From [log in to unmask] Sat Apr 12 18:07 EDT 1997
Date: Sat, 12 Apr 1997 22:49:20 +0200
To: STAN MULAIK <[log in to unmask]>
From: "Dr. Rainer Thiel" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: It. gettone
At 21:34 Uhr +0200 on 04.04.1997, STAN MULAIK wrote:
> Do you know whether italian _gettone_ is influenced by the French
> jeton on the analogy of _gettare_/_gettone_ : _jeter_/_jeton_, or
> do these two words have a more ancient common ancester in either
> vulgar Latin or protoromance. These refer to chips or tokens,
> like phone tokens, or roulette chips, subway tokens in current
> usage. We note that German has what seems to be the French
> term _jeton_ and English has _jeton_ or _jetton_, meaning a
> counter in calculating.
>
> Stan Mulaik
Please forgive me for not answering the question cited above until now. I
have much to do right now, so I postponed it for a couple of days, then
forgot about it and rediscovered it while cleaning my in-box. I hope I am
still in time for helping you.
Both gettare and jeter go back to vulgar Latin *iectare; as very often, the
intensivum replaced simple iacere. As to jeton/gettone, it is a typically
French formation, and I am absolutely sure Italian gettone in its modern
meaning is a loan word from French (or at least influenced in meaning by
the French word) and not an independent formation in Italian; it does have
the same meaning as French jeton, and only subsequently was used to signify
phone tokens (officially called gettoni _telefonici_), as well. On the
other hand, it is possible and not _altogether_ improbable, that gettone
originated in Italy meaning the calculus used with abaci (probably the same
thing you called counter in calculating) and in this meaning (attested in
French and German; don't know about Italian) first came to France from
Italy. But I doubt it, because this use of the suffix -one which usually
has another value in Italian I think shows it is a French formation. --
Likewise, German Jeton is used in the same sense as the French word since
the late 18th/early 19th century.
So if I were to create an Interlingua word for jeton according to the
principles used for word creation in this CL, I should take over the French
word and adapt it to Interlingua's morphological system (jeton/jetone,
jetones), not try to reconstruct a pseudo-vulgar Latin form *jecton(e) that
most probably never existed. This is what I believe Italian did. What about
Castilian and Portoguese? My guess is Castilian has jeton, not jechon, as
should be expected in an independant formation.
Hope this helps.
Best regards,
Rainer Thiel
- Paper mail: Univ. FB 07, Klass. Phil. - D-35032 Marburg, Germany (EU)
- For more information and for my PGP public key check my homepage:
http://staff-www.uni-marburg.de/~thielr/
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