Sp. uno and Eng. one
What is traditionally considered to be the first number, not
counting zero, is number one: Eng. one
and Sp. uno/a. This is the only number
that has masculine and feminine forms in Spanish: uno for the masculine and una
for the feminine. Masculine uno gets
shortened to un when followed by a
noun, e.g. Tengo uno ‘I have one’ vs.
Tengo un libro ‘I have one/a book’.
(No such shortening happens with feminine una.)
As we just saw in the second example, this Spanish numeral
can also act as an indefinite article, equivalent to English a(n). This is not at all unusual. For
example, as we will see, in Old English, the ancestor of one and a(n) where one
and the same word, just like they are in Spanish to this day. The two senses of
uno are distinguished by stress. In
both languages, numerals are stressed (Sp. palabras
tónicas) and articles are unstressed (Sp. palabras átonas). So, if you hear Tengo un libro with stress on un,
then it means ‘I have one book’ and if you hear Tengo un libro without stress on un, then it means ‘I have a book’. Indefinite articles function
very much the same way in English and Spanish, except that in some contexts English
uses one when Spanish does not, as when we describe occupations, as in Eng. I am a teacher, which translates into
Spanish as Soy professor (if the noun
professor is modified by an adjective, then Spanish too adds an indefinite
article, as in Soy un buen profesor
‘I am a good teacher’.
In Latin, the numbers one, two and three were the only ones that
declined, that is, that had different forms according to case (nominative, accusative,
etc.) and gender (masculine, feminine, and neuter). In Spanish, the masculine-feminine
and singular-plural (unos, unas ‘some, several’) inflections of the
numeral uno are the only remnants of this
type of Latin declension.
Spanish uno
is a patrimonial word derived from accusative Lat. ūnŭm (nominative:
ūnŭs).
As we saw in Part I, Chapter 10,
the final ‑m was always lost and the short
ŭ changed to o. This numeral is close enough to its English counterpart one in the spelling, although not in its
pronunciation ([ˈwʌn]), for one to suspect that
the two may be cognates, which indeed they are. They both descent from Proto-Indo-European
*ói-no-s ‘single, one, etc.’. That is,
the two are patrimonial cognates (patrimonial words in both languages with a
common source), not historical cognates through borrowing.
PIE *óinos ‘single, one’
|
|
Proto-Germanic *ainaz
|
Old Latin oinos
|
Old English ān
|
Latin ūnus
|
Eng. one
|
Sp. uno
|
English one
comes from Old English ān. This ān is also the source of the English indefinite
article an, shortened to a before a consonant, as in an apple
or a pear. Just like Spanish uno
can be a numeral (always stressed) or an indefinite article (always unstressed),
the same thing was true of Old English ān. At one point in early
Middle English, a long, stressed a
vowel /ɑː/ changed its pronunciation to /ɔː/, and its spelling also changed
from 〈a〉 to 〈o〉. This
explains the difference in the vowel of an
and one.[1]
Old English
|
Middle English
|
Modern English
|
〈ān〉 /ɑːn/
|
〈one〉 /ɔːn/
|
〈one〉 /wʌn/
|
It seems that Proto-Indo-European *óinos ‘single, one’ was not the original
word for ‘one’ in the proto-language, but rather a pronominal or demonstrative word
of some kind formed with the suffix ‑nós
that formed adjectives from verb stems. It seems the root for the word for ‘one’
was the PIE root sem‑ ‘one, together’,
including *sḗm ’one’, *sēm-i ‘half’, and *som-h-ós ‘same’. This root that can be found in many English words from
different Germanic and Latin sources, such as some, same, sum, simple,
single, assimilate, ensemble, hom(o)‑, syn‑, seem, and similar.[i]
Latin words derived from the numeral ūnus and their descendants
Latin had a number of words derived from the root ūn‑
of the numeral ūnus and quite a few of them have made it into
Spanish, either patrimonially or through borrowing, and into English (through
borrowing):
Latin
|
Spanish
|
English
|
|
ūnīre (part.: ūnītus)
|
ūn‑īre
|
unir(se)
|
unite
|
reūnīre (part.: reūnītus)
|
re‑ūn‑īre
|
reunir
|
reunite
|
ūnĭtātem (nom.: ūnĭtas)
|
ūn‑ĭ‑tāt‑em
|
unidad
|
unit, unity
|
ūniōn- (nom.: ūniō)
|
ūn‑iōn‑
|
unión
|
union
|
ūnĭcus/a
|
ūn‑ĭc‑us
|
único/a
|
unique
|
ūnificāre (ūn‑i‑fic‑āre)
|
ūn‑i‑fic‑āre
|
unificar
|
unify
|
Lat. ūnīre
We should note that not all these cognates are best
of friends and some are actually false friends. Sp. unir and unite, which
come from Lat. ūnīre ‘to join
together, unite’, have the same core meaning, namely ‘to make one’ (transitive)
or ‘to become one’ (intransitive). However, sometimes transitive Sp. unir is better translated by to join (cf. Sp. juntar) or to combine
(cf. Sp. combinar), and intransitive Sp.
unirse is sometimes best translated
by to join (together) or to merge.
Medieval Lat. reūnīre
Medieval Lat. reūnīre
is derived from ūnīre
by the addition of the prefix re‑,
which meant ‘again’ in this case, and thus meant ‘to join (together) again’.
Eng. reunite and Sp. reunir(se) are not equivalent, however.
Eng. reunite /ˈɹi.jʊ.ˌnaɪ̯t/ means ‘to bring or come
together again’ (AHD) and it translates into Spanish as volver a unir(se)/juntar(se), for Spanish transitive reunir
translates best as to gather (together),
as in Reunió a sus amigos ‘He
gathered his friends together’ or Reunió
todo el dinero ‘He gathered all the money’. Intransitive (reflexive) reunirse translates as (intransitive) to gather, get together, or meet, as
in Me reuní (=junté) con mis amigos hoy
‘I got together with my friends today’. Going back to Eng. reunite, we find that the intransitive sense is typically expressed
with the participle/adjective, as reunited,
as in The family was reunited soon after
the accident ‘La familia volvió a estar junta poco después del accidente’
or We are all reunited now ‘Estamos
todos juntos de nuevo ahora’.
Lat. ūnĭtātem
The Spanish noun unidad
has two distinct meanings, which translate into English by two different
descendants of the Latin noun ūnĭtātem,
that is two doublets of the Latin word. They all come from Lat. ūnĭtas, which meant ‘oneness, sameness,
agreement’. Eng. unity, at first
meaning ‘oneness, singleness’, first appeared around 1300 and it is a loanword
from Old French unité, with much the
same meaning. Its main meaning is ‘the state of being united’ (COED). The
doublet of this word that translates the other sense of Sp. unidad is unit, a word derived from unity
as a back-formation, on the basis of the word digit, in the mid-16th
century (for back-formation, see Part I, §5.7.3).
Its main meaning is ‘an individual thing or person regarded as single and
complete but also able to form an individual component of a larger whole’ (COED).
Sp. unidad is a
loanword from Latin ūnĭtas, first
attested in the late 15th century. As with all loans of Latin words containing
the suffix ‑tas, the ending was
adapted to the patrimonial reflex of that suffix in Spanish, namely ‑dad, which descends from the accusative
form of this suffix: ‑tātem.
The changes we find in this suffix are the expected ones: (1) the two
intervocalic t’s were voiced to d, (2) the final m characteristic of the accusative case was lost (very early on),
and (3) the now final e was dropped
when preceded by a dental consonant (cf. Part I, Chapter 10).
Eng. unique and Sp. único/a
Finally, from the list above, let us look at the pair Eng. unique /ju.ˈnik/ ~ Sp. único/a
/ˈu.ni.ko/. English
borrowed this word from French around the year 1600, who itself borrowed it
from Lat. ūnĭcus (fem.: ūnica) more than a century earlier, around
1480. Much like its English descendant, Lat. ūnĭcus meant ‘only, sole, single’, ‘unique’, and ‘uncommon’. It is
formed with the suffix ‑ĭcus (‑ĭ‑c‑us),
which forms adjectives when added to a variety of words such as nouns,
adjectives, verbs, and even numerals, as in this case.
Although dictionaries typically tell us that Eng. unique and Sp. único/a are equivalent, that is not always the case. These words
have two major meanings. The senses of Eng. unique
are (1) ‘not the same as anything or anyone else’, as in Everybody’s DNA is unique or He
has a unique handwriting, and (2) ‘very special, unusual, or good’, as in He has a unique talent.
Sp. único also has two senses. The first one is ‘there is no
other one’, which may seem very similar to the first sense of Eng. unique, but it is not exactly the same.
This sense of único is closer to the
sense of only in English, as in Soy el único superviviente ‘I am the
only survivor’, Es hijo único ‘He’s
an only child’ or Es el único hijo que
tengo ‘He’s the only child/son I have’ (adverbial only translates as únicamente).
Except in some set expressions such as hijo
único/hija única ‘only
child/son/daughter’ and talla única
‘single size’ (for articles of clothing), the adjective único with this sense typically precedes the noun. Although
sometimes the ‘not the same’ sense of Eng. unique
can be translated as único, due
perhaps to semantic calquing, other ways are more common, such as sin par, sin igual, diferente, etc.,
as in El ADN de cada uno es diferente
‘Everybody’s DNA is unique’. Likewise, the ‘special’ or ‘exceptionally good’
sense of Eng. unique more often than
not does not translate as único, but
rather as extraordinario, fantástico, etc.
English has a third sense of the word unique, the ‘exclusive’ sense, always used in the expression to be unique to, as in This plant is unique to this area. This
sense does not translate into Spanish with an expression containing único, but rather solo encontrarse en, ser
exclusivo de, or darse exclusivamente
en, among others. For example, the English sentence we just saw could be
translated into Spanish as Esta planta
solo se encuentra en esta zona.
Lat. ŭncĭa
Several units of measure (Sp. unidades de medida) are derived from the Latin word for one. As we
saw earlier, the word unit in English
and its cognate unidad in Spanish are
themselves derived from Lat. ūnitātem
(nom. ūnitās) ‘unity, oneness’, etc.
Actually, as we saw, Eng. unit is a mid-16th
century back-formation of the noun unity,
on the model of the word digit. The
original meaning of the word unit was
‘an individual thing or person regarded as single and complete but also able to
form an individual component of a larger whole’ (COED). The sense ‘a standard quantity
in terms of which other quantities may be expressed’ (COED) for the word unit came later, in the 18th century.
The word Eng. ounce
/ˈaʊ̯ns/, which refers to a unit of
weight, and the word Eng. inch, which
refers to a unit of length, come from a Latin word derived from the Latin word ūnus,
namely the word ŭncĭa, which meant ‘the
twelfth part of any thing, a twelfth’. The word must be very old and so its
exact composition of this compound is lost in time. We recognize the ŭn‑
part in this word, albeit with a short ŭ instead of a long one, but
the meaning and source of the other part, the ‑cĭa part, is not known. (The Ancient Greek equivalent
is the cognate οὐγγία
(oungía), also attested as οὐγκία (ounkía) and ὀγκία (onkía), so this word is probably a very old compound word. It
may even be related to the word ūnĭcus
that we saw in the preceding section.
Eng. ounce is a 14th
century loanword from Old French once
or unce, which was a measure of weight,
or time, in this language, first attested in the 12th century. It comes ultimately
from Lat. ŭncĭa ‘one-twelfth’. An ounce
is equivalent to one twelfth of a pound in the Troy system of weights (equal to
31.1034768 grams), which is still used for precious metals and is divided into
480 grains. The ounce is equivalent to one-sixteenth of a pound in the avoirdupois
system (28.349523125 grams), which is the most common system of weight still used
in the US today. It is divided into 437.5 grains.
The ounce and the pound were the units of weight all over Europe
since Roman times. However, they were replaced in most of the world by the gram
and the kilogram, which were units of mass (not weight) in the metric system.
It was adopted by most countries of Europe in the 19th century and by most of
the rest of the world in the 20th century. It is also the only system of
measures used in the scientific world.[2]
The Spanish equivalent of Eng. ounce is onza /ˈon.θa/, a patrimonial word written onça and pronounced /ˈon.ʦ̪a/ in Old Spanish. The abbreviation
for both Eng. ounce and Sp. onza is oz., probably taken from the Italian spelling for the word, onza (in recent times, z became the standard spelling for Mod.Sp.
[θ] that derives from Old.Sp.
[ʦ̪] or [ʣ̪], cf. Part I, Chapter 10). The
word onza is archaic nowadays in
Spanish, just like the system of measures that preceded de metric system is
archaic. For many Modern Spanish speakers an onza is a square of a tablet of chocolate, for that is one of the
senses of the word. The Spanish onza
was equivalent to 28.7558 grams. It was divided into 16 adarmes, and for pharmaceutical purposes, into 8 dracmas (Eng. drachma). In either context, the Spanish onza could also be divided into 576 granos (Eng. grains).
Latin ŭncĭa was one
twelfth (1/12) of a pound in terms of weight. The Latin word for pound, the Roman
unit of weight, was lībra.
The English word pound comes from Lat.
lībra pondō ‘a
pound by weight’, where pondō,
ablative of pondus ‘weight’ meant ‘by
weight’. To this day, the abbreviation for pound
is lb. which was the abbreviation of
the Latin word lībra.
The Latin word ŭncĭa not just a
unit of weight. It was also used for other types of units.[ii]
It was also used as a monetary unit and for units of time, space (distance), and
area. It doesn’t seem that it was used as a unit of (liquid) volume, though in English,
the term ounce came to be used a unit
of liquid volume in the avoirdupois system, namely the fluid ounce, which referred
at first to the volume occupied by one ounce of some liquid substance by weight
(abbrev.: fl. oz.). The actual value
of a fluid ounce has changed over time and is different in different countries.
Thus, the British imperial system is different from the US system. A fluid ounce
in the US is 1⁄16 of a US fluid pint, or 1⁄128 of a US liquid gallon, which is approximately
equivalent to 29.6 milliliters (0.0296 of a liter). That is, there are 33.8140227
US fluid ounces in a liter. (An imperial UK gallon is equal to 4.54609 liters, so
an imperial fluid ounce, which is equal to 1/20 of an imperial pint, is equal to
28.4130625 milliliters.)
In Roman times, ŭncĭa was the name
for a bronze (later copper) coin with the monetary value of 1/12 a Roman coin called
as (also known as assarius). Although that sense of the
word as a monetary unit has not survived, the word pound (Sp. libra) is
still used as a unit of currency in places such as the UK. As a unit of
monetary value, the pound originated in the Frankish Empire, and it was brought
to England to represent the value of a pound of silver (by weight). Other
countries where the pound is currently the unit of currency are Egypt, Lebanon,
Sudan, and Syria.
As a unit of time, the ounce was still used in the Middle Ages
and, in Middle English, it was equivalent to approximately 1/12 of a moment or 7.5 seconds. The word moment, and its Spanish cognate momento, now mean ‘a very brief period of
time’ (COED), but in Medieval times they referred to a unit of time equivalent to
1/40 of an hour, or 1.5 minutes. The moment was divided into 12 ounces of 7.5 seconds
each.
As a unit of distance, the word ounce was used at times in English as a unit of distance equal to
1/12 yard or 3 inches. But Lat. ŭncĭa
was borrowed into English much earlier than the word ounce was, in the period of Old English. It was ynce in Old English, a word that has turned
into Modern Eng. inch /ˈɪnʧ/. It is equivalent to 2.54 centimeters. The equivalent of
inch in Spanish is pulgada, a word derived
from the noun pulgar ‘thumb’, since an
inch is approximately the width of a man’s thumb.[iii]
The patrimonial word pulgar comes from
the Latin adjective pollicāris, derived
from the noun pollex ‘thumb, big toe’
(acc. pollicem, root pollic‑) and the adjectival suffix ‑āl‑
(‑ār‑
when added to stems which contained an l).
By the way, a Castilian inch (pulgada)
was slightly shorter than an English inch: 2.322 centimeters as opposed to 2.54
centimeters.
[1] Later on, during the Great Vowel Shift that
took place at the beginning of the Modern English period, the /ɔː/ was further
raised to giving us diphthonguized /oʊ̯/ in Modern English (/ə̯ʊ/ in Std.
British English) (cf. Part I, Chapter 12). From all this we gather that the pronunciation of Modern English one
should have been /oʊ̯n/, homophonous with the word own, rather than /ˈwʌn/ (in some dialects of British English, it is
pronounced [ˈwɒn]). The fact that the word one
is not pronounced /oʊ̯n/ today is due to two changes that happened later. The
first is the insertion of an initial [w] sound. This was due the influence of a
sound change in some English dialects by which a [w] sound was inserted in all
words that started with the /ɔː/ vowel. This change influenced a few words in
Standard English in the 16th century, one
being the main one. In the word only
/ˈoʊ̯n.li/, which is nothing but one
with the suffix ‑ly, the root (one) sounds they way the numeral one would have sounded like in Modern
English if it hadn’t been because of the intereference of a dialectal
pronunciation of the word. The second change is the shortening of the lon /ɔː/
vowel to /ɔ/, which was a sporadic change. Short /ɔ/ changed to /ʌ/ in Modern English, whereas long /ɔː/ changed
to /oʊ̯/. Another related word that had a shortening was the word none /ˈnʌn/, which is a contraction
of ne ‘not’ and one. If the vowel shortening hadn’t taken place, it would now be
pronounced /ˈnoʊ̯ˈn/, homophonous with known.
[2] The metric system was originally developed in
France in 1795 during the French Revolution. Perhaps because of that, the last
countries to adopt the metric system were English-speaking countries. The only
countries that have not yet adopted the metric system are the United States,
Myanmar (Burma), and Liberia.
[ii] Cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncia_(coin),
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncia_(unit),
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Roman_units_of_measurement
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