NF _estat_ from Latin _status. escape_ is from NF _escaper_, which assumes late Latin _*excappare. _So, in the former the _e-_ is euphonic; in the latter it is from the first phoneme in Latin _ex-._


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## owlman5

Hello, Yakor.  MW* tells me that the prefix "e" is derived from the prefix "ex", which comes from Latin: Etymology:	Middle English, not, out, forth, away, from Old French & Latin; Old French, out, forth, away, from Latin, from _ex-_ 

*"e-." _Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged_. Merriam-Webster, 2002. 

The same dictionary tells me that "es" exists as a suffix, but not a prefix.


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## yakor

owlman5 said:


> The same dictionary tells me that "es" exists as a suffix, but not a prefix.



hello, I'm confused with it. Why "es", when it is "e" in "escape" and "estate"? In which words you mean "es" as the suffix? 
Also I can't get from which language these words came? (latin-->french-->english)?


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## owlman5

yakor said:


> hello, I'm confused with it. Why "es", when it is "e" in "escape" and "estate"? In which words you mean "es" as the suffix?
> Also I can't get from which language these words came? (latin-->french-->english)?


Yakor, here is the dictionary entry for "escape":  Etymology:	Middle English _escapen, ascapen, _from Old North French _escaper, ascaper, _from (assumed) Vulgar Latin _excappare, _from Latin _ex- _+ Late Latin _cappa _head covering, 

Notice that many Old French words came into English after the Norman French conquest of England.  Many of these Old French words were themselves derived from Latin.  

I think you should try an etymological website or dictionary if you want some comprehensive explanation of _why_ certain prefixes and suffixes are used in English.


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## yakor

I just wanted to know what does the preffix "e" mean. (out?) "E-' means "out","away" according Latin? 





owlman5 said:


> Yakor, here is the dictionary entry for "escape":  Etymology:    Middle English _escapen, ascapen, _from Old North French _escaper, ascaper, _from (assumed) Vulgar Latin _excappare, _from Latin _ex- _+ Late Latin _cappa _head covering,


But which word from these ones was the first one;"ascapen", "escapen" or "escaper","ascaper"? Or maybe "eXcappare" at all?
Maybe Middle English and Old North French take these words from the Vulgar Latin "excappare"? And why you call Latin Vulgar?


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## cyberpedant

The term "vulgar" in Vulgar Latin means "the language of the people," not "dirty word" as is the more common (vulgar) meaning.


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## owlman5

The Vulgar Latin word "excappare" is probably the oldest.  

The dictionary is not calling all Latin "vulgar".  That's a term for the  Latin spoken by people who didn't speak the classical Latin of Rome and  the Italian peninsula.  Latin was widespread in Europe at one time as  Roman armies began conquering other people.  These people would  typically learn the Latin spoken by soldiers and government officials in their countries.  Over  time, these versions of Latin grew increasingly different from the  classical Latin spoken by the great orators of Rome.

Etymologists who contributed to the dictionary, MW, don't think there is any "maybe" about Middle English having derived the word "escapen" or "ascapen" from Old North French "escaper" or "ascaper".  They do believe that English acquired those words from the French.


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## berndf

yakor said:


> Why "es", when it is "e" in "escape" and "estate"?


There is no single answer to that. The etymology of these words is totally different. In _estate_, the initial _e-_ is *not *a prefix morpheme and is *not *derived from _ex-_. Vulgar Latin/Proto-Romance added this initial _e-_ in front of _sc-, sp-_ and _st-_ solely for ease of pronunciation, it has no meaning; and English got it from Old French and Norman French. In words derived from _ex_+verb (like _escape_), the prefix _ex-_ was generally shortened to _e-_. In some words this happened already in Latin, in some words only later. In front of words starting with _c-_, _exc-_ often changed to _esc-_ rather than to the to-be-expected _ec-_, probably only for phonetic reasons, i.e. similarity to other words starting _esc-_.


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## Andygc

*Thread moved to the Etymology and History of Languages forum.*


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## Kevin Beach

I wonder if one could propose a presumed Latin origin *Exstatu?

The wealth and possessions that one derives "from" or "out of" one's station in life (L. Status) constitutes one's *Exstatu, which would be naturally conflated in Vulgar Latin to *Estatu.


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## berndf

ALL words starting st- changed to est-. This is so regular, it isn't worth speculating about any other origin, unless you have evidence for it. The verb stare itself changed to estare.


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## Montesacro

berndf said:


> In _estate_, the initial _e-_ is *not *a prefix morpheme and is *not *derived from _ex-_. Vulgar Latin/Proto-Romance added this initial _e-_ in front of _sc-, sp-_ and _st-_ solely for ease of pronunciation, it has no meaning(...)





berndf said:


> ALL words starting st- changed to est-. This is so regular, it isn't worth speculating about any other origin, unless you have evidence for it. The verb stare itself changed to estare.



Was Vulgar Latin/Proto-Romance homogeneous throughout the empire? As you certainly know Italian words don't add a euphonic _e_ before _sc_-, _sp_-, _st_-, therefore I think it is reasonable to assume that these words were never pronounced with an initial _e_ in Italy.

Or maybe all Vulgar Latin words beginning with es_c_-, e_sp_-, e_st_-, whatever the origin of the initial _e_, lost it at a later stage in the dialects spoken in the italian peninsula? (Even words beginnings with the prefix _ex_- such as _excappare_ or _exterminare_ have turned into modern Italian _scappare_ and _sterminare_).

Perhaps you were specifically referring to the Vulgar Latin spoken in Gaul?


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## fdb

Montesacro said:


> Perhaps you were specifically referring to the Vulgar Latin spoken in Gaul?



Yes, the question was about English, or rather about Norman French loan words in English.


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## Montesacro

I know, but Bernd's replies look more general.


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## CapnPrep

Montesacro said:


> Was Vulgar Latin/Proto-Romance homogeneous throughout the empire? As you certainly know Italian words don't add a euphonic _e_ before _sc_-, _sp_-, _st_-, therefore I think it is reasonable to assume that these words were never pronounced with an initial _e_ in Italy.


Of course Vulgar Latin was not homogeneous, but vowel prosthesis was indeed a general tendency. Knowledge of Modern Italian is insufficient/misleading in this case, because the standard language has eliminated most prosthetic vowels, except in some fixed expressions (e.g. _per iscritto_). In Old Italian prosthetic _i-_ was more widespread (depending on phonetic context): _iscudo, isposa, istretto_, etc.


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## merquiades

It could (often) be a case of the division between Eastern Vulgar Latin (from which Italian evolves) and Western vulgar Latin (from which French, Spanish, Portuguese etc. evolve).  In the latter the epenthetic e- before  s+ consonant is rather systematic, as Berndt said to facilitate the pronunciation.  WVL no longer accepted sp-, st-, sc- etc. at the beginning of words. In EVL it's not at all so regular.  España, Espagne, Espanha... but Spagna.  Estaño, Étain, Estanho... Stagno.  Escollo, Écueil, Escolho... Scoglio....
The "s" of the "es-" was dropped in French at a later date.  So many of the French words came into English before it was dropped, and it stuck.

Italian uses the articles lo, uno, quello and adjectives ending in -o before words in sp-, st-, sc- (instead of il, un, quel, no -o/-e) so a kind of "masked" epenthetic vowel is still present:  Lo straniero, uno straniero, quello straniero, il/un/quel bello straniero (il/un /quel bel ragazzo, lo/uno/quello stupido ragazzo)... 

English at different times has taken Classical Latin words, Vulgar Latin words, Old French, Norman French, Modern French, Italian and Spanish words.  It will have the form it had in the language of origin, at the time it was taken.   So we have both "state" and "estate",  "Stella" and "Estelle",  "story" and "history", "specially" and "especially".  "Escape" but not "*Echape" or "*scape" which could have been possible under different borrowing circumstances....


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## CapnPrep

merquiades said:


> España, Espagne, Espanha... but Spagna.


At the risk of repeating what I just wrote, the absence of support vowels in current-day standard written Italian is a relatively recent phenomenon. _Ma in Ispagna son' già mille e tre!_ 

There is no absolutely clear boundary between Eastern and Western Romance. In many respects, Italian straddles this boundary, or exists outside of this simplistic (but sometimes convenient) binary division.


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## berndf

merquiades said:


> It could (often) be a case of the division between Eastern Vulgar Latin (from which Italian evolves) and Western vulgar Latin (from which French, Spanish, Portuguese etc. evolve).  In the latter the epenthetic e- before  s+ consonant is rather systematic, as Berndt said to facilitate the pronunciation.  WVL no longer accepted sp-, st-, sc- etc. at the beginning of words. In EVL it's not at all so regular.  España, Espagne, Espanha... but Spagna.  Estaño, Étain, Estanho... Stagno.  Escollo, Écueil, Escolho... Scoglio....


You seem to have overlooked CapnPrep's comment above. Contrary to what you said, Eastern Romance did develop this prosthetic vowel. It just dropped it again afterwards. Sardic has preserved many of them, e.g. _istagnu_ instead of _stagno_.


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## berndf

CapnPrep said:


> _Ma in Ispagna son' già mille e tre!_


Just in case you aren't a Mozart fan: This is from the register aria in Don Giovanni, i.e. late 18th century.


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## merquiades

CapnPrep said:


> Of course Vulgar Latin was not homogeneous, but vowel prosthesis was indeed a general tendency. Knowledge of Modern Italian is insufficient/misleading in this case, because the standard language has eliminated most prosthetic vowels, except in some fixed expressions (e.g. _per iscritto_). In Old Italian prosthetic _i-_ was more widespread (depending on phonetic context): _iscudo, isposa, istretto_, etc.



Sorry.  I didn't see comment before. Sometimes I work on messages for hours.
It's totally coherent an epenthetic vowel would appear when three consonants come in a row:  In (i)Spagna, per (i)scritto.  (Theoretically four too:  con (i)streghe).  After prepositions would be one of the few contexts left "unprotected".   Other environments would always have vowels.


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## berndf

merquiades said:


> It's totally coherent an epenthetic vowel would appear when three consonants come in a row:  In (i)Spagna, per (i)scritto.  (Theoretically four too:  con (i)streghe).  After prepositions would be one of the few contexts left "unprotected".   Other environments would always have vowels.


Sorry, I don't understand you point. Where do you see three consonants in a row in _(I)spagna, (i)stangno, (i)scudo or (i)sposa_?


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## merquiades

berndf said:


> Sorry, I don't understand you point. Where do you see three consonants in a row in _(I)spagna, (i)stangno, (i)scudo or (i)sposa_?



In the examples:  in Spagna (nsp), per scritto (rsc), in stagno (nst), con sposa (nsp), con streghe (nstr) would bring three or four consonants together.  The "i-" would break these combinations and make the sequence easier to pronounce.  

This coming together of 3 or 4 consonants would occur mostly when prepositions ending in consonants directly precede words starting with s(C)-.  In Ispagna, per iscritto, in istagno etc. seem logical to me. 

In other cases, [for example: with articles or adjectives + s(C) words (lo straniero, il bello straniero)], the "o" or "e" of the preceding word (ending in a vowel) serves the same role of pronunciation facilitator.  It stops the 3 of 4 consonants coming together that would have occurred if *il straniero/ *quel bel straniero were possible.  

My point is that changing "quel, il, un, gran, bel" to "quello, lo, uno, grande, bello" is equal to adding an epethetic vowel in modern Italian.

What would be interesting to find is if older versions of Italian had words with  "i- + s(C)-" even if the preceding word ended in a vowel...  The examples I've seen are with (per, in, con).  Would they have also said "La bella Ispagna" or "una bella isposa ispagnola"?   Or did they put the "i-" only to avoid a preceding consonant linking with s(C)-?  If we had "istagno" would they have preferred  "lo stagno" with the article or "il istagno" or maybe "lo istagno"?  "La storia" or "La Istoria"?

Beyond spelling conventions which are meant to standardize and bring some kind of order to what people actually say, I'm interested in the ways speakers break up these difficult consonant groups.   Italian has always seemed quite flexible to me:  Quest'uomo alternates with questo uomo,  mangiare with mangiar, un buon amico with un buono amico.  Particularly operas and poetry seem flexible.  In "Ma in Ispagna son' già mille e tre!" not only do we have the i- but also the final "o" of "sono" missing.  Mozart might have been done this to preserve a melody??


Apart:
The French often add schwas to break up consonants from coming together even when no written "e" is present:  un ours(e) blanc.   That's why I said "In (I)spagna" is logical.  Romance languages avoid having too many consonants.  The Slavs wouldn't understand this 
Yet, Spanish and Portuguese are rigid.  They always have ES(C)- in all circumstances even with foreign loanwords (Estop) and regardless whether there is a preceding vowel or consonant or if it starts a utterance.


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## berndf

merquiades said:


> My point is that changing "quel, il, un, gran, bel" to "quello, lo, uno, grande, bello"..


What makes you think "qell" is the original and "quello" a change?


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## CapnPrep

The example of _España_/_Spagna_ is problematic because it derives from _H*i*spania_. In other words, the Spanish/French forms are more conservative; the Italian form is derived by apheresis. Da Ponte's _in *I*spagna _is probably better analyzed as epenthetic, not etymological, but by this time epenthesis was obviously no longer productive, either (elsewhere in the same libretto we find _un tal spavento_, _non scappar_, _vogliam stare_, etc.)


merquiades said:


> What would be interesting to find is if older versions of Italian had words with  "i- + s(C)-" even if the preceding word ended in a vowel...


Yes, rarely. For example, in Jacopone da Todi (13th cent., cited by P. Bec): _la mente *e*smarruta crepava a dolore_.


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## merquiades

berndf said:


> What makes you think "qell" is the original and "quello" a change?



No, it actually is the other way around.   "eccum + illum >  eccu + illu > quello".   Likewise, "illum" would give "illo".

So, "illo" drops one syllable or another to form "il" and "lo".  "Lo" would be reserved before those difficult consonant groups s(C)-, z, gn..., "Il" in other cases.  "L'" before vowels.


In this case, it turns out that it's not so different from Spanish, except "El" became universal masculine article (the) and the subject pronoun (he), but "lo" the object pronoun and the abstract article before adjectives as in "lo bueno".  Same with "Aquel/aquello".  There's a functional difference in this language.

To compare:
Vedo quello/lo sposo....  Veo a aquel/el esposo
Vedo quella/la sposa....  Veo a aquella/la esposa
Lo (la) vedo/ lo (la) veo

Quello sposo / Aquel esposo (both with vowel before sp-)


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## merquiades

CapnPrep said:


> The example of _España_/_Spagna_ is problematic because it derives from _H*i*spania_. In other words, the Spanish/French forms are more conservative; the Italian form is derived by apheresis. Da Ponte's _in *I*spagna _is probably better analyzed as epenthetic, not etymological, but by this time epenthesis was obviously no longer productive, either (elsewhere in the same libretto we find _un tal spavento_, _non scappar_, _vogliam stare_, etc.)
> Yes, rarely. For example, in Jacopone da Todi (13th cent., cited by P. Bec): _la mente *e*smarruta crepava a dolore_.



Thanks for the info, CapnPrep.  Food for thought...


If Spanish and French were more conservative in the case of _Hispania_ wouldn't the final result have had to be _Hispaña_ and _Hispagne_?  Perhaps it had become _Spania_ in a later stage in vulgar Latin and then the epenthetic e- occured naturally as with the other words.  The RAE states the origin of _Historia_ as _Historia_ in Classical Latin which could explain _Historia_ and _Histoire_, but _Estoria_ was quite common in Medieval Spanish too, so maybe all of them went to s(C)- in VL and the "hi" were reinstated during the Renaissance as cultisms.  Including Ispania (possibly Istoria) in Italian?



> Galilei, Galileo: Istoria e dimostrazioni intorno alle macchie solari e loro accidenti


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## olaszinho

In "Ma in Ispagna son' già mille e tre!" not only do we have the i- but also the final "o" of "sono" missing.  Mozart might have been done this to preserve a melody??

I would like to add my two cents: _Son_ and_ han _instead of_ sono _or _hanno _are quite common in contemporary Italian, especially in compound tenses: _han detto _or_ son andati, _while_ in Ispagna _or _(i)sposa or (i)stagno _are poetic or literary.


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## CapnPrep

merquiades said:


> If Spanish and French were more conservative in the case of _Hispania_ wouldn't the final result have had to be _Hispaña_ and _Hispagne_?


_Hispania_ > _España_ looks entirely regular to me. For French, I guess the expected phonetic form would be _Espaigne > Épaigne_, so the actual form _Espagne _shows some anti-phonetic (etymological, foreign) influence, but I still see no reason to think that the initial vowel was epenthetic. _Historia_/_histoire_ are learned forms.

Update: It turns out that _Spania _is attested for Late Latin (and _Σπανία_ in Greek), and then we have all the _Sp-_ forms throughout Germanic… So it seems that both analyses may be possible for _España _(unless someone knows of attested aphetic forms in Ibero-Romance).


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## berndf

merquiades said:


> ...so maybe all of them went to s(C)- in VL and the "hi" were reinstated during the Renaissance as cultisms.


Old French was _estorie_; the _hi-_ is obviously a re-Latinization. But this doesn't mean _estorie_ went through _*storie_. He find _storia_ in Late Latin, but I this could also be a sign of exactly the opposite of what you suggest, namely that the epenthetic _e-/i-_ was a universal phenomenon and omissions of etymological _(h)i-_ as in _storia _in Latin texts written by VL speakers are hyper-corrections. 

Word pairs like these (Sardic - Italian) suggest indeed that the epenthetic _i- _was once regular in Eastern Romance and was lost in Italian:_
istoria - storia
istadha - stalla
istagnu - stagno
istadu - stato
istafa - staffa
iscabessada - scapaccione
iscadenare - scatenare_
... and more.


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## merquiades

berndf said:


> Old French was _estorie_; the _hi-_ is obviously a re-Latinization. But this doesn't mean _estorie_ went through _*storie_. He find _storia_ in Late Latin, but I this could also be a sign of exactly the opposite of what you suggest, namely that the epenthetic _e-/i-_ was a universal phenomenon and omissions of etymological _(h)i-_ as in _storia _in Latin texts written by VL speakers are hyper-corrections.
> 
> Word pairs like these (Sardic - Italian) suggest indeed that the epenthetic _i- _was once regular in Eastern Romance and was lost in Italian:_
> istoria - storia
> istadha - stalla
> istagnu - stagno
> istadu - stato
> istafa - staffa
> iscabessada - scapaccione
> iscadenare - scatenare_
> ... and more.





> "account of some happening," early 13c., "narrative of important events or celebrated persons of the past," from O.Fr. estorie, from L.L. storia and L. historia "history, account, tale, story"


Online etymology dictionary of the English word "story" suggests _Estorie_ did go through the LL "storia" process.  
I am saying these words did lose the "hi".  Omission of hi- due to hypercorrections because the epenthetic e- or i- was already so common so early?  Why would a Latin Latin scribe do that?  He would have learnt classical Latin to become a scribe....



			
				 Sardinian wikipedia said:
			
		

> Su sardu est atesu meda dae s'italianu e sas àteras limbas nou-latinas, mescamente pro su chi pertocat sa gramàtica. Sa limba sarda s' agatat in s'ala otzidentale de sa latinidade, paris a su catalanu, su frantzesu, s'otzitanu, su castillanu, su portughesu e àteras minores. Custu cheret nàrrere chi tenet comente caraterìstica su prurale in -s. A intro de sas limbas latinas si sinnalat ca nde at leadu s'artìculu (su) dae su latinu ipse, cando imbetzes totu sas àteras limbas l'ant leadu dae ille (francu su cadelanu in sas Isulas Baleares chi at bogadu s'artìculu es/sa dae su latinu ipse), in prus est s'unica chi fraighet su tempus benidore ponende su verbu de agiudu "àere" in antis de su disfinidu (p.e.: apo a cantare dae "habeo ad cantare") e no a pustis (p.e.: it. canterò, dae "cantare habeo").



I'll have to decipher this a bit more tbut I think it states that Sardinian has Western Vulgar Latin influence... example plurals in s, the forms of its articles and its morphology.

English Wikipedia is not so complete and gives this:



> Vowel prothesis in Logudorese before an initial s followed by consonant, like in Western Romance: scriptum > iscrítu (Spanish escrito, French écrit), stellam > isteddu 'star' (Spanish estrella, French étoile).


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## berndf

merquiades said:


> Online etymology dictionary of the English word "story" suggests _Estorie_ did go through the LL "storia" process.


Yes, that is what I said:





berndf said:


> He find _storia_ in Late Latin, but I this could also be a sign of exactly the opposite of what you suggest, namely that the epenthetic _e-/i-_ was a universal phenomenon and omissions of etymological _(h)i-_ as in _storia _in Latin texts written by VL speakers are hyper-corrections.





merquiades said:


> Why would a Latin Latin scribe do that?  He  would have learnt classical Latin to become a scribe....


Because  this is what people do who write a dead language: They make all kind of  mistakes induced by there native languages. And those are very typical  errors by speakers of a descendent language which has lost distinctions the original language made.


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## CapnPrep

merquiades said:


> Omission of hi- due to hypercorrections because the epenthetic e- or i- was already so common so early?


Yes, absolutely. What makes you think this is a late phenomenon? There is already an example of prosthetic _i-_ in the graffiti of Pompeii! (_*I*SMVRNA_ for the city of Smyrna)


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## merquiades

CapnPrep said:


> Yes, absolutely. What makes you think this is a late phenomenon? There is already an example of prosthetic _i-_ in the graffiti of Pompeii! (_*I*SMVRNA_ for the city of Smyrna)



Ok.  I stand corrected then.  No, I didn't think it was a very late phenomenon, but at least after the late Latin period when Western/ Eastern had diverged and the Romance languages were developing.  I thought a word like "stare" wouldn't have developed any epenthetic vowel until after Latin had ceased to be an active vernacular language.  My timing must be off



			
				Berndf said:
			
		

> Because this is what people do who write a dead language: They make all kind of mistakes induced by there native languages. And those are very typical errors by speakers of a descendent language which has lost distinctions the original language made.



It depends on when we consider Latin to be dead and scribes to be writing in a dead language they have learned.  For me I assumed it was later, 700-900 AD and not 200-400 AD.  But I guess we really have to define when it actually died.  Is Late Latin already so different from Classical Latin that it is considered to be dead?


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## berndf

merquiades said:


> It depends on when we consider Latin to be dead and scribes to be writing in a dead language they have learned.  For me I assumed it was later, 700-900 AD and not 200-400 AD.  But I guess we really have to define when it actually died.  Is Late Latin already so different from Classical Latin that it is considered to be dead?


Ok, that is a discussion we fortunately don't have to enter. It suffices to note that in this period (3rd-6th centuries) many of the VL changes had already occurred and that the written languages was very different from the spoken one. We know this kind of hyper-corrections from modern diglossic regions.


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## Angelo di fuoco

berndf said:


> You seem to have overlooked CapnPrep's comment above. Contrary to what you said, Eastern Romance did develop this prosthetic vowel. It just dropped it again afterwards. Sardic has preserved many of them, e.g. _istagnu_ instead of _stagno_.



Sardic is Western Romance, not Eastern Romance.


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## Angelo di fuoco

merquiades said:


> Apart:
> The French often add schwas to break up consonants from coming together even when no written "e" is present:  un ours(e) blanc.   That's why I said "In (I)spagna" is logical.  Romance languages avoid having too many consonants.  The Slavs wouldn't understand this



The Slavs do understand this: we have up to three versions of a preposition depending on phonetical context: in my native Russian there are с, со; к, ко; в, во; о, об, обо.


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## Angelo di fuoco

berndf said:


> Sorry, I don't understand you point. Where do you see three consonants in a row in _(I)spagna, (i)stangno, (i)scudo or (i)sposa_?



These conventions of adding an epenthetic i in the circumstances described by Merquiades (separation of the final consonant of the preceding word, generally a preposition or a (demonstrative) adjective (in Italian they qualify "questo", "quello" etc. as adjectives rather than pronouns) from s+C was a generalised convention up to the middle of the 20th century. It is the norm in writing, e. g. of authors such as Elsa Morante (1912-1985). Nowadays the only remnant of this convention is the fix expression "per iscritto" where one would expect *"per scritto" - and no, it is not a form of the verb "iscrivere", where the initial vowel comes from the prefix in-.
A Milanese friend of mine, *1946, very particular in his writing habits, still follows this convention, as well as some other like the obsolete allomorph "sur" rather than "su" before words beginning with "su".


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## fdb

CapnPrep said:


> Of course Vulgar Latin was not homogeneous, but vowel prosthesis was indeed a general tendency. Knowledge of Modern Italian is insufficient/misleading in this case, because the standard language has eliminated most prosthetic vowels, except in some fixed expressions (e.g. _per iscritto_). In Old Italian prosthetic _i-_ was more widespread (depending on phonetic context): _iscudo, isposa, istretto_, etc.




There are 24 columns of words beginning with st- in Meyer-Lübke, _Rom. etym. Wb._, and if you read through them you will be left with no doubt that in the vast majority of words Latin st- remains st- in Italian and Romanian (and also in Vegliotic, Engadine, Friaulic), but becomes est- in Gallo-Romanic  and Ibero-Romanic (and also in Logudorese Sardinian).  You will find a comparable situation with sp- and sc-.

ἱστορία > historia > storia, histoire is not a good example for this, first because of the hi- of the etymon, and second because this is in any case not an inherited word but a cultural Latinism.

In da Ponte’s “ma in Ispagna” the I- is euphonic after the consonant of “in”. Prothetic i- is indeed common in Italian, but if you look at the Romance evidence as a whole you will see that it is a secondary development.


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## berndf

Angelo di fuoco said:


> Sardic is Western Romance, not Eastern Romance.


Where did you get this from? Ethnologue e.g. classifies Sardic and Corsican as a separate family on Romance languages, but I never heard of it being classified as Western.


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## merquiades

This map suggests it's intermediary between Western and Eastern with some characteristics of both.: probably the plurals, articles and verbs being more western.  As for the prominent role of systematic i- + s(C)-  we can only speculate at this point.


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## olaszinho

berndf said:


> Where did you get this from? Ethnologue e.g. classifies Sardic and Corsican as a separate family on Romance languages, but I never heard of it being classified as Western.



I have always read that Sardinian languages are neither Western nor Eastern, linguistically speaking. By the way, only Tuscan and some other central and Southern dialects/languages of Italy can be classified as Eastern according to most experts in Romance languages. Other linguists refuse such a rigid distinction.


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## Angelo di fuoco

I admit that my intervention was a little bit hasty and I have to retract the part about Western Romance. However, I don't retract the part about Sardinian not being Eastern Romance, since its many consonantic endings are definitely a feature of the Western Romance languages.
It was some years ago I read about Sardinian being Western Romance, so I cannot tell you now where exactly I read this.


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## CapnPrep

fdb said:


> Prothetic i- is indeed common in Italian, but if you look at the Romance evidence as a whole you will see that it is a secondary development.


I'm looking, but I'm not seeing. Prothesis is "secondary" in Italian in the sense that it didn't catch on and is a vestigial phenomenon in the modern standard language, but it is not chronologically secondary. On the contrary, it appeared earlier in the Italian peninsula before spreading north and west, according to Loporcaro:


> [_I_-prosthesis] is widespread in Latin texts from Africa […], whence it seems to have spread to southern and central Italy (whereas it is virtually absent in Christian epigraphs from northern Italy and Gaul […]). (2011, p. 98)


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## fdb

Yes, but you need to distinguish between i- prothesis, which is mainly restricted to Italian, and e- prothesis, which is a shared innovation in Gallo-Romanic and Ibero-Romanic.


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## CapnPrep

fdb said:


> Yes, but you need to distinguish between i- prothesis, which is mainly restricted to Italian, and e- prothesis, which is a shared innovation in Gallo-Romanic and Ibero-Romanic.


I cited a Tuscan form in _e-_ above, and a Vulgar Latin form in _i-_. Changes between _i_ and _e_ are very common in Romance, in both directions. _ĭ_ > _e_ is one of the basic vowel correspondences in Romance, and _e_ commonly raises to _i_ in protonic syllables in Italian (_re-_ > _ri-_, _de-_ > _di-_, _f*i*nestra_, _d*i*cembre_, etc.). So I still don't see why _i_-prothesis has to be a separate development.

P. Bec (It. VII, 9): "Le lat. vulg. a développé d'assez bonne heure une voy. adventice, dite prothétique, devant le groupe initial s+cons. (ou z des mots grecs) […] Cette voy. est d'abord _i_, puis _e_."


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## fdb

fdb said:


> There are 24 columns of words beginning with st- in Meyer-Lübke, _Rom. etym. Wb._, and if you read through them you will be left with no doubt that in the vast majority of words Latin st- remains st- in Italian and Romanian (and also in Vegliotic, Engadine, Friaulic), but becomes est- in Gallo-Romanic  and Ibero-Romanic (and also in Logudorese Sardinian).  You will find a comparable situation with sp- and sc-. ...



No one has replied to my point about Romanian, Vegliotic etc.


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## CapnPrep

fdb said:


> No one has replied to my point about Romanian, Vegliotic etc.


What is there to reply to? No one disputes that Latin _s_*C*- generally corresponds to _s_*C*- in modern Italian and in Romance varieties to the east. The question is whether this has always been the case, or if these languages had prothetic vowels at some point their (possibly pre-literary) evolution and later lost them. I doubt that you can find a conclusive answer for Romanian, Vegliot, etc., and certainly not just by looking in Meyer-Lübke.


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## fdb

CapnPrep said:


> No one disputes that Latin _s_*C*- generally corresponds to _s_*C*- in modern Italian and in Romance varieties to the east.



Agreed.



CapnPrep said:


> The question is whether this has always been the case,



that means: none of the "Eastern" Romance languages had prothetic vowels prior to their splitting off into separate languages; the i- in Italian would then be an inner-Italian development,



CapnPrep said:


> or if these languages had prothetic vowels at some point their (possibly pre-literary) evolution and later lost them.



in other words: Italian, Romanian, etc. had inherited prothetic vowels and then lost them independently of each other after they had split into separate languages. 
Is that really a likely scenario?


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## CapnPrep

fdb said:


> in other words: Italian, Romanian, etc. had inherited prothetic vowels and then lost them independently of each other after they had split into separate languages.
> Is that really a likely scenario?


Here's another scenario: Italian inherited prothetic vowels and later eliminated them, while Romanian maybe never had them. Why do you assume that Italian and Romanian must have evolved in parallel?


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## fdb

That is a third option, different from the two suggested in 48. It is not likely to go down well with those (not necessarily including me) who posit a proto-Romance dichotomy of "Western" and "Eastern" Romance, with the presence or absence of prothetic vowels as one of the decisive shibboleths for distinguishing the two.


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## CapnPrep

fdb said:


> That is a third option, different from the two suggested in 48.


The question I formulated in #48 can and should be asked about Italian and Romanian independently, with no prior expectation that the answer will be the same for both languages. Facts first, generalizations (if any) second. A strict dichotomy of Eastern vs. Western Romance is something that needs to be demonstrated, not posited.


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## yakor

But why -es is the suffix, not the prefix. It iis put at the beginning of the word, not at the end.


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## merquiades

yakor said:


> But why -es is the suffix, not the prefix. It iis put at the beginning of the word, not at the end.



In "estate" it looks a prefix since it comes right at the beginning of the word.....  but really an e- got added to the beginning of the word (e-state) to make pronunciation easier for speakers of Vulgar Latin/Old French.  It means nothing here and never did.
In "escape", a Latin prefix ex- (out of) turned into es- over time.  But only people who know Latin recognize there is a prefix here, because "scape" (in English) means nothing without the es-.
English borrowed both of these words.  In both cases it is impossible to remove this e-, so it's not seen as a prefix.  It is affixed permanently to the words in the language(s) or dialect(s) that have them.

Berndf already answered this better than me.  Let's reexamine his message since it has been lost at the bottom:


> There is no single answer to that. The etymology of these words is totally different. In estate, the initial e- is not a prefix morpheme and is not derived from ex-. Vulgar Latin/Proto-Romance added this initial e- in front of sc-, sp- and st- solely for ease of pronunciation, it has no meaning; and English got it from Old French and Norman French. In words derived from ex+verb (like escape), the prefix ex- was generally shortened to e-. In some words this happened already in Latin, in some words only later. In front of words starting with c-, exc- often changed to esc- rather than to the to-be-expected ec-, probably only for phonetic reasons, i.e. similarity to other words starting esc-.


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## berndf

yakor said:


> But why -es is the suffix, not the prefix. It iis put at the beginning of the word, not at the end.


To be a prefix, _es-_ would have to me a functional group, i.e. it would have to have a "meaning", i.e. estate would have to be analysable as _es-tate_, i.e. _es-_ would have to mean something and _-tate_ would have to mean something. And this is obviously not the case.

On the other side, _escape_ could be analysed as _es-cape_. But Webster seems not view this as a functional prefix; but _e-_ alone is a prefix, i.e. the "s" in _e-s-cape_ is just a phonetic linking element. On the other hand, Webster considers -es a separate suffix, i.e. in _glass*-es*_ or _bush-*es*_.


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## CapnPrep

berndf said:


> But Webster seems not view this as a functional prefix; but _e-_ alone is a prefix, i.e. the "s" in _e-s-cape_ is just a phonetic linking element.


That is a very strange analysis, and it should be made clear that it does not come from Merriam-Webster. They do recognize _e-_ as a prefix in words like _edentulous_ and _eluviation_, but it does not follow that they believe that every word beginning with _e-_ involves this prefix! (Or that _e-_ is the only possible outcome of Latin _ex-_ in English_._) For _escape_, they give the same etymology provided by fdb and owlman5 in the very first responses of this thread.


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## berndf

CapnPrep said:


> That is a very strange analysis, and it should be made clear that it does not come from Merriam-Webster. They do recognize _e-_ as a prefix in words like _edentulous_ and _eluviation_, but it does not follow that they believe that every word beginning with _e-_ involves this prefix! (Or that _e-_ is the only possible outcome of Latin _ex-_ in English_._) For _escape_, they give the same etymology provided by fdb and owlman5 in the very first responses of this thread.


They do say that the prefix _e-_ is derived from _ex-_. The also say that _escape _is derived from _excapare _yet they do not acknowledge _es-_ to be a prefix. On the other hand they regards _-s_ as in _books_ and _-es_ as in _glasses_ as distinct suffixes. This asymmetry should be explained.


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## merquiades

CapnPrep said:


> _Hispania_ > _España_ looks entirely regular to me. For French, I guess the expected phonetic form would be _Espaigne > Épaigne_, so the actual form _Espagne _shows some anti-phonetic (etymological, foreign) influence, but I still see no reason to think that the initial vowel was epenthetic. _Historia_/_histoire_ are learned forms.
> 
> Update: It turns out that _Spania _is attested for Late Latin (and _Σπανία_ in Greek), and then we have all the _Sp-_ forms throughout Germanic… So it seems that both analyses may be possible for _España _(unless someone knows of attested aphetic forms in Ibero-Romance).



Would the _Spania > Espaigne > Épaigne_ evolution be the origin of "Spain" with maybe an intermediate form "Spaign"?  That would account for the "ai" in English. The CNRTL attests "espaignol" for 1181-91.


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## Angelo di fuoco

I can imagine "Espaigne" (if you listen to Québecois pronunciation the group "ai" is almost a diphthong there, which would correspond to Old or Middle French pronunciation), but I cannot think how "Épaigne" would have reverted to the modern "Espagne"... and please don't forget that Spanish kings married French princesses (Philip II and Elisabeth Valois, e. g.) and French kings married Spanish princesses (Louis XIII and Anne of Austria, Louis XIV also married a Spanish princess).


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## merquiades

Angelo di fuoco said:


> I can imagine "Espaigne" (if you listen to Québecois pronunciation the group "ai" is almost a diphthong there, which would correspond to Old or Middle French pronunciation), but I cannot think how "Épaigne" would have reverted to the modern "Espagne"... and please don't forget that Spanish kings married French princesses (Philip II and Elisabeth Valois, e. g.) and French kings married Spanish princesses (Louis XIII and Anne of Austria, Louis XIV also married a Spanish princess).



Hi Angelo.  I would imagine it was taken as a loan from the Spanish "España" or else at least affected by it at a later date.  España/ Espagne match one another too much.  Otherwise, perhaps the yod was absorbed into the palatal nasal "gn".  It wouldn't be the only example: bretaigne-bretagne, perhaps montaigne-montagne, yet it mostly didn't saigne, daigne, baigne


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## Angelo di fuoco

The word "bagne" still exists, but it doesn't mean the same as "baigne".
I don't remember much about the history of the French language, but I remember there was something about the philosopher Michel Montaigne: the i was put authomatically befor the gn group, but the word was still pronounced Montagne, and only later the pronunciation changed to the modern one.


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## CapnPrep

berndf said:


> The also say that _escape _is derived from _excapare _yet they do not acknowledge _es-_ to be a prefix. On the other hand they regards _-s_ as in _books_ and _-es_ as in _glasses_ as distinct suffixes. This asymmetry should be explained.


They have separate (but cross-linked) entries for _-s_ and _-es_ because these are the graphic allomorphs of two of the most common and productive prefixes in English, because the allomorphy is regular and easy to describe, and above all because they consider this to be useful and pertinent information for the users of their dictionary. In contrast, _es-_ is neither productive nor common as an allomorph of _ex-/e-_, and as far as I can tell, it not even recognizable as a meaningful prefix in any of the common words where it occurs. I don't think the average English speaker, without etymological knowledge, would think to decompose *escape* into EX_-_ + _cape_; in English, this word is monomorphemic and unrelated to the noun _cape_. There is a meaning component "away from, out of", which may explain the common mispronunciation "excape", but the overall semantic decomposition of this word is not transparent. Ditto for *escort*, *esplanade*, *esquadrille*, *essay*: I don't think any of these can be argued to contain the prefix EX- (or any other prefix) in English.

Among the other words in _es-_ going back to Latin _ex-_, there is a handful of legal terms that no one knows: 

_escheat_, _esplees_, _essart_, _essoi(g)n_, _estreat_, _estrepe_. 
And there are maybe 30–40 very rare or obsolete words in the OED:

_escarteled_, _esbrandill_, _esperduct_, _esclarishment_, _esmay_, _esrache_, _escry_, _esmarvel_, _essuyance_, … 
And of course, there's _espresso_. 

So, you're right, there is a prefix _es-_ in English, and there is an entry for it in the OED, for example. But it's completely understandable that a dictionary of current usage, like Merriam-Webster, might mention _ex-_ and _e-_, but not _es-_ (or _s-_, _ef-_, _iss-_, or any of the other rare, marginal, obsolete, or otherwise unproductive outcomes of EX-).


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## berndf

CapnPrep said:


> I don't think the average English speaker, without etymological knowledge, would think to decompose *escape* into EX_-_ + _cape_; in English, this word is monomorphemic and unrelated to the noun _cape_.


I am happy with this explanation. As it need specialist knowledge to analyse _escape_ as _es-cape_, it makes no sense to describe _es-_ as a functional group in Modern English.


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## merquiades

berndf said:


> I am happy with this explanation. As it need specialist knowledge to analyse _escape_ as _es-cape_, it makes no sense to describe _es-_ as a functional group in Modern English.



  Yes, CapnPrep's explanation is perfect.


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## yakor

merquiades said:


> But only people who know Latin recognize there is a prefix here, because "scape" (in English) means nothing without the es-.
> English borrowed both of these words.  In both cases it is impossible to remove this e-, so it's not seen as a prefix.  It is affixed permanently to the words in the language(s) or dialect(s) that have them.


But I agree that "e' in "estate" IS not the preffix , or the the suffix. It means nothing. 
I mean  "es" in "escape". Why not "e"+"scape"? There is such a word  as  the "Scape" in English. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/scape
Also, why "es"  is the suffix? I think it is not the suffix. If it were "ex" it were the preffix. If not, then it is nothing, as in the case "e" in "estate".


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## yakor

What did  the Vulgar Latin word "excappare" mean? Is it used  somewhere now?


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## merquiades

yakor said:


> But I agree that "e' in "estate" IS not the preffix , or the the suffix. It means nothing.
> I mean  "es" in "escape". Why not "e"+"scape"? There is such a word  as  the "Scape" in English. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/scape
> Also, why "es"  is the suffix? I think it is not the suffix. If it were "ex" it were the preffix. If not, then it is nothing, as in the case "e" in "estate".



I was mistaken.  The prefix is es- (not e-), the root is -cape (not -scape).  I suppose my confusion strangely enough proves the point that English speakers don't even know what the Latin prefix and root are in these types of words.  Yes, both "cape" and "scape"(I had no idea this last one meant leafless flower or part of an insect's anatomy) are words but we don't associate "escape" with either of them.  It's just a word with a fixed meaning now "to run away".   Compare this with an active prefix like "un" as in "unfriendly".  Everyone knows that "un" is a removable prefix from "friendly" and "ly" is a removable suffix from "friend".  Even non-literary folks can appreciate that as it's common knowledge.

I don't know why you say -es is the suffix????  It is only a suffix in Berndf's examples:   glass - es.   It is a common plural ending which stands out to native speakers as well.  It's obviously highly functional.



> What did the Vulgar Latin word "excappare" mean? Is it used somewhere now?



Have a look at this dictionary entry again.
No, it's not used in the VL sense anywhere anymore.  With the meaning of "run away, flee" it exists in all Romance languages as "escapar (Spanish/Portuguese)",  "scappare (Italian)", "échapper (French)".


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## CapnPrep

merquiades said:


> I don't know why you say -es is the suffix????


Because in #3 owlman5 mentioned, for the sake of completeness, that _es_ could be a suffix. Unfortunately this seems to have introduced some confusion.

yakor, please forget about the suffix. The words you are interested in do not contain the suffix _-es_.


yakor said:


> If it were "ex" it were the preffix. If not, then it is nothing, as in the case "e" in "estate".


You're right: the _es-_ in _escape_ is nothing. It used to be something, but now it is nothing. Someone who knows a little bit about Latin might guess that _escape_ comes from _ex-_ + something, but then they might guess this about _estate_, too (see Kevin Beach's #11).


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## aruniyan

yakor said:


> What did  the Vulgar Latin word "excappare" mean? Is it used  somewhere now?



*cappe* looks related to _protection_ or _under guard_

 L. capere "seize, grasp"  and words like _captive, cuff, cuffia _could give us clues?


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## yakor

But I suspected  that "escape" means "out from the cape". That is why asked. It was interesting to know. Thanks for "Online etymplogy dictionary".


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## Walshie79

merquiades said:


> Would the _Spania > Espaigne > Épaigne_ evolution be the origin of "Spain" with maybe an intermediate form "Spaign"?  That would account for the "ai" in English. The CNRTL attests "espaignol" for 1181-91.



Isn't there a French word ' Epagneul' meaning 'spaniel' (type of dog)?


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## stevelogan

aruniyan said:


> *cappe* looks related to _protection_ or _under guard_
> 
> L. capere "seize, grasp"  and words like _captive, cuff, cuffia _could give us clues?



Hi, everybody. 

Well, I think it is well known the etymology of "to escape" (are we still referring to that?): it is the same of the verb "scappare" in Italian (that means in fact "to escape"), and I don't see why the english "to escape" should have a different origin.

_To escape_ is from the Latin _ex-capere _or _ex-captus_, where captus means "prisoner" and _capere_ to imprisonate. 

_Mente captus_ (orig. of Italian mentecatto)  stay for "crazy and desperate" (someone who lost his mind captured by some uncontrolled fact, like in the "Orlando Furioso" where Orlando lost his wisdom and sense of reality, and he goes in the moon to regain it):  extensively it means an unfortunate person.

So _ex-capere_  means "to be ex-prisoned out", i.e. to put themselves away from the state of captivity (other english word with same origin) we were before.

The _ex_ prefix (before the verb) changes the sense of the root, in the same way the phrasal verbs do in English using final clause "in, out, for, with, etc". 

In particular, in Latin the _ex_ before a verb, has the same sense that _out_  has in the English/American verbs at the end (e.g. "opt out", opposite to "opt in"), interjecting a metaphorical sense of "eliminating something out" by the situation described in the radix of the verb, in contrast or in opposition to other prefix like _in_ (cfr. for example the opposite meanings of "ex-cludere" and "in-cludere" in Latin)
...


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## fdb

The problem with this suggestion is that _capere_ has one –p- and the stem vowel ĕ, but Ital. _scappare_, Fr. _échapper_, Port. _escappar_ all have double –pp- and the stem vowel ā. For this reason Romanists have preferred to derive these words from a vulgar Latin *_excappare_, from _cappa_ ‘coat, cape’. To ‘escape’ would then mean to throw off one’s coat and run away.


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## berndf

stevelogan said:


> Well, I think it is well known the etymology of "to escape" (are we still referring to that?): it is the same of the verb "scappare" in Italian (that means in fact "to escape"), and I don't see why the english "to escape" should have a different origin.


Agreed.



stevelogan said:


> _To escape_ is from the Latin _ex-capere _or _ex-captus_, where captus means "prisoner" and _capere_ to imprisonate.


The frequentative form _*excaptare_ derived from _*excapere_, yields in Italian _scattare_ and not _scappare_. Italian _scappare_, like French _échapper _and English _escape_, is derived from _ex+cappa._


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## Youngfun

CapnPrep said:


> At the risk of repeating what I just wrote, the absence of support vowels in current-day standard written Italian is a relatively recent phenomenon. _Ma in Ispagna son' già mille e tre!_


Hi CarnPrep.
Agree with you. In the XX century there still was the usage of the _epenthentic vowel_, for a phonosyntatical reason: traditional Italian phonosyntax doesn't allow consonant clusters like -nsp-, or generally -nsC-, so an "i" was added at the beginning of the second word.
In Tuscany, some old people still pronounce that "i" in speaking language.

I know an Italian language forum where its users still like to write this way.


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## romario_

aruniyan said:


> L. capere "seize, grasp"  and words like _captive, cuff, cuffia _could give us clues?



ex+cap,where  that cap- could come from cap-ere instead of caput,from the stronger  form of cap-ere (capt-are) you get words like captive ,catch and so on.
ww.etimo.it/?term=cappa&find=Cerca
In old greek ,for example, you have also capto (καπτω) wich has ,some of the latin cap-ere meanings.
The  other root cap- (caput), head ,beginning,could be linked to old greek  kefale (κεφαλη),root ,probably,kef-.This other root in old greek and  latin has not the meanings which cap-ere has.Even if in latin these two  roots are very similar ,and they causes confusion,in old greek they are  quite separated and it is possible order this confusion,which you have in latin.My simple and personal opinion.


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