Hello. I was wondering if anyone had an explanation as to why July is Luglio in Italian rather than an expected Giuglio. Besides July, other Romance also has (Julio, Julho, Juillet... )
Luglio
- Thread starter merquiades
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Another reason is (in my opinion) the need to avoid confusion with the very common personal masculine name Giulio. The latter is a more faithful continuation of Latin Julius. The man and the month have phonetically taken somewhat divergent ways.
Is it plausible to relate the initial letter of the month to the masculine article L' ?
I had thought of that, too, but linguists don't seem to agree. They just mention ''dissimilation'' (initial j was palatalized, just like the subsequent lj>gl, hence the need to differentiate..). Etimologia : luglio;
Okay, I see. Thanks, bearded.
Dissimilation because it is impossible to pronounce Gliuglio?
So lolium becomes liolum > liolo. Then ʎolio > ʒoʎo > ʃoʎo > xoʝo . That's a long process for lolium to become joyo. But did Catalan ʎ become ʒ too at a certain stage? At any rate lolium already had an L, Iulius had I.
Maybe, but Spanish doesn't seem to have a problem with Julio being both the name and the month. French has Jules and Juillet though, the -et being another mystery.
No, words from lo- become llo- and stay like that (lloc, llom, llong). Loliu should have given lloll, so in jull there is a clear case of dissimilation (probably causing the closing of o into u).
By the way, Catalan also distinguishes the name Juli and the month juliol (iuliolu, diminutive)
Sooooo... what if somebody mistook the I of Iulius for an L? Sorry, I was just being silly. I suppose that Iuglius became Gliuglius for assimilation, the two syllables being so similar, but the sound "gl" being too hard to pronounce at the beginning of a word, it naturally morphed into a L.