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Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2014 October 10

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October 10

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Could we know when or how the convert of the meaning of the Greek word "physis" be done?

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Could we know when or how the convert of the meaning of the Greek word "physis" be done? (in origin it means "nature", but in now days it means to the body. "you need a physical examination" or "physiology" (in meaning of study of the body function) and so on. 5.28.188.65 (talk) 15:11, 10 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

There's an interesting chapter "Nature" (which includes material on Greek φύσις) in C. S. Lewis's Studies in Words, if you have access to that work. The "medical" sense of physic[al] was already present in Shakespeare; previously on the ref desk I've cited an anecdote from the introduction to that work, which illustrates the confusion that can result from the various senses that words deriving from physis have accumulated over time in English: When confronted with a test question asking for an explanation of a bit from Julius Caesar, "Is Brutus sick and is it physical / To walk unbraced and suck up the humours / Of the dank morning", one student responded that physical meant "sensible, sane; the opposite of 'mental' or mad". Words derived from physis are hardly confined to "the body" these days; we still speak of "the physical sciences" and "physics" and so forth. It's just that the range of senses has been expanded to encompass various oppositions to whatever might be considered "non-natural" or "non-physical": the metaphysical, the mental, and so forth.
That said, the use in English of words related to physis to describe the study of the human body go way back to Middle English, just like the uses to refer to the natural sciences. An early citation in the OED for "physic" is Chaucer's "Wiþ us ther was a Doctour of Physik. / In al this world be was ther noon hym lik / To speke of phisik and of Surgerye." In short, as long as such words have been used in English, they have been used in both senses. Deor (talk) 17:22, 10 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The OED says the sense of "physics" goes back to ancient Greek, specifically the title of Aristotle's treatises on the subject, and physica also meant the science of medicine in Latin starting about 400 A.D. —JerryFriedman (Talk) 17:58, 10 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Will it help you? 5.28.188.65 (talk) 04:41, 11 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

collecting songs with nonsense syllables

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Hello Wikipedians. I’ve been asked to collect songs that, taken in aggregate, showcase as many different nonsense words as possible. It’s for a children’s game. We are looking for songs in all languages. The examples I was given are all English so far though:

Na na na na, na na na na

Fa la la la la

Pollywollydoodle

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

I’d be grateful for any additions, or a point to the right article. Thanks in advance. 184.147.132.209 (talk) 18:25, 10 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Auf einem Baum ein Kuckuck –
Simsalabimbam basala dusala dim
Auf einem Baum ein Kuckuck saß...
First one that comes to mind... Fut.Perf. ☼ 18:36, 10 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
(ec) Lots of madrigals are full of "fa-la-la" and the like. See also scat singing. Then there's Mairzy Doats, though perhaps it doesn't exactly qualify. The relevant article would seem to be Non-lexical vocables in music. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 18:40, 10 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]


Bawitdaba, though I wouldn't recommend anyone listen to that song :) SemanticMantis (talk) 19:13, 10 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Mah_Nà_Mah_Nà, in contrast, is an excellent song [1]. SemanticMantis (talk) 19:18, 10 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Land of a thousand dances, and here's a list of 36 others, which can be streamed for free [2]. SemanticMantis (talk) 19:24, 10 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
And all children should be exposed to the intro to Hush (Deep Purple song), [3]. (ok I think I'm done now but this is fun!) SemanticMantis (talk) 19:28, 10 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
In the "na na" genre, there's "Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye"; and also Rachel Sweet's theme tune for Clarissa Explains It All, which consisted mostly of "na na na-na-na na na-na-na-na na". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:49, 10 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
"Ob la di ob la da" by The Beatles? Dismas|(talk) 20:01, 10 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
And most any rock and roll song from the "do wop" era in the 1950s and early 1960s. Countless examples come to mind. A few: "Get a Job" (yip-yip-yip-yip-moom, sha-na-na-na, sha-na-na-na-na-na, ba-do); "Little Darlin'" (aaaaaah-yah-yah-yaaaaaaaah); "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do" (do-do-do-down-doobie-do-down-down, comma-comma, down-doobie-do-down-down); even Sinatra's version of "Strangers in the Night" (doobie-doobie-do). ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:07, 10 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Or for an executive summary:[4] ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:07, 10 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Coo coo ca-choo, Mrs._Robinson/ They are the eggman, I Am The Walrus, goo goo g'joob. SemanticMantis (talk) 20:13, 10 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Gilly, Gilly, Ossenfeffer, Katzenellen Bogen by the Sea. -- Jack of Oz [pleasantries] 20:35, 10 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Part of that is distorted German, Hasenpfeffer and Katzenellenbogen or Katzenelnbogen. (In grad school I knew students of a Prof. Katzenellenbogen, known as K-bogen.) —JerryFriedman (Talk) 14:35, 11 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
"A-wop-bop-a-loo-bop-a-lomp-bam-boom..". I speak of the pompatus of love.... Ghmyrtle (talk) 20:49, 10 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
From the Scouting world, Ging Gang Goolie and Oo a lay lay - Cucumber Mike (talk) 20:58, 10 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
"De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da"? "Da Da Da"? (Anything by Trio, in fact). "Local Boy in the Photograph" has a verse "Blah blah, blah blah blah, blah BLAHH"... Tevildo (talk) 20:59, 10 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Nobody's mentioned "The Hut-Sut Song" yet? Honestly, you lot, you're supposed to be at least as old as I am... Tevildo (talk) 21:05, 10 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
That's from about the same era as "Mairzy Doats", and both songs use real words that are fiddled with to make them sound like nonsense words. So they might or might not fit the OP's criteria. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:08, 10 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm. I always believed that the words of the Hut-Sut song were entirely nonsense, rather than being derived from actual Swedish. Our article doesn't resolve the issue one way or the other. Do any Swedish speakers have an opinion? Tevildo (talk) 21:40, 10 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
You may be right. However, the song claims to explain what the words mean. But that might be a ruse. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 22:20, 10 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Do Wah Diddy Diddy, Iko Iko. HiLo48 (talk) 21:49, 10 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
"Whistle Stop" from Roger Miller in Disney's Robin Hood, which became the Hampster Dance. Miller of course also brought us Do-Wacka-Do and Chug-a-Lug. HiLo48 (talk) 22:06, 10 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Roger Miller did a lot of "countrified" scat in various songs. "Do-Wacka-Do" is a funny way of saying "Do Like I Do", roughly putting it in the "Mairzy Doats" category. An unrelated song from the Jazz Age is called "Doo Wacka Doo".[5] That doo-wacka-doo is imitative of a cornet. The song takes us into another sub-category, of vocalizations imitating sounds of musical instruments. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 22:34, 10 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
"Be-Bop-A-Lula", "Da Doo Ron Ron", "Boom Bang-a-Bang", "Zabadak".... Ghmyrtle (talk) 22:22, 10 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Lots more titles here. Ghmyrtle (talk) 22:29, 10 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Mr. Bass Man from Johnny Cymbal is nice. HiLo48 (talk) 22:17, 10 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
"Hooga chaka, hooga chaka" Hooked on a feeling/176.10.249.240 (talk) 22:24, 10 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Shalalalalalalalala. Uh huh. Also, it's hard to bargle nawdle zouss. InedibleHulk (talk) 22:22, 10 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
My Coo Ca Choo from Alvin Stardust. HiLo48 (talk) 22:25, 10 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Speaking of Alvin (and Simon and Theodore), it's pretty hard to beat the Witch Doctor Song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmjrTcYMqBM
There's also one of my favorite shower songs, "Ken Li": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQt-h753jHI
The nonsense syllables are... English (or at least the singer believes so). Dominus Vobisdu (talk) 22:40, 10 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
It's not exactly nonsense, but I've found Banana banana banana terracotta banana terracotta terracotta pie! a pretty silly thing to say. Nice rhythm, though. InedibleHulk (talk) 22:29, 10 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Naturally we have an article on Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow. HiLo48 (talk) 22:34, 10 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
"The Name Game" is pretty much nonsense lyrics except for the built-in explanation and the names themselves. Just use names like "Chuck" with caution. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 22:37, 10 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Black Betty tells us to Bam ba lam quite a bit. HiLo48 (talk) 22:39, 10 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
And how could I have forgotten "Pony Time", with it's "boogety-shoo".[6] ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 22:43, 10 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
You can hear Big Bird singing about "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ" (3:57) at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTvhKZHAP8U.
—Wavelength (talk) 22:57, 10 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
What?! –No mention of "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" yet? However... "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" is what "In the Garden of Eden" sounds like after consuming a gallon of cheap red wine. —[7]   71.20.250.51 (talk) 23:04, 10 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The best I know - Haru Mamburu.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 23:52, 10 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Awimoweh, awimoweh, awimoweh, awimoweh. Clarityfiend (talk) 00:30, 11 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
That's apparently distorted Zulu, uyimbube, according to our article. —JerryFriedman (Talk) 14:35, 11 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Each verse of Aba Daba Honeymoon begins with the line "Aba daba daba daba daba daba dab". HiLo48 (talk) 01:52, 11 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

My favorite nonsense lyric of all time: Pompatus (Steve Miller)--William Thweatt TalkContribs 04:52, 11 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Roy Orbison's "Ooby Dooby" doesn't make much sense. HiLo48 (talk) 06:33, 11 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Bom ba ba bom ba bom ba bom bom ba ba bom ba ba bom ba ba dang a dang dang Ba ba ding a dong ding Blue moon moon blue moon dip di dip di dip Moo Moo Moo Blue moon dip di dip di dip Moo Moo Moo Blue moon dip di dip di dip Bom ba ba bom ba bom ba bom bom ba ba bom ba ba bom ba ba dang a dang dang Ba ba ding a dong ding"
  • and other oldies here. Rmhermen (talk) 06:52, 11 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
See also "Who Put the Bomp (in the Bomp, Bomp, Bomp)" ---Sluzzelin talk 10:49, 11 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo! Oda Mari (talk) 08:28, 11 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I second the recommendation for scat singing. If you want to collect syllables, you won't be able to beat the songs that are all or almost all scat, such as Ella Fitzgerald's or Sarah Vaughn's "How High the Moon", or "Sassy's Blues" (Vaughn).
Speaking of Fitzgerald, there's "A-Tisket, A-Tasket". From the same era as that and the Hut-Sut Song, we have "Chickery Chick" and "Flat Foot Floogie (with a Floy Floy)" (though that seems to be distorted slang).
In Jewish music I only know "Bim Bom". (There seems to be a João Gilberto song of the same name.) That kind of thing was imitated in "If I Were a Rich Man". But speaking of "cheeree beeree", there's "Ciribiribin" and "María Isabel".
You might have to decide whether interjections such as "Hey", "Oh" (hey, that brings me to the Red Hot Chili Peppers), and "Ay, ay, ay, ay" as in "Cielito Lindo" are words or nonsense. Or imitations of laughter, as in "L'éclat de rire" from Auber's Manon Lescaut and "They're Coming to Take Me Away". Same with onomatopeia such as "Splish Splash", "Cucurrucucǘ Paloma", and "Stodola Pumpa" (Czech, I think). "Ding dong" might not be nonsense in Gilbert and Sullivan's "Brightly Dawns our Wedding Day" or Shakespeare's "Full Fathom Five", but it is in "Ram-a lam-a ding dong". —JerryFriedman (Talk) 15:20, 11 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Rapper's Delight, which the previously mentioned Asereje parodied. And Minnie the Moocher, one of the most famous examples of scat. John M Baker (talk) 15:59, 11 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Roadhouse Blues by the Doors has a middle scat section that ends which "yeah, right!". At one time Eurovision Song Contest was a fertile ground for nonsense songs - or what seemed in English to be nonsense, so you could explore that section. Alternate Title by the Monkees had a scat section. --TammyMoet (talk) 16:11, 11 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
There are all the Irish songs like "Moses Ri-Tooral-I-Ay". And don't you remember "Sweet Betsy from Pike"?
Camp songs: There's "Tongo", which may mean something in one of the languages of the Solomon Islands, and "Sarasponda". I'm sure there are many others. "Donna Donna" wasn't originally a children's song, but it's been sung at lots of summer camps.
Some older ones still known to children: "Skidamarink" and "Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay", which reminds me of G. and S.'s "When the Foeman Bares His Steel".
In the same vein as the Witch Doctor, there's "The King of the Cannibal Islands" ("Hokey pokey winky wong...") and "Digga Digga Doo". "Nagasaki" and "Land of the Silver Birch" might tie in here. Powwow songs can contain a lot of nonsense words ("heya hey"), but I don't know how to tell what are real words and what aren't. However, the children might like Kids' Powwow Songs by the Black Lodge Singers.
"Nagasaki" leads to those songs where the nonsense words are euphemisms. The simplest might be in "Lovin' You": "And every time that we, ooh, I'm more in love with you." I don't know how much of the chorus of "Man Piaba" is real words in some Caribbean English and how much is nonsense. —JerryFriedman (Talk) 17:05, 11 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
G&S were imitating the sounds of musical instruments. These nonsense words seem to fall into some categories. Oh, and I just remembered the old Phil Harris novelty song called "The Thing", which used an actual drumbeat in place of the name of the Thing: "You'll never get rid of that (dum da-dum) no matter what you do!" ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 17:36, 11 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
If we're counting those, Van Canto is non-stop jibberish. Rum-diddy-dum, dar-in-doo-doh! InedibleHulk (talk) 12:40, 12 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I forgot (it's called "denial") the most famous euphemism song, "My Ding-a-Ling". —JerryFriedman (Talk) 12:14, 12 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Another oldie: "Inka Dinka Doo", Jimmy Durante's signature song. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:43, 11 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Try Ging Gang Goolie and A Rum Sum Sum. Also another lesser known Scouting campfire antiphon with variable gibberish lyrics, depending on who you learned the song from - Ricky Ticky Tomba or Ricky Ticky Tumba or Tomba Tomba. Alansplodge (talk) 11:28, 12 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
"Good Morning, Starshine." (It's barely 6 AM here.) Another camp (and Scout?) antiphon is "The Keeper". "Hey down." "Ho down." "Derry derry down." That's part of a "derry down" tradition.
And then there are cowboy songs such as "Git Along, Little Dogies" and "The Old Chisholm Trail". And yodeling. And Laurie Anderson's "Big Science". And children's songs such as "The Farmer in the Dell" and "Old MacDonald Had a Farm". —JerryFriedman (Talk) 12:14, 12 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
"The Keeper" is actually a rather rude song dating from the 17th century according to Among The Leaves So Green-O, the lyrics having been bowdlerised at the end of the 19th century. A similar folky song (which may or may not be Irish, English or American) is The Whistling Gypsy with "A dee do a dee do die day, A dee do a dee day-o...". Alansplodge (talk) 14:17, 12 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
An interesting nonsense song was recorded in the 1940s on the remote Danish island of Anholt being sung by local children. It went: "Jeck og Jill Vent op de hill, Og Jill kom tombling after."[8] The island had been occupied by British Royal Marines during the Gunboat War 130 years previously, and the rhyme had been passed down without anybody knowing what it meant. Alansplodge (talk) 15:47, 12 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
These songs can be categorized in Category:Songs with nonsense syllables and listed in "List of songs with nonsense syllables".
—Wavelength (talk) 20:30, 12 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Now there's a project for a rainy day :-) Alansplodge (talk) 20:32, 12 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
After starting the category and populating it with about 20 songs, I discovered the already existing Category:Songs with nonsensical lyrics.
—Wavelength (talk) 02:19, 13 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Too many replies already, but Shoo-Be-Doo-Be-Doo-Da-Day. Eman235/talk 06:48, 15 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Modern French words derived from Old French nominative?

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Do you know any modern French words derived from the Old French nominative (aka subject) case? I could only find two: "on" (from Lat. homo I give the Latin nominative which is the ultimate origin because I'm not completely familiar with Old French spelling(s)) and "sire" (from Lat. senior). There's got to be more. Contact Basemetal here 20:54, 10 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

  • Fils and Dieu if I remember right from high school. μηδείς (talk) 21:47, 10 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • Fils I get. This (non-silent!) s in a singular form seems to point to the nominative (its being non-silent however could just be a later hypercorrection since in French final s generally became silent and I don't know why this particular one would have escaped the action of that sound law). On the other hand Dieu I don't get. Being derived from Lat. 2nd declension deus the only difference between cas sujet and cas régime would be dieus vs dieu, so dieu would have to be the oblique case. Phrases such as Hôtel-Dieu (preposition-less genitive use of the oblique case for Hôtel de Dieu as in so many cases of place names in France, Belgium, and even the Netherlands: Bois-le-Duc aka 's Hertogenbosch for Bois du Duc) also seems to point in that direction. I'm not saying I'm certain it is not. I'm just saying I'm puzzled. I don't get it. Contact Basemetal here 23:38, 10 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
There are pairs, the best known being "pute" and "putain", from the nominative and cas regime respectively. Itsmejudith (talk) 21:54, 10 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks guys. Keep 'em coming. There ought to be a Wiktionary category for these words. I'm also interested in those cas sujet/cas régime (subject/oblique) pairs mentioned by Itsmejudith. Note the two examples I'd already found are in such pairs: on/homme and sire/seigneur. Contact Basemetal here 22:30, 10 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
PS As a added question: Are there extant texts in old Romance languages other than Old French that display the subject/oblique case distinction? Contact Basemetal here 22:30, 10 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Perhaps the Castillian Dios was interfering with my suspicion of the French Dieu? Like I said, I wasn't sure I remembered right from the 1980's. μηδείς (talk) 00:10, 11 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • Ah but that is interesting. Dios indeed must go back to Lat. nominative deus. May I expand the question to: please send my way any modern Romance word you know (in any modern Romance language) that comes from the Latin nominative. Contact Basemetal here 00:24, 11 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Probably some masculine names ending in "s": Georges, Charles, etc. AnonMoos (talk) 00:37, 11 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

And maybe Louis, Clovis, etc. And all the Romanian/Italian plurs in i. But how 'bout more "real" examples (like Spanish Dios). Contact Basemetal here 00:47, 11 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

All the subject pronouns? (Je, certainly.) There are a bunch of adjectives/adverbs that also have pairs (moins/moindre, mieux/meilleur...I'm sure there must be more). As for nouns, aside from sieur, there is also soeur and coeur. I'm pretty sure my Old French textbook had a list, but that's packed away somewhere (it's Introduction à l'ancien français by Guy Renaud de Lage, if you happen to have it). Adam Bishop (talk) 00:53, 11 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The French wikipedia article on "nominatif" lists prestre, ancestre, traïtre, suer, gars, copain, pâtre, nonne and "many pronouns", as well as mentioning names: Georges, Gui, Guennes.184.147.132.209 (talk) 00:57, 11 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Portuguese Deus in addition to Spanish Dios. Several personal names in several languages, such as Carlos/Charles, Georges, Jacques, Marcos, Lucas, Mateus. Probably not too many common nouns since they would have been analogically reinterpreted as plurals and then have new singulars created by back-formation (e.g. tiempo < tiempos < tempus, though French temps retained the -s; but since tempus is neuter it's both nominative and accusative). —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 09:17, 11 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Oh yeah, coeur comes from the neuter cor too, so I was wrong about that one. Adam Bishop (talk) 14:31, 11 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
You mean that coeur comes from acc. cor. But how do things work with the neuters? Since at some point between Vulgar Latin and common Romance the neuter gender was lost and neut. were reassigned to masc. isn't it possible that newly masc. cor had acquired an acc. *cordem and that one can still say that coeur derives from nom. cor and not from the acc.? Contact Basemetal here 17:33, 11 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Possibly, but apparently that is not the case with cor. Similar things did happen though - an example is "chef", which does not come from classical Latin caput/capitis, but from a vulgar Latin form, "capum". Adam Bishop (talk) 22:43, 11 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
How can you tell that chef comes from *capum and not caput? Surely both would have given the same result, since -t was lost in Romance (e.g. amat > aime). —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 14:51, 12 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know personally, but the Trésor de la langue française says so. (Although apparently based on only one 7th-century attestation...) Adam Bishop (talk) 18:09, 12 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm still not sure that Dieu doesn't ultimately come from the nominative OF deus rather than the oblique, deo. The French article on God says the word lost the final ess from deus in the 11th or 12th century, meanwhile our article on Old French says the -s in fils was restored by analogy, and is now pronounced only due to spelling pronunciation, distinguishing it from fil, "wire". Given that Latin deus and divus "divine" were originally separate case forms of a single Old Latin paradigm that were reanalyzed into two separate paradigms, not to mention that Jove, Jupiter, jour and -di in week names all come from the same source, a little manipulation of the spelling to avoid the possibly polytheistic sounding deus doesn't seem impossible. μηδείς (talk) 02:31, 12 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Old French had a lot of spellings for the modern French "dieu" - it appears as "diex", "deux", "dex", etc. That must be from the nominative. (Or the vocative - apparently there is a bit of a controversy about it, but the vocative of "deus" might have simply been "deus"). Adam Bishop (talk) 11:00, 12 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Medeis and Adam Bishop: if Dieu comes from OF nominative Deus then what do you make of a phrase such as Hôtel-Dieu where Dieu is clearly in a cas régime position? And what form would OF oblique case Deo would have been expected to yield in modern French? Contact Basemetal here 14:41, 12 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
To what date does Hotel-Dieu date, and is there some reason to assume the obsolescent forms wouldn't have fallen together orthographically? Again, the French article on God says the -s in the nominative was lost earlier (11th or 12th century) than in general, where the distinction was lost in the 13th-14th century according to our Old French article. μηδείς (talk) 16:41, 12 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Various Hôtel-Dieu were founded at various times. The oldest is the Hôtel-Dieu de Paris founded in 660 way before there was such a thing as a French language. You can find others at the disambiguation page Hôtel-Dieu. A Hôtel-Dieu could be founded next year and it will still be called Hôtel-Dieu even though the French language has lost its oblique case many centuries ago, but it's clear the phrase dates back to a time when the French language had both an oblique and a direct case and the ability to use the oblique case all by itself as a genitive without the need to insert the preposition de which you can no longer do in modern French. But maybe some would wanna argue that in this specific instance it could simply be an OF calque of Latin Hospitale Dei. Leaving that aside I'm asking again: (1) When direct case Deus lost its s did the two forms of the oblique and direct case become undistinguishable? And (2): Even if they were still different what would the (hypothetical) reflex of the oblique form would be in modern French? Indeed if either (1) the two forms coalesced or (2) the two forms did not coalesce but would give identical reflexes in modern French it is not clear to me that you can decide whether modern French Dieu is a reflex either of the direct or the oblique case. Contact Basemetal here 19:33, 12 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
It's possible to stick two nouns together in modern French (and Old French) to make a noun phrase, just like in English. I think this is an inheritance from Indo-European actually. "Personne ressource", "facteur clé"...it's not really a standard process, but it's possible. So maybe that is the origin of "hôtel-Dieu". Adam Bishop (talk) 00:29, 13 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
By the way, "deo" does exist in extremely early Old French - the Strasbourg Oaths contain the phrase "pro Deo amur" (and the subject case "Deus" elsewhere). I don't really know about early stuff like that, but I'm much more familiar with the language after about 1200, and I can't recall ever seeing a separate oblique case for Dieu - just dieu, des, dex, diex (where "x" is actually a shorthand for "us"). For example, the Assizes of Jerusalem (to pick a text I just happen to have at hand!) contains the phrase "en la merci de Dex et dou seignor". Elsewhere there is a clearly a subject case "sire" and an object case "seignor", but this is not true for the word for God. (I should say that this is a rather late example though, ~1250, when the subject/oblique distinction was already starting to disappear.) Adam Bishop (talk) 01:05, 13 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I should also say that this discussion reminds me that "studying Old French texts" and "being an Old French philologist" are completely different things, heh. Adam Bishop (talk) 01:09, 13 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, that pro deo in the Strasbourg Oaths is definitely a continuation of the Latin oblique. Were it pro deu we'd have a problem. μηδείς (talk) 01:14, 13 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Without trying to put words in your mouth, User:Basemetal, there seems to a presumption that there was a regular class of vulgar latin/old french masculines in -eus/-eo and that we should be able to predict the behavior of Deus on this at a latter date. I searched Comrie's World's Major Languages without success; no such class of words and no direct mention of Dieu. The presumption that Dieu would have developed regularly along with such a class is belied by this website on word families that gives dozens of developments of PIE *dei- in French ("day" in English is a mistake, it's not cognate, Tag neither.) and the fact that the oblique of pretre survives as the name of a street in paris, Rue des Prouvaires, along with the reflex of de. I think we're kind of stuck with negative evidence at this point, but AnonMoos' spelling variants for the Nom form, and the difference in dates of loss (11-12th vs 13-14th) of final ess nominatives for Deus vs regular masculines, and the context of the retention of -s in the rest of Western Romance seems to point to this being the survival or merger of a nominative in French, not a loss. μηδείς (talk) 20:39, 12 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]
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