Talk:campana

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In (late) response to your ping, @Fay Freak:

I do not see any reason to derive the Latin word from Greek. The attempted semantic connection is unimpressive, and the Latin etymology is more than adequate as it stands.

Not mentioned in the etymologies on this page is that Roman Campania was famed for the quality of the bronze produced there (the aes Campanum), of which bells were traditionally made. Nicodene (talk) 13:36, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

@Nicodene: This is good to note, because if one reads a lot of these etymologies, “traditionally” is how etymologies which we warn against start, especially if found in Isidore of Seville. But you were unnecessarily tacit about the ‘scales’ words, in spite of it being my primary motive for the enquiry, in contrast to Romance etymologists, who did not need to care about the slew I posted at ἀπήνη. So you as confidently state that campāna (“steelyard”) is unrelated? Apparently you won’t do so, since bronze scales were a thing during all of antiquity. Consequently, man has to move the descendants of meaning ‘scales’ posted at ἀπήνη (apḗnē) and dismiss the derivation from the Thessalian dialect form of ἀπήνη found in a footnote Martinez (1992) at قَبَّان (qabbān) as eccentric, but the notion of a Greek borrowing must be right and we miss a Byzantine Greek term here, etymology 2 perhaps found in Greek dictionaries by @Sarri.greek, which presumably via a masculine -ος or neuter -ον in Greek also explains the gender in Arabic / its not ending in ـَة (-a), and would mitigate geographical concern of it appearing during the 11th century in Iraqi/Irani authors. So what has hindered correct portrayal is an inhibition to favour etyma no textual witness vouches, losing against bright shiny objects. What was the best formatting for descendants in two meaning strains, since to present all together would mislead people again? Fay Freak (talk) 15:57, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

@Fay Freak Are the Aeolic/Thessalian forms not attested in the sense of 'steelyard'? And what may explain their initial consonant and ᾱ́?

We do know that the Latin word was borrowed into Greek at least twice (Dickley 2023 Latin loanwords in Ancient Greek, p. 171), and indeed the masculine variant has the sense that we want here. Would /bb/ be an expected adaptation of the Greek /mp/ in Arabic? Nicodene (talk) 20:25, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

@Nicodene: It isn’t, the author who claimed this origin, I got excited about in 2019, only used the most commonplace dictionaries we also know. The initial consonant is how Greek rendered the Semitic glottal stop, Talk:կապար. Still only cross-piece of a chariot or harness with either initial consonant and a long way to be transferred to a scale-beam.

I don’t have enough entropy of Greek borrowings in Arabic to be sure how the sequence would be borrowed, one should look over the terms in Wörterbuch zu den griechisch-arabischen Übersetzungen des 9. Jahrhunderts or transcriptions of Greek terms in Arabic texts in general one day or the other. The Arabs probably would have heard the /m/ only weakly though, and on the other hand قَنْبَان (qanbān) (where the nūn assimilates in place of articulation) is attested and Semitic likes to remove or add /n/ in this position anyway so we get قَبَّان (qabbān), perhaps to be similar to a native Arabic word in general and to قُبَّةُ الْمِيزَانِ (qubbatu l-mīzāni, “beam of a pair of scales”) (vocalization قُبَّان (qubbān) I also stumbled upon), moreover the graphic sequence〈µπ〉probably stood for /b/ as in Modern Greek, so why do you say /mp/? Fay Freak (talk) 21:26, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

@Fay Freak: Ah, I see. Thank you.

I'd assumed that the modern Greek rendition of µπ came about rather late, but now that you mention it I'm not sure. Perhaps a stage [ᵐb] had already been reached by the time the Arabs borrowed this word, or it was 'adjusted' as you describe. The existence of a variant قَنْبَان‎ is also suggestive. It seems the etymology on the Arabic entry is to be updated. Nicodene (talk) 22:05, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

As for the Balkan Slavic (and then Romanian) outcomes- I take it they reflect either some feminine Greek variant with the sense of 'steelyard' or perhaps a direct borrowing from the Late Latin of the Balkans. Nicodene (talk) 22:21, 4 November 2023 (UTC)