English brother and Latin frāter
The English word brother [ˈbɹʌ.ðəɹ] is a native (patrimonial)
Germanic word and it is a cognate of the Latin word for ‘brother’, namely frāter (acc. frātrem, regular stem frātr‑).
Both brother and frāter go back to Proto-Indo-European *bhrā́ter- (also reconstructed as *bʰréh₂tēr) and are patrimonial cognates of Ancient Greek φράτηρ (phrátēr).
Proto-Indo-European bhrā́ter-
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Eng. brother
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Lat. frāter
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A.Gk. φράτηρ
(phrátēr)
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Many other Indo-European languages have keep this
basic word for a family relationship for the last five thousand years, such as
for example German Bruder, Dutch broer, Russian брат (brat), Romanian frate, Iranian برادر (barâdar), or Hindi/Urdu भाई (bhāī; Urdu
spelling بھائی),
which descends from Sanskrit भ्रातृ (bhrā́tṛ). Do note that the word for ‘brother’ in
Modern Greek is the unrelated αδελφός
(adelfós), a word that comes from Ancient Greek ἀδελφός
(adelphós), an alternate word for ‘brother’ in that ancient language, one which
is derived from the word δελφύς (delphús)
‘womb’.
Spanish hermano and hermana
The ancient Indo-European word for ‘brother’ did not survive
into all languages that descend from Latin, Spanish being one of them. In
Spanish, the word for ‘brother is hermano, which is unrelated to either
Eng. brother or Lat. frāter.
So, where does the Spanish word hermano ‘brother’ come from? It comes from the Latin adjective germānus ‘true, authentic’, or
actually from the shortening of the Latin phrase frāter germānus
‘true/authentic brother’, which was used to refer to brothers with the same mother
and father, as opposed to stepbrothers and half-brothers. (The phrase was also
used sometimes, however, for brothers who shared the same father.) The same
thing is true of the word hermana ‘sister’, which descends from the feminine
form, germāna, of the adjective germānus. The phrase frater germānus was used already in Rome’s golden age and, for some reason,
it got shortened to germānus
in some of the western Romance languages, such as Spanish (hermano), Portuguese (irmão),
and Catalan (germà). Equivalently,
the phrase soror germāna was used for sisters and eventually the first part of
the phrase was lost, giving us hermana.
The sound changes that converted Lat. germānus and germāna to Sp. hermano and hermana are fully the expected ones
in patrimonial words, but there is a spelling change that requires some
explaining. The change in the ending ‑us
to ‑o in Old Spanish is perfectly regular.
(Actually, the ‑o derives from the accusative
ending -ŭm, not the nominative ending ‑ŭs, cf. Part
I, Chapters 8
and 10.)
What looks like the change of the initial g
to a (silent) h, it is not the result
of any sound change in the consonant itself, as it might seem. What happened is
that the sound of the letter g at the
beginning of a word was lost in Old Spanish when followed by the short vowel ĕ.
This resulted in the word ermano in Old
Spanish. The addition of the silent h
(Sp. hache muda) in the spelling took
place later and it had nothing to do with pronunciation. For some reason,
someone thought that it would be a good idea to put a silent h at the beginning of this word as if to
hold the place for that lost Latin consonant.
Latin
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g
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e
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r
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m
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ā
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n
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ŭs
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Old Spanish
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e
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r
|
m
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a
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n
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o
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Modern Spanish
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h
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e
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r
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m
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a
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n
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o
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What we just said about hermano applies to its feminine form hermana ‘sister’, which comes
from the Latin phrase soror germāna ‘true sister’, also by
shortening (for the Latin word soror
‘sister’ and derived words found in English and Spanish, cf. §7.5.4
below).
The Latin adjective germānus
is derived from the Latin noun germen,
same in the nominative and accusative cases (the regular stem was germin‑). Lat. germen meant primarily ‘shoot, sprout, bud’. It comes from Proto-Indo-European
*ǵénh₁mn̥ ‘offspring; seed’. The
Latin source-word was derived from the
root *ǵenh₁‑ ‘to beget’, ‘to give
birth’, a root found in many other words, such as Eng. genetics ~ Sp. genética, Eng.
generic ~ Sp. genérico/a, and genitals
~ Sp. genitales.
Going back to the Latin adjective germānus (feminine: germāna; stem: germān‑),
this word meant ‘full, own’ and ‘genuine, real, actual, true’. It was formed
from the stem germ‑ and the adjective
forming suffix ‑ān‑, and the inflectional ending: nominative,
masculine singular ‑us, or nominative
feminine singular ‑a). From this
Latin word, we get the nouns Eng. germ
~ Sp. germen, as well as the derived
verbs Eng. germinate ~ Sp. germinar. From the exact Latin word germānus, comes the English
adjective germane [ʤəɹ.ˈmeɪ̯n], which means ‘relevant to
a subject under consideration’ (COED). It translates into Spanish as pertinente or relacionado and it is a cognate of Sp. hermano/a.
Proto-Indo-European
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English
derivates
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*ǵenh₁-
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‘to beget’, ‘to
give birth’
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genus, genetic, genome,…
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*ǵénh₁‑mn̥
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‘offspring, seed’
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germ, germen, germane,…
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The Latin adjective germānus is not to be confused with its homonym noun germānus ‘a Germanic person’ (germān‑us), whose adjective form was germānicus ‘Germanic’ (germān‑ĭc‑us; fem. germānica). The equivalents in English
and Spanish are Germanic and germánico, respectively. It is not clear
where the noun germānus
(plural germāni) for Germanic people
comes from. It seems Julius Caesar was the first to use it, as he was also the first
to use the word Germania for the land
they inhabited, west of the Rhine. This word is the source of the English
country name Germany (Sp. Alemania). The Germanic tribes played a major
part in both in the fall of the Western Roman Empire and in the creation of Medieval
Europe.[1]
As we saw, the switch from Lat. frater ‘brother’ and Lat. soror
‘sister’ to a derivate of Lat. germānus
and germāna is not common to all
Romance languages, only to those in the Iberian Peninsula, such as Catalan germà ‘brother’ and germana ‘sister’, and Galego/Portuguese irmão ‘brother’ and irmã
‘sister’ (in addition to Sp. hermano/hermana).
Descendants of Lat. germānus/a
are also now found in parts of Italy and they were supposedly found in the whole
Italic peninsula in earlier times, only to be later replaced back by fratello ‘brother’ and sorella ‘sister’ in Standard Italian.
These two words come from diminutive forms of Latin frater and soror. The French
word for ‘brother’ is frère [ˈfʀɛʀ], a patrimonial descendant
of Lat. frater.
GO TO PART 4B
[1] The Germanic peoples’ names for themselves are
often related to the words Deutch and
Dutch, related to the Germanic word
for people. Another name for the
Germanic peoples in Latin was Teutonicus
(cf. Eng. Teutonic ~ Sp. teutónico/a), especially after the 8th
century, probably from a Germanic tribe’s name, the Teutons or Teutones. The
cognates Eng. Gothic ~ Sp. gótico have also been used in the past
for these people, though technically it is a more restricted term that refers
to a subgroup of Germanic peoples, the Goths, an East Germanic people, with two
main branches, the Visigoths (Western Goths) and the Ostrogoths (Eastern
Goths). The name for Germany is Allemagne
in French and Alemania in Spanish. Both
of these names are derived from a particular confederation of Germanic tribes
known as Allemani, Alemanni, or Alamanni located on the upper Rhine river, north of the Italian
Alps and south of the original region where the Franks lived in the 5th century
before they took over the northern half of what is today France (Roman Galia).
Spanish borrowed the name Alemania
from French. The word Alemanni has
been said to come from a phrase meaning ‘all men’ in Germanic. Another theory
is that it comes from from alahmannen
‘men of sanctuary’.
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