# Origin of Romansch "gea" and Sardinian "eja" = yes



## robbie_SWE

Ok, I remember a discussion in another thread about the origin of "yes" in Romanian (which is *da*, if anyone was wondering ). Seem to recall the discussion being about Romanian being the only Romance language deviating from the "norm" of creating "yes" from Latin testimonials. 
 
I stumbled upon the Romansch *gea* and Sardinian *eja*, and I was wondering if anyone knows the origin of these words? 
 
The reason is because the other Latin languages seem to have this word in common (sp. *sí*, pt. *sim*, it. *sì *and even the fr. *oui *kind of seems to be connected), except for Romanian and apparently Romansch and Sardinian. 

 robbie


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## sokol

I think you are referring to this thread, right? - But to keep it all neat and tidy let's post further points on "yes" in Romance languages in general over there and keep it here strictly to the Romansch and Sardinian varieties, right?


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## Joannes

Though I'm quite interested in answer particles, as you might have noticed, I don't know anything about the etymology of the two discussed. Just maybe the Sardinian *eja* could be connected to Corsican *ié* (which also has *sì*)? You can read about *ié* here.


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## berndf

You have to bear in mind that _Rumantsch Grischun_ is an artificial language. It is synthesis of several Ladinic dialects spoken in Grison. The word for _yes, gea_, is taken from _Sutsilvan_ (see here), a dialect spoken by less than 800 people. I have no idea why they chose that. It will probably by difficult to trace the origin of a word in such a small community. Everything to be known about _Rumantsch Grischun_ is should be contained in the _Dicziunari Rumantsch Grischun_. Unfortunately, I don’t have access to this dictionary and it is only on paper.

I am not an expert on Ladinic dialects, but as far as I know, the most frequent word for _yes_ is [ʃi], [ʃɛ], [ʒi] or [ʒɛ] which is probably related to _sì_.


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## sokol

berndf said:


> I am not an expert on Ladinic dialects, but as far as I know, the most frequent word for _yes_ is [ʃi], [ʃɛ], [ʒi] or [ʒɛ] which is probably related to _sì_.


I did look up in Langenscheidt's dictionary _Rätoromanisch-Deutsch_ (the only one available to me) where unfortunately no etymology is given - but it says that /g/ in front of /e, a/ is pronounced like that (quote, p. 15): "weich und stimmhaft, ähnlich wie g in Genova, jedoch noch palataler" - with a non-standardised phonetic symbol added.

From this description ("soft, voiced, similar to g in Genova but >more palatal<") I guess that /gea/ could be pronounced with palatal stop or palatal fricative; because it is unclear to me if /e/ in this case is mute and only written to "make g soft" (like in Italian)*) there are four possibilities: [ɟa] ~ [ɟea] ~ [ʑa] ~ [ʑea].
*) The dictionary here gives only indirect clues; with /gieu/ this would be clear because no need for insertion of /i/ is needed here to change pronunciation of /g/, thus logic tells me that both /i/ and /e/ should be pronounced. It's different with /gea/ where /ga/ would be pronounced differently; on the other hand, inserted mute vowel usually seems to be /i/ rather than /e/ (there's only one entry in the dictionary beginning with /ge- + vowel/ - except for /geo-/ which surely is [ɟeo] or similar -, and that's /gea/) which could point to /e/ not being mute in /gea/.

And both [ɟa] and [ʑa]wouldn't be so very much different of [ʒɛ] which you have given above - they're close enough to possibly track back to the same root.
But that's a wild guess from me too because I hardly know anything about Rumuntsch; a change from [ɛ] to [a] is not unlikely but only if this change in the language concerned did happen on a rather regular basis. I can't contribute to that as I only know some basic facts about Romance historical linguistics.

Anyway, if it is /gea/ = [ɟ*e*a] or similar then it would at least be very difficult to relate this with  [ʒɛ] or similar of other dialects.


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## berndf

Sorry, I forgot to add, _gea_ is pronounced [ʒa]. This I remember from listening to Rumantsch programs on Swiss TV.


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## sokol

berndf said:


> Sorry, I forgot to add, _gea_ is pronounced [ʒa]. This I remember from listening to Rumantsch programs on Swiss TV.


Strange that. 
Anyway: in that case I think we should at least keep the possibility in mind that /gea/ simply _could _go back to /si/.


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## berndf

If you look at the four different forms that exist is Rumantsch dialects, _gie, ea, schi_ and _gea_, it looks as if there are two different stems, _si_ and another one, _ea_, _ia_ or _ya_. Where this other stem comes from is in my mind pure speculation at this point. I used to work with someone from the region (areas 2 and 3 on this map) coming from a Rumantsch family. I can try contact him tomorrow. Maybe he knows something.


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## Corsicum

Joannes said:


> Though I'm quite interested in answer particles, as you might have noticed, I don't know anything about the etymology of the two discussed. Just maybe the Sardinian *eja* could be connected to Corsican *ié* (which also has *sì*)? You can read about *ié* here.


 
Thanks, yes…, and also Corsican "*isié" *

Sardinian : *eja* / giai 
Corsican : iè, isié (iè : Etymology as Toscan "egli è", From Latin "illi est".)
_(For me …we always say : ié) _
http://infcor.adecec.net/

Sardinian Gallurese
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallurese
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corsican_language


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## berndf

berndf said:


> I used to work with someone from the region (areas 2 and 3 on this map) coming from a Rumantsch family. I can try contact him tomorrow. Maybe he knows something.


He said that [ʒɛ] is the main form for the dialects of the Rhine valley and that he would regard [ʒa] just as a rare variant. He agreed with me that it is of little significance to find _gea_ in the standard because this standard is artificial.


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## sokol

berndf said:


> If you look at the four different forms that exist is Rumantsch dialects, _gie, ea, schi_ and _gea_, it looks as if there are two different stems, _si_ and another one, _ea_, _ia_ or _ya_. Where this other stem comes from is in my mind pure speculation at this point.





Corsicum said:


> Sardinian : *eja* / giai


When connecting Bernd's finding with those of Corsicum at least to me it wouldn't sound _very _far-fetched to suggest similar developments for Rumuntsch 'gea' [ʒa] or 'ea' and Sardinian 'eja' or 'giai' ([ʒai] I guess?).

True, Bernd, it *is *pure speculation, but the similarities are striking.
And it wouldn't be the first case of similar developments in dialects which regionally are very distant; such things occur in many languages.


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## berndf

sokol said:


> True, Bernd, it *is *pure speculation, but the similarities are striking.


And according to what my colleague said, you were most probably right!


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## Outsider

berndf said:


> Sorry, I forgot to add, _gea_ is pronounced [ʒa]. This I remember from listening to Rumantsch programs on Swiss TV.


That sounds remarkably close to German _ja_! Could Romansch _gea_ be a Germanic loan?


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## berndf

Outsider said:


> That sounds remarkably close to German _ja_! Could Romansch _gea_ be a Germanic loan?


That is exactly why I was cautious to buy into Sokol's theory at first. After discussing with a native who was very adiment that it is just a variant of [ʒɛ] I am reaonably convinced now that it is not a German loanword.


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## Outsider

Thanks; that certainly makes a lot of sense. In Portuguese, too, it's common to say "it is" meaning "yes".


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## berndf

Outsider said:


> Thanks; that certainly makes a lot of sense. In Portuguese, too, it's common to say "it is" meaning "yes".


To make sure there is no misunderstanding. I was referring to





sokol said:


> Anyway: in that case I think we should at least keep the possibility in mind that /gea/ simply _could _go back to /si/.


This is what I believe now. You find [ʃi] and [ʃɛ] in Ladinic/Rumantisch dialects which I would assume to be derived from /si/ as [s]> [ʃ] is typical for Rumantsch. [ʒi] or [ʒɛ] are plausible variants.


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## sokol

After some thinking about it: it is possible, even quite likely that an original [ʒɛ] for (probably) all Rumantsch dialects has been _motivated _by German "ja" to change to [ʒa] - that is, no loan (= originally Romance etymology) but influence of German to move [ɛ]towards [a].
For that however pronunciation of "ja" in Bündnerdeutsch also would be relevant; I don't know how it's pronounced in the German dialects there, and if it were /jo/ (with half-open /o/) and not /jɒ/ or /jɑ/ then such an influence would be less likely.

Such influences - that is, convergence of two languages in bilingual regions - aren't uncommon at all especially in cases like Graubünden where people were bilingual for centuries. Sometimes such influence isn't much more but to "move preferences" - that is, in case two varieties [ʒɛ] and [ʒa] exist to make [ʒa] more frequent = the variety having a vowel in common with German (= the second language spoken).

Still I'd be more in favour of a Romance explanation, without convergence influence of German - especially because [ʒɛ] is the more common Rumuntsch variety; if there would be any German influence it would be more likely for [ʒa] being more popular, as explained above.


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## Sprocedato

Hi!

Sardinian _*eja*_: Puddu's Sardinian dictionary (monolingual, see ditzionariu online) says that _éja_ [ˈeja] is a strengthened form of *éi* [ei]. He notes that the initial _e_ is a closed [e] even though, according to a phonetic law of Sardinian, a following _a_ should cause the _e_ to become open [ɛ]. This proves that this _a_ did not originally belong to the word. Just one step towards the etymology...


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## Joannes

Sprocedato said:


> With _*oc*_ the Occitan (and maybe Catalan?) languages


Yes, upto one point. (Only the tag Q *oi?* 'right?' remains as a relic of this in Catalan nowadays.)


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## Sprocedato

sokol said:


> Sardinian 'giai' ([ʒai] I guess?)



It's pronounced [dʒai] with an affricate. Other variants are _zai_ [dzai], _ciai_ [tʃai]. There are also variants without the paragogic _i_: _già_, _za_. It regularly comes from Latin _iam_. It is used as ‘yes’, but it's mainly an emphatic particle: «_giai mi dh'ais a nàrrere!»_ ‘You will say it to me!’ (_giai_ not translated because there is no equivalent particle in English, as far as I know).

Sardinian _giai_ is (most probably) not connected with Sardinian _eja_, _ei_. With reference to the latter, Blasco Ferrer says «di natura espressiva»; that is, without further etymology. (Eduardo Blasco Ferrer, _Storia linguistica della Sardegna_, Niemeyer Verlag, 1984)

Sardinian _emmo_ [ˈɛmmo] is yet another way to say ‘yes’. It apparently comes from Latin _immo_, but the _e_ is unexpected (we would expect Sardinian _*immo_).




Joannes said:


> Yes, upto one point. (Only the tag Q *oi?* 'right?' remains as a relic of this in Catalan nowadays.)



Very intreresting, thank you. I was just guessing.  (I've moved my citation of Dante to the thread *'Yes' distinction in Romance*.)


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