Talk:ante litteram

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This is not Italian, but Latin!

But used in Italian as a wholesale borrowing from Latin. That's what the entry says, anyway. Mglovesfun (talk) 11:49, 14 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

RFV discussion: June–July 2019[edit]

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Apparently an Italian phrase, but the quotes are in English. What's the deal? --Robbie SWE (talk) 18:40, 28 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Withour prejudice as to whether this meets our CFI, this is originally pure Latin.  --Lambiam 22:20, 28 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Here we see several (presumably native) Italian speakers stating that, to say avant la lettre in Italian, one uses ante litteram. A diligent search is bound to come up with three attestations. As the current quotes show, the Latin phrase is also used in English. Here it is presented as “English translation” of French avant la lettre.  --Lambiam 17:55, 29 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Here are three uses in Italian texts: [1]; [2]; [3].  --Lambiam 18:04, 29 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Lambiam, thanks for researching this. Does this mean that we should add more language sections - one for English, Italian and Latin? The current solution doesn't really make sense to me. --Robbie SWE (talk) 18:23, 29 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, it looks like it should have both an English and an Italian L2 section.  --Lambiam 18:30, 29 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Lambiam, sorry for the delay! I've separated ante litteram into two sections – an English one and an Italian one. I added the Italian quotes and apologise beforehand for any mistakes – I'm not that good at adding quotes. I'm on the fence though if ante litteram should be considered a prepositional phrase or an adverb. Feel free to make any changes necessary. --Robbie SWE (talk) 10:51, 3 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Personally, I’d prefer to use the heading "Prepositional phrase" on language-X entries only for collocations in which the preposition is also in language X. Currently we are not consistent. The synonym avant la lettre is also classified as a prepositional phrase, even though avant is French, not English. Likewise, à deux, au jus, post mortem auctoris and ex abundante cautela have all been labelled as English prepositional phrases. On the other hand, ante meridiem, par excellence and per procurationem are considered English adverbs.  --Lambiam 13:06, 3 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]