Talk:tserclju

Borrowed from Italian?

Hi @Word dewd544. Are you sure it's plausible for this to be borrowed from Italian? I don't see anything unusual with the phonetic development circulum > tserclju for Aromanian, after comparing native derivatives of Latin words with similar sequences. Nicodene (talk) 00:25, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

It's not really on purely phonetic grounds that the Italian etymology is proposed, I think. It's more that the standard Romanian equivalent is just cerc from circus, rather than the diminutive, and those usually match up between the languages. But there is no descendant of circulus (presumably *cerchi(u)) in Romanian and no *tsercu from circus in Aromanian (however there is the expected țerc in Megleno-Romanian). Also, in those few cases that Aromanian does borrow from Italian, it seems to partly adapt the term to its own phonetics, so the -chio turning into the equivalent -clju in some dialects. Also, the variant forms tserchiu/tserkiu with the hard k sound without an l, which is not the normal result in Aromanian for the -clu cluster, further give it away I think (for example the definitely inherited veclju doesn't have such forms). It's not impossible that it may be a partial convergence to the Italian from an inherited form, but less likely in my opinion. In the more detailed DEX entry for Romanian cerc, it says "Mr. țerkl’u" (Mr. being Macedo-Română, another word for Aromanian, and it just uses a different orthography for the word). It later says it derives from the Italian:

cerc (cércuri), s. n. – 1. Figură geometrică formată din mulțimea tuturor punctelor egal depărtate de un punct fix. – 2. Belciug, inel. – 3. Inel de întărire, fretă. – 4. Crup de oameni, cenaclu. – 5. Oțel pentru arcuri. – 6. Nuia în formă circulară. – 7. (Arg.) Inel, bijuterie. – 8. Cîmp, domeniu, sferă. – Mr. (țerkl’u), megl. țerc. Lat. cĭrcus (Pușcariu 341; Candrea-Dens., 309; REW 1948; DAR); cf. alb. kjiark (Meyer 20; Philippide, II, 637), it., sp., port. cerco. Mr. provine din it. cerchio. Word dewd544 (talk) 14:58, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

> for example the definitely inherited veclju doesn't have such forms [*vechiu, *vekiu]

@Word dewd544 Ah, that is an especially interesting piece of information. Thank you for your comment. Nicodene (talk) 20:07, 10 April 2022 (UTC)