[This entry is taken from a chapter of Part II of the open-source textbook Spanish-English Cognates: An Unconventional Introduction to Spanish Linguistics.]
This is Part 15 of Slaves and Slavery: Go to Part 1
Lat. sĕrvĭtĭum: Eng. service ~ Sp. servicio
There
is a Latin word derived from the noun sĕrvus that has reflexes in English
and Spanish that are extremely common words. The Latin word is sĕrvĭtĭum and its reflexes are the
cognates Eng. service ~ Sp. servicio. Lat. sĕrvitĭum meant first of all ‘the condition
of a slave, service, slavery, servitude’ and, by extension, ‘servitude or subjection
of any kind’ (L&S). In other words, sĕrvĭtĭum was the equivalent of Eng.
slavery and Sp. esclavitud, words that as we saw were derived in these
languages, not descendants of Latin words. Lat. sĕrvĭtĭum was also a synonym of the words that meant
‘slavery’ in Latin, namely sĕrvĭtūs and sĕrvĭtūdo (see above). Finally, the Latin noun sĕrvitĭum could also mean ‘a body of servants,
the class of slaves’ (L&S), so it could be used to refer to the servants of
a household, the domestic help, a sense that Sp. servicio still has.
Lat.
sĕrvitĭum was
a second declension neuter noun derived from the root sĕrv‑ of the noun sĕrvus ‘slave’ by means of the suffix
or ending ‑(ĭ)‑t‑ĭ‑(um). Note that the first
ĭ is a linking vowel, not part of the suffix, and was used only used
when the stem ended in a consonant, and the ‑um ending was the
nominative singular inflection of second declension neuter nouns. This suffix was an extended
variant form of the suffix ‑ĭ‑(um) that derived neuter second declension
abstract nouns typically from verbs, such as ŏdĭum ‘hatred, etc.’ from ōdisse
‘to hate, etc.’ (cf. Sp. odio ‘hate’), collŏquĭum ‘talk, conversation,
etc.’ from colloquī ‘to talk together’ (cf. Eng. colloquium ~ Sp.
coloquio), and delīrĭum ‘derangement, madness, frenzy’
from dēlīrāre ‘to deviate from the straight track; to be deranged, crazy’
(cf. Eng. delirium ~ Sp. delirio).[1] An
extended variant came about when speakers mis-parsed a word and assumed that a
certain letter was part of the suffix, as opposed to being part of the stem.
The suffix
‑(ĭ)‑t‑ĭ‑(um) was not as common as its feminine counterpart ‑(ĭ)‑t‑ĭ‑(a)
(an extended form of the suffix ‑ĭ‑(a)) that derived first declension abstract
nouns describing the condition of being something from adjectives (or occasionally
other nouns), a suffix that has resulted in the patrimonial Spanish reflex ‑eza,
as in dureza ‘hardness’ (cf. Lat. dūritĭa), and the learned Spanish
reflex ‑icia, as in justicia ‘justice’ (cf. Lat. iūstitĭa).[2] Another
variant of this suffix was ‑(ĭ)‑t‑ĭ‑(ēs) (accusative: ‑(ĭ)‑t‑ĭ‑(ēm)), which resulted in fifth
declension feminine abstract nouns, a suffix whose patrimonial Spanish reflex
is ‑ez, as in vejez ‘old age’ from viejo ‘old’.[3]
Descendants
(reflexes) of Lat. sĕrvĭtĭum
are ubiquitous and very common in all Romance languages, cf. Provençal servizi
or servis, Spanish servicio, Portuguese serviço, Fr. service,
and Italian servizio or servigio (OED). These words have also
been very common words in these languages from the very beginning. The word was
even borrowed by a neighboring language such as Basque quite early on,
presumably from Latin, not from its Romance descendant, cf. Modern Basque zerbitzu
[seɾˈbiʦu].[4]
Sp. servicio is attested very early
on in the language. DCEH tells us it is found in the very first written records
of the language, in the Glosas Emilianenses from around the year 950 (cf. Part
I, Chapter 9), as well as in many subsequent early writings. It is quite likely
that this was the main word that meant ‘servitude’ in the post-Latin period
before of the creation of the word servidumbre. Nonetheless, there is something about the
form of this Spanish word that does not make it look patrimonial (inherited),
but rather borrowed. That is because the rare Latin ending ‑(ĭ)‑t‑ĭ‑(um)
does not have a patrimonial reflex in Spanish and if it had been passed on, it would
have been *‑ezo, resulting in *servezo, which is not attested in Old
Spanish.
The ending ‑icio is obviously a
learned adaptation of the Latin ending ‑ĭtĭum, and the Spanish word servicio
itself cannot be a fully patrimonial (inherited) word. (Note that in addition
to being a reflex of Lat. ‑ĭtĭum , the ending ‑icio in Spanish
words may also be a reflex of the rare Latin ending ‑īcĭus that formed
adjectives, as in fictīcĭus, source of Sp. ficticio/a ~ Eng. fictitious.)
All other Spanish words that end in ‑icio seem to be loanwords that
come from Latin words ending in ‑ĭtĭum
in which the suffix is ‑ĭum and
the ‑t‑ is part of the verbal stem, as in armisticio ‘armistice’
(< Lat. armistitĭum ‘truce’)
and solsticio ‘solstice’ (< Lat. solstitĭum ‘summer solstice; summer;
solstice’). There are a handful of Spanish words which seem to have been
created in Spanish by means of the ending ‑icio, such as the word bullicio
‘racket, noise’, formed by adding ‑icio to the stem of the verb bullir
‘to boil’ (from Lat. bŭllīre ‘to boil’ from Lat. bŭlla ‘bubble’). Such words are
rare, however.
Because
of all this, we can see that Sp. servicio is quite a special
word, given that it is so old and its ending is so rare and unique. It is most
likely a semi-learned word, namely one that was patrimonial (inherited) but was
altered in its form (the ending ‑icio) to make it more Latin-like
because of its association with the learned (educated) classes. The
pronunciation of the original, patrimonial word is not known to us, given that
the semi-learned ending ‑icio is found in even the earliest written attestations
of this word. If there was such a patrimonial word, it would have been
pronounced [seɾˈβeʣo] and written *servezo (cf. Basque zerbitzu).
English
borrowed the word service, pronounced [ˈsɜɹ.vɪs] today, in the early 14th
century. It was borrowed from Old French, where the word it was spelled
variously as servise, service, servige, or serviche
(cf. modern French service, pronounced [sɛʀ.ˈvis]). Eng. service
has had a variety of meanings over time. Even today, dictionaries tell us that this
is a polysemous word, one with many senses. The Concise Oxford English
Dictionary gives us six senses for this noun, two of them with subsenses;
the American Heritage Dictionary has fifteen senses, six of them with
two subsenses; Merriam-Webster’s Advanced Learner’s Dictionary gives us
thirteen senses, one of them with three subsenses; and the Oxford Advanced
Learner’s Dictionary gives sixteen senses. To describe the senses of service,
we will use the Advanced English-Spanish VOX dictionary senses with
their Spanish equivalents, as shown in Table 2.
|
service
noun 1
(attention to customer) servicio the service here is terribly slow el servicio aquí es muy
lento
is service included? ¿el servicio está incluido? 2
(organization, system, business) servicio there’s a good bus service hay un buen servicio de autobuses
there’s a 24-hour service hay un servicio permanente, hay un servicio las 24 horas 3
(work, duty) servicio a life of public service una vida de servicio al pueblo
he has twenty years’ service in the army lleva veinte años de servicio en el ejército he died on active service murió en acto de servicio she went into (domestic) service se puso a trabajar de criada 4
(use) servicio you’ll get excellent service from this model este modelo te dará un servicio
excelente
this machine is not in service esta máquina no funciona [idiomatic expression] 5
(maintenance of car, machine) revisión nombre femenino 6
RELIGION oficio, oficio religioso 7
(of dishes) vajilla; (for tea, coffee) juego 8
(tennis) saque nombre masculino, servicio 9 LAW entrega,
citación nombre femenino, notificación nombre femenino |
Table 2: Entry for service in Advanced English-Spanish VOX
As
we can see, most of the senses of Eng. service translate into Spanish as
servicio, though some do not, such as the sense of ‘religious service’, defined
as ‘a ceremony of religious worship according to a prescribed form’ (COED),
though if one looks at the senses for servicio in a Spanish dictionary,
such as the academies’ DLE, we see that ‘religious worship’ (Sp. culto
religioso) is supposedly one of the meanings of the word servicio,
albeit not a common one. On the other hand, going against what Vox claims, it can
be argued that the ‘(coffee/tea) set’ sense or Eng. service (#7) can indeed
be translated as servicio, not just vajilla or juego. Actually,
the Advanced Spanish-English VOX dictionary gives that as one of the senses
of Sp. servicio, which curiously it proceeds to translate into English as
set, not service (see below). Conversely, just like not all
senses or uses of Eng. service translate into Spanish as servicio,
there are some uses of Sp. servicio that do not translate into English as
service. Thus, for example, servicio or servicios is a common
way to refer to public restrooms in Spanish (see sense #6), e.g., El servicio
de señoras está al fondo a la derecha ‘The ladies’ restroom is at the end to
the right’, Por favor, ¿los servicios? ‘Excuse me, where is the restroom?’
(DUEAEV).
|
servicio nombre
masculino 1 (gen) service |
Table 3:
Entry for servicio in Advanced Español-Inglés VOX
Sp.
servicio is attested very early on, in the Aemilian glosses written around
the year 950 (Sp. glosas emilianenses, cf. Part I, Chapter 9). Its
medieval pronunciation must have been something like [seɾ.ˈβi.ʦi̯o], with the letter 〈c〉
representing the sound [ʦ] (cf. Part I, Chapter 10). It is spelled with ç in
the Cid, though this letter was not needed to represent the sound [ʦ] before the letter 〈i〉
in Old Spanish. As
we said, this cannot be a fully patrimonial word and it is probably a semi-learned
word (Sp. semicultismo), which when transmitted in writing, kept a form closer
to the Latin one than would have been expected from word-of-mouth transmission.
(The change in the spelling from ‑t‑ to ‑c‑ was standard in this context
before the semivowel [i̯], for the two consonants had come to be pronounced identically
in this phonetic environment.)
Spanish dictionaries also give a large number of senses for the
word servicio, not just the six senses found in the Spanish-English dictionary
above. The DLE, for instance, gives 19 senses for this word, many of which are rare,
including the already mentioned religious sense and one that we will see below having
to do with a medieval cattle tax. There is one sense that is not shared with Eng.
service, but which is related to the ‘set’ sense, namely the ‘cutlery for
one diner’ sense. The DLE and other dictionaries also give a large number of collocations
or semi-idiomatic phrases that contain the word servicio, such as the
following: entrar en servicio ‘to come into service’, estar al
servicio de alguien ‘to be at someone’s disposal’, estar de servicio
‘to be on duty’, fuera de servicio ‘out of order’, hacer servicio
‘to be of use’, hacer un flaco servicio ‘to do more harm than good’, ir
al servicio ‘go to the restroom’, poner en servicio ‘to put into operation’,
prestar servicio ‘to serve’, servicio incluido ‘service charge included’,
servicio a domicilio ‘home delivery’, servicio de urgencias ‘emergency
service’, servicios informativos ‘broadcasting services’, servicio médico
‘medical care/assistance’, servicio militar ‘military service’, servicios
mínimos ‘skeleton service(s)’, servicio secreto = servicio de
inteligencia ‘secret service’.
Going back to Eng. service, we should note that there
are a number of common compound nouns in which this noun is used as a modifier of
another noun. These are the most common ones in use today with their Spanish equivalents:
service area ≈ Sp.
área de servicio; service charge ≈ (on a bill) (suplemento por) servicio, (in banking)
comisión, (condo fees, in Britain) gastos de comunidad; service
department ≈ Sp. servicio
de atención al cliente; service economy ≈ Sp. economía de servicios;
service elevator/lift ≈
Sp. montacargas; (Britain) service flat ≈ Sp. apartamento con servicios incluidos; service
industry/sector ≈ Sp.
sector (de) servicios; service provider ≈ Sp. proveedor de servicios (de Internet); service
road ≈ Sp. vía de
acceso; service station ≈
Sp. estación de servicio, gasolinera.
From
the noun service, English derived a verb (to) service by conversion.
This happened in the late 19th century. The verb (to) service has several
meanings. The first one is ‘to do the work that is needed to keep (a machine or
vehicle) in good condition’ (MWALD). This ‘maintenance’ sense of the verb service
translates into Spanish as revisar or hacer una revisión de (for cars,
Spain) or hacer(le) un servicio (for cars, America), or hacerle el mantenimiento
a (for machines), e.g. I must get the car serviced ≈ Tengo que llevar el coche
a revisión (Spain, Advanced English-Spanish VOX). But in many contexts,
the ‘maintenance’ sense of service does translate into Spanish as servicio,
mostly in calqued phrases, such as service area = área de servicio
and service station = estación de servicio.
A second
sense of the verb service is a technical one in finance, namely ‘to pay interest
on (a loan or debt)’ (MWALD), usually in a collocation with the noun loan,
as in The company was unable to service the loan. The ‘debt, loan’ sense
of the verb service can be translated as pagar los intereses (de) (AESV).
A third
sense of the English verb service is ‘to provide (someone) with something
that is needed or wanted’, as in The bookstore primarily services people looking
for out-of-print books. This sense can be translated into Spanish as atender,
servir, dar servicio a, or proveer de servicios.
Some
dictionaries mention a fourth sense for this derived English verb, namely ‘(of a
male animal) mate with (a female animal)’ (COED). The ‘mate’ sense can be translated
into Spanish euphemistically as cubrir, which literally means ‘to
cover’ (Harrap’s). Other synonyms for this word are montar (cf. Eng. to
mount), aparear ‘to mate’ (lit. ‘to pair off’), gallar (a
una gallina), and cargar (in southern Spain) (C+S).
Note
that Spanish too has at some point in its history created a verb serviciar
out of the noun servicio. This is a historical word that modern-day speakers do
not recognized. Its meaning was ‘to pay, collect or receive the servicio
tribute/tax’. This refers to a special sense of the noun servicio, namely
a yearly cattle tax. Also known as servicio y montazgo, this was a legal
term used in medieval times, now a historical and thus obsolete term, though
you would not know it by looking it up in any modern dictionary.[5]
English
has a word derived from the noun service and Spanish one derived from the
verb servir, both of which involve the Latinate suffix ‑ble. The English
word is the adjective serviceable, which actually comes from Old French serviçable/servisable,
from which it was borrowed in the 14th century. This French word is thought to come
from medieval Latin serviciābĭlis (OED), but it could have been
derived from Old French servise, a variant spelling of the word service.
At any rate, this word never made it into Spanish, which thus does not have a
cognate of the French and English words.
Eng.
serviceable, pronounced [ˈsɜɹ.və.sə.bəl], has two senses today:
(a) ‘in usable condition’, equivalent to Sp. útil, práctico, en
buen uso, utilizable, servible; and (2) ‘durable, hard-wearing’,
equivalent to Sp. práctico/a, duradero/a (AESV). Note that one of
the possible translations of (one sense of) Eng. serviceable is Sp. servible
‘usable, serviceable’, a word derived from the stem serv‑ of the verb servir by means of the suffix
‑ible (serv+ible) (when this suffix is attached to stems of first
conjugation verbs, the variant ‑able is used instead). This word is rare,
however. Much more common is its antonym or opposite inservible ‘unusable,
useless’. The opposite of Eng. serviceable is unserviceable, formed
in English with the prefix un‑. This word translates into Spanish as inutilizable,
inservible, or inútil.
There
is yet one more word that was derived in English from the noun service, namely
the antonymous noun disservice ‘a harmful action’ (COED). It was formed in
the late 16th century by means of the Latinate prefix dis‑, a cognate of
Sp. des‑, a suffix that English has used quite productively to produce
antonyms of adjectives, nouns, and verbs, e.g. Eng. dissimilar, disinterest,
disapprove, dishonesty, disconnect. Eng. disservice
translates into Spanish primarily as perjuicio ‘damage, harm, loss’, a
word that is a doublet (cognate) of Sp. prejuicio and, thus, a cognate
of Eng. prejudice, since all of these words come from Lat. praeiūdicĭum, although their meanings
differ quite a bit.[6] The English word is often used
in the phrase to do somebody/something a disservice, which can be translated
into Spanish as perjudicar a alguien/algo, using the verb perjudicar
‘to adversely affect, be bad for, be detrimental to’ (AEIV), related to the
noun perjuicio.
Before
leaving the word service, we should note that there is a second noun service
in English, which is totally unrelated to the more common one. This noun is found
in the phrase service tree that refers to ‘either of two European trees,
Sorbus domestica [aka (true) service tree or sorb tree; Sp.
serbal común, azarollo, sorbo, sorbeira, zurbal,
la silba, jerbo, or jerbal], bearing a small, acid fruit that
is edible when overripe, or Sorbus torminalis (wild service tree) [aka chequers
or checker tree; Sp. sorbo silvestre], bearing a similar fruit’ (Random
House Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary). This word service is also found
in the compound serviceberry (also known as Juneberry), formed in
the late 18th century, which refers to ‘the fruit of any service tree’ as well as
to ‘a North American shrub or small tree, Amelanchier canadensis’ and ‘any
of various other plants of the genus Amelanchier’ (Random House Webster’s
Unabridged Dictionary). The current spelling of that second noun service
has come about by influence of the first one. In Middle English, this word was spelled
serves, which was the plural of serve, the name of the fruit of the
service tree. This word comes ultimately from Old English syrfe, which was
a loanword from Vulgar Latin *sorbea, ultimately from Latin sorbus
‘service tree’ (Lat. Sorbus domestica) and sorbum ‘fruit of the service
tree’, cf. Sp. suerbo.
[1] This
ending is also found in ‘deverbal compounds with the initial element denoting the
object of the verb (nasturtium), other types of compounds (equilibrium;
millennium), and derivatives of personal nouns, often denoting the associated
status or office (collegium; consortium; magisterium); ‑ium
also occurs in scientific coinages on a Latin model, as in names of metallic elements
(barium; titanium) and as a Latinization of Gk ‑ion (pericardium)’
(Collins Dictionary).
[2] Some examples of the use of
the ending ‑ĭt‑ĭ‑a are: dūrus ‘hard’ (cf. Sp. duro/a ‘hard’) → dūritia
‘hardness’ (cf. Sp. dureza ‘hardness’), trīstis ‘sad’ > trīstĭtĭa ‘sadness’ (cf. Sp. tristeza
‘sadness’), and laetus ‘happy’ → laetĭtĭa ‘happiness’. As you can see,
the patrimonial Spanish descendant of this suffix is ‑eza (cf. Part I,
Chapter 5).
[3] Latin
nouns derived from this suffix include: avāritĭēs ‘avarice, greediness, etc.’, from avārus ‘greedy,
avaricious’, cf. Sp. avaricia; blanditĭēs ‘flattery, compliment, etc.’ (alternative of blanditĭa); calvitĭēs ‘baldness’, from calvus
‘bald’, cf. Sp. calvicie ~ Eng. fancy calvities; dūritĭēs/dūritĭa ‘hardness’, from dūrus ‘hard’, cf. Sp. dureza;
mollitĭēs/mollitĭa ‘pliability, softness’,
from mollis ‘soft’, cf. Sp. obsol. mollez(a) ‘physical softness’,
molicie ‘softness, comfort’; mundĭtĭēs/mundĭtĭa ‘cleanness, neatness, elegance’,
from mundus ‘clean, neat, elegant’, cf. Sp. mundicia and inmundicia;
plānitĭēs/plānitĭa ‘flatness; plain,
plateau’, from plānus
‘flat’, cf. Sp. planicie; pueritĭēs/pueritĭa
‘boyhood, childhood’, from puer ‘boy, child’, cf. Sp. rare puericia.
[4] This
idea is reinforced by the fact that this Latin word was borrowed by Basque
quite early on, very likely from Latin, not from Romance, as its phonology
reveals. The word is zerbitzu in modern Standard Basque and in many
Basque dialects, it is written with the letter 〈z〉: zerbitzu (L LN), serbitzu
(B G HN), zerbutxu (R), zerbǘtxü (Z) (cf. R. L. Trask, 2008, Etymological
Dictionary of Basque). The letter 〈z〉 in Basque represents the laminal
sound [s̻] (the
sound of s in most dialects of English and Spanish, but not Castilian
Spanish), and in words borrowed from Latin, Latin s corresponds to
Basque z. In Basque, the letter 〈s〉 represents the apical sound
[s̺], which is the sound of the letter 〈s〉 in Castilian Spanish, and
thus Basque words borrowed from Spanish, have 〈s〉 (not 〈z〉) where Spanish has
〈s〉 (cf. Part I, Chapter 7).
[5] As
explained in the Diccionario panhispánico del español jurídico, 2020: ‘servicio y montazgo. Tributo pagado
por los ganados de la Mesta, dejando de ser estrictamente un derecho de paso,
para convertirse en una contribución por los beneficios que dichos ganados
obtenían. Inicialmente el montazgo era un derecho de paso de cualquier tipo de
ganado que se pagaba a los municipios por los daños causados y el pasto
consumido por los ganados en sus traslados, siendo considerado por algunos
autores como una especie de multa por dichos daños, de lo que pasó a ser un
derecho de paso. La denominación de servicio y montazgo parece derivar del
servicio extraordinario concedido por los ganaderos castellanos a Alfonso X con
motivo de la boda de su hijo mayor, Alfonso de la Cerda, con Blanca de Francia,
como contrapartida al privilegio concedido por dicho rey a la Mesta; desde
entonces, el gravamen se convirtió en ordinario, denominándose servicio y
montazgo, como impuesto directo, al que se sumaban otros derechos de paso.’ Diccionario
panhispánico del español jurídico, 2020, cf. https://dpej.rae.es/lema/servicio-y-montazgo
(2021.01.11).
[6] The Latin
word praeiūdicĭum means literally
‘prior judgement’, since it is formed with the prefix prae‑ ‘before’ and
the noun iūdicĭum ‘judgement’
(cf. Sp. juicio ‘judgement; trial, lawsuit; reason, common sense’). More
specifically, it meant ‘a previous judgment, a preliminary decision or
examination (for the sake of investigating facts for subsequent proceedings)’
and, by extension, ‘a premature decision’ or ‘an example, precedent’ (Cassell).
Eng. prejudice today means primarily ‘preconceived opinion that is not
based on reason or actual experience’, which is equivalent to Sp. prejuicio.
However, when English borrowed this word from French in the late 13th century
it meant ‘harm, damage’, just like in Old French (and in its Spanish cognate perjuicio).
Eng. prejudice has a second, legal sense that is ‘harm or injury that
results or may result from some action or judgement’, cf. the legal phrase without
prejudice that means ‘without detriment to any existing right or claim’
(COED). The second, ‘preconceived opinion’ sense developed in English in the late
14th century and it was seemingly calqued later by French, as préjugé,
and Spanish, as prejuicio.
No comments:
Post a Comment