Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2010 May 16

= May 16 =

Hebe Camargo
What is the translation of the name "Hebe Camargo" for the Uyghurche language? --Gustavo1997 (talk) 02:16, 16 May 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.76.192.18 (talk)
 * This was added to WT:RD but was moved here Nil Einne (talk) 11:58, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Etymology of Romanian "dragostea"
What is the etymology of the Romanian word for "love", "dragostea". It sounds neither Romance, nor Slavic. There is some resemblance to Finnish "rakastaa". Is that pure coincidence? 82.103.139.67 (talk) 18:51, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Wiktionary says that it comes from Slavonic dragostĩ. Compare Croatian/Slovene drag, Czech/Slovak drahý, Russian dorogój, Polish drogi (all means dear). Hungarian (another non-slavic language) word drága (dear) has also the same etymology. The Finnish counterpart seems unrelated: ''From Proto-Finno-Ugric. Compare Hungarian rokon, or alternatively a borrowing from Proto-Germanic *frakaz''.--151.51.20.38 (talk) 19:12, 16 May 2010 (UTC)


 * dragostea is the definite form (the enclitic definite article "a" is postfixed), the actual noun is dragoste, which doesn't sound that similar to rakastaa anymore. You can also translate love with iubire, another borrowing from Slavic (ljubiti). Rimush (talk) 19:36, 16 May 2010 (UTC)


 * The Finnish word sounds closer once you know that they don't allow consonant clusters, and their standard procedure when adopting a word from a foreign language is to keep only the last of the consonants in the cluster. I'm a bit hazy on the details (what exactly is forbidden, and where), but it seems like this would mean that "dr" would turn into "r".  (The example I (think I) remember of this is "strand" (the English word, meaning beach) turns into "ranta".) Ctourneur (talk) 23:27, 19 May 2010 (UTC)