02-18-2014, 07:33 PM
Quote:Pavel, ... Pavel you know I love you, don't you? So, if a move you a small observation you won't hate me?
It's about the Title of the Thread: 'Santa Maria Magiorre Mosaic', it should be. 'Santa Maria Maggiore Mosaic', 'Maggiore' actually corresponds to the Latin 'Maior' (English: Greater) that is the superlative of the adjective 'Magnus', (Italian: Grande, En.: 'Great'), while the superlative absolute is 'Maxismus' (italian: Massimo, En.: Greatest), the intervocalic sound of the 'i' in Italian has become 'gg' but still conserving the same meaning and function.
So, the meaning of 'Santa Maria Maggiore' is Saint Mary the Greater, in the meaning of 'greater' compared to other churches named Saint Maria (actually a lot of churches in Italy are dedicated to mom of Jesus).
Ha I was going to jokingly point out the same thing with the title. However the sound shift you're talking about is /gg/ because it was built on the root magnus not maior. Meh, that's the kind of stuff that happened in vulgar speech. The reason we get /gg/ from gn is because in Latin the sound was actually something like /nbg/ so magnus = mangnus (not exactly, it was nasalised) which is why the sound develops differently in so many Romance dialects. I think Sardinian has kept the hangnail sound as we call it whereas standard Italian resolves it to /gg/. Actually its remarkably similar to something that happened with some other Indo-European dialects.
Jass
