Talk:gât

Etymology

It is impossible phonetically to derive gât from guttura, not even close.

• the normal phonetic evolution would be *gutură. See guturai, which is indeed derived from a *gutturālium following the expected phonetic evolution.
• "ât" is never derived from "at". In order to have "gât", the Latin word would be *gantus or *gantus, with the "n" disappearing as in quantus to cât.

On the other hand, the phonetic evolution from Slavic fits perfectly:

• глътъ (glŭtŭ) --> gâlt (found dialectally and in old texts), with an internal Romanian elision of the "l", but only after doing some internal like "gâltej" or "gâtlan". The consonant-consonant-ъ --> consonant-î-consonant is expected.

This is the consensus for the last 50 years. DEX and the 2010 edition of the Romanian Academy's MDA have only this etymology.

Ciorănescu cites two mid-19th-century linguists (Diez and Cipariu), whose works were before the linguistics tools were developed and/or widely spread. Bogdan (talk)

Still Bogdan, it's a highly disputed term and as long as there are scholars out there backing this theory, it would be misleading of us to just present one side. It also opens up for a perpetual edit war where different opinions will always clash. Better to keep it at least open.--Robbie SWE (talk) 23:20, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

@Bogdan, Robbie SWE: I don't have any opinion on this word's etymology, I just wanted to point out that we on Wiktionary (unlike Wikipedia) are not at all committed to merely copy-paste sources. Users regularly do original research regarding etymologies; users also regularly evaluate the merits of sourced materials and write their evaluation down in the etymology sections (see e.g. User:Vahagn_Petrosyan/research#My_discoveries). If the situation really is as Bogdan described (I can't tell, I have no knowledge and I haven't verified), then I think we should not call the Latin derivation "more likely", though I still think we should mention it as it's found in the literature (but perhaps qualified with "(far) less likely" if that's okay with all Romanian editors). Would that be a compromise for both of you? — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 19:01, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

Sorry, writing "far less likely" doesn't work for me either especially since it's the only plausible option for several scholars. I would however accept deleting any gradation altogether - presenting both theories as they are, with arguments for and against both is what I'd like to see. Robbie SWE (talk) 23:22, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

The two scholars for which it's the only plausible variant are Diez (1794-1876) and Cipariu (1805-1887). The existence of the "gâlt" variant (and derivatives still in use) simply cannot be explained if it were a Latin word. Bogdan (talk) 12:59, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

When a theory is clearly superseded but is still cited in the literature, I usually mention it in the References or the Further reading section (but not in the Etymology section) with a summary of the theory and preferably its rebuttal, as in երախայ (eraxay). Vahag (talk) 12:27, 21 August 2022 (UTC)