Talk:africus

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Hi @Grassfuel,

What source does this Dalmarian jafraic come from?

Best, Nicodene (talk) 15:03, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

@Nicodene here is the full explanation taken from an expert on the field:

Probably jafraic Note: 1) Starting latin a- can remain a- in dalmatian but usually it goes to ja- or ju- or other similar combinations. Compre with arma->jarma, alter->jultro, albus->jualb, etc. It seems to me that a- turns more to jua-/ju- if followed by -l- or -r- but will be ja- or ia- otherwise. Also note that versions noting ia- instead of ja- are not different. Same spelling, different writting convention. 2) The -icus suffix always goes to -aic. E.g. inimīcus->nemaic and amīcus->amaic. 3) I retain one reservation for 1 and 2 because āfricus is ā- not a- and -icus not -īcus. However, for 1 i highly doubt i am wrong due to the surviving form in the modern chakavian japrk and for 2, i have yet to see a dalmatian term with a clear -ic suffix. They all have -aic. 4) I have not seen any reason for -fr- to change to -pr- in dalmatian and it would make more sense if the change was adopted later in chakavian.

Probably the following process in some shape or form: (Latin)āfricus->(Dalmatian)jafraic->(Chakavian Serbo-Croatian)jafrc->japrk(-c- to -k- as that is how that sound is written in serbo-croatian. The -f- to -p- is also reasonable in serbo-croatian)Grassfuel (talk) 15:10, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

@Grassfuel So this is in fact unattested and based entirely on your own guesswork. In that case, it should be marked with an asterisk.

The actual form to reconstruct is something like *jafrac, just to be clear. Dalmatian has <ai> as the result of stressed Latin long i, not unstressed Latin short i. Nicodene (talk) 15:26, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

Good point, I'll take care of doing that. Thanks for the help! Grassfuel (talk) 15:31, 7 August 2023 (UTC)