p53 Please correct me

[strong shale]

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[ruby mortar]

Mostly, I guess. Rutabaga, however, is masculine.

[faint tide]

While I don't know if this is always the case, I should point out that not all -a words are feminine in Romance. A number of Greek-origin words like sistema, problema, dilemma are masculine and are preserved as such (Spanish el sistema, el problema, el dilemma). French changed the A to an E but kept it masculine (le système, le problème, le dilemme)

I did find one interesting thing: Latin planēta is masculine since it borrowed the Greek planḗtēs which is also masculine. It is masculine in other Romance languages except French and Romanian: Spanish el planeta, Italian il pianeta, Portuguese o planeta. Romanian planetă is feminine because it's borrowed from French planète.

[ruby mortar]

Acacia, épicéa, yoga, tréma, soda, sauna, etc.

[gusty eagle]

that's insane. I would have definitely expected French have "un planète" given the other languages

[gusty eagle]

I do know about Greek-origin words that are generally exceptions to gender rules like musée

[gusty eagle]

I would guess that these must be masculine because they were borrowed from non-romance languages where grammatical gender either doesn't exist or isn't accepted as "valid" when borrowing into French

[ruby mortar]

Épicéa actually comes from Latin picea, a feminine word qualifying the word arbor (tree), also feminine.

[gusty eagle]

Oof

[ruby mortar]

Acacia comes from Latin acacia, feminine, from Greek akakia, also feminine.

[faint tide]

Gender is messy when it's transferred from one language to another, be it through inheritance or borrowing

[gusty eagle]

I guess there's not really a pattern

[ruby mortar]

There is also yucca, from Spanish yuca, a feminine word. How fun.

[gusty eagle]

I like it when exceptions are "transferrable" like une main = una mano

[faint tide]

Borrowed words, at least, tend to follow the original gender if there's a parallel

But inheritance is messy

[gusty eagle]

I know original grammars (inflections) are sometimes not 'accepted' and are frozen e.g. "un spaghetti" when spaghetti is originally plural

I don't know, sometimes they are translated and sometimes not

[faint tide]

Yeah, but the gender is at least preserved

Inheritance is a lot messier

[ruby mortar]

Ah, I just remembered there is also the Latin neuter ending -um turning into -a in the plural. Média for example comes from that.

[gusty eagle]

This one makes sense

[faint tide]

Latin's neuter opus only survived in the plural reanalysed as a feminine singular

[gusty eagle]

Well it seems like Latin's noun endings and inflections got completely destroyed over time

[faint tide]

The plural form of opus is opera which then replaced the original word. This new word, because of that -a ending, became feminine. This is what gives birth to French œuvre, Spanish and Portuguese obra, Italian opera, etc

[faint tide]

French's Germanic stress accent will do that for ya

[gusty eagle]

But surely it's not a problem with French since they also got destroyed in different ways by neighbouring languages

so I'd guess that a lot was lost even before all the different romance languages split

[faint tide]

Right but French's changes are a lot more extensive

[gusty eagle]

Are they really?

[faint tide]

As an example, Latin sacramentum became sacramento in Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese (though in the case of the latter two it was sagramento before it was relatinised into sacramento) but serment in French; « sacrement » is a borrowing

[gusty eagle]

Ok I can see that in that example for sure

a hard consonant like 'g' shouldn't have the right to just disappear

[faint tide]

Latin Stephanum became Italian Stefano, Spanish Esteban, Portuguese Estêvão, but French Étienne

[gusty eagle]

I think this is slightly more forgiveable because f -> v -> u is a plausible way for an f to disappear

Also disappearing 's's are definitely not unique to French

[ruby mortar]

That's even why the inhabitants of Saint-Étienne are called Stéphanois.

[faint tide]

Right but you see that Latin's three syllables stayed three in the daughter languages but only two in French

[gusty eagle]

I think comparing number of syllables is kind of a rigged competition

[ruby mortar]

Latin dormitorium => French dortoir

[gusty eagle]

that's beautiful

[ruby mortar]

The other languages just keep the "mi".

[gusty eagle]

I guess if I think about it, the French words that are faithful to latin spellings are all borrowings. Still I think French is unfairly blamed for having so many sounds disappear. Catalan also likes to make final consonants disappear and also southern french accents have some more conservation so

[faint tide]

It is a dialect continuum

[ruby mortar]

Digitus => doigt in French. Well, it used to be doi(t) or dei.
Did the other Romance languages get to keep the g? Nope, dedo, dito, etc.

[gusty eagle]

W