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From: deb5@midway.uchicago.edu (Daniel von Brighoff)
Subject: Re: Latin Elements in a Few Instances in English and German
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Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 03:57:41 GMT
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In article <AE8716F7-27457@195.78.3.203>,
Magnus Lewan <lewan@alcyonis.fr> wrote:
>>I did not want to point out any mistake: sorry but I just wander which
>>connection there is between italian "mucchio", spanish "mucho" (both "a
>>lot") and swedish "mycket" ("a lot"). I am not a linguist, but an italian
>>living and working in northern Europe.
>>Thanks for help
>>Piero
>>
>The best I can tell you is that "mycket" is one of those very old roots,
>that appear in many Indo-European languages.  It corresponds both to Greek
>"mega-" as we today use in for example "MegaByte", to Latin "magnus" (as in
>Carolus Magnus for Charles the Great) and to Maha-radja (magnus rex, big
>king).
>
>It seems logical to believe that mucho comes from the same stem, and my
>guess is that Italian borrowed it from Spanish, as you normally use "molto"
>for the same thing.

	"mucho" and "molto" both derive from Latin MULTUS, meaning "many,
much."  Obviously, there's no connexion between this and Latin MAGNUS.  I
don't have an Italian etymological dictionary handy, but my guess is that
Italian mucchio (pronounced ['mukkjo] in Standard Italian) is derived from
Latin MONTICELLUS, a diminutive of MONS "mountain" and the source for
French monceau "mound, pile" (the basic meaning of mucchio).

	Therefore, the series Eng. much [from earlier mycel]/Sw. myket --
Sp. mucho -- It. mucchio is the result of nothing more than chance
similarity.
-- 
	 Daniel "Da" von Brighoff    /\          Dilettanten
	(deb5@midway.uchicago.edu)  /__\         erhebt Euch
				   /____\      gegen die Kunst!
