In Latin, the verb
iungere (join or put together) has the past participle
iunctus/iuncta/iunctum. From these words, we get words like
cónyuge (spouse, "conjugal"),
yunta (two bulls that pull the weight in a farm and are joined by a yunta (yoke),
juntar (put together),
subjuntivo (it joins two clauses),
ayuntamiento, etc. Ayuntamiento means city/town hall because people come together for these. Funnily, at some point, ayuntamiento also meant intercourse since you can come together with someone else for different purposes 😉, but it's an old-fashioned word, as far as I know. The suffix -
miento in ayuntamiento is also to be found in
conocimiento (knowledge),
requerimiento (requirement),
sufrimiento, etc, and it signals the way something is done or its result. Latin
mens/mentis (the mind) ended up being used in
Romance languages as a marker of adverbs (
interesantemente, tristemente, correctamente) because things were done in an "interesting/sad/correct"
state of mind. The suffix -
miento is simply another manifestation of that.
Comments
Post a Comment