pasta (Portuguese massa): just like spaghetti cuartos (Galician cartos): money, probably referring to the fourth of - a piece of eight, perhaps? May I add for colloquial Spanish in Spain: Anyway, it is mere speculation as I am quite ignorant about historic linguistics.įor the sake of economy of words, I won't quote from above posts. I would rather suggest a 'denarius/denarium/denario.' > denairu(a) > deairu(a)/deiru(a) > diru(a). I can think of 'ikaragarria' (terrible), which can be pronounced something like 'ikeearri(y)a' or 'ikeerri(y)a' (real pronounciation of the words varies from place to place, from one village to the one next to it and between speakers), where ee is a long e rather than two different 'e's (as in Spanish 'leer'), which is what you suggested I think, but for example the word 'mahaia' (table), I've always heard it pronounced 'maia', and in southern dialects that 'h' is supposed to have been pronounced until few centuries ago the same as it is in the northern ones. Well, I'll correct myself, there are long vowels where a consonant has been lost not long ago, or isn't lost yet, but it's omitted.

No, it isn't long, and I don't think there are long vowels in Basque (in fact, it has been suggested that the 5 vowel system of Castilian could come from Basque, as both languages developed in very close areas).

had it in English), or perhaps a general name for 'coin' the usual word for coin is 'txanpon' ('txanpona' with a definite article). I leave it as a challenge to find where it comes from: one would be tempted to say it was the name of a coin (the same way pennies, shillings, florins, sovereigns, threepences, farthings. I also know an informal word (it's not my native language, anyway), which is 'xoxak', always in plural (where x is pronounced as English 'sh', but stronger) in singular it would be 'xoxa'. I don't know where it comes from, but I suppose it's also Latin 'denarius' or a later Romance or Spanish word (the loss of intervocalical n was usual at earlier stages of the language). In Basque, the word for money is 'dirua'. Whoever knows how any of these can come to mean 'money', please explain it. 'dough' or 'pasta'), and I can think of other two: 'tela' (lit.

There are other colloquial words, the most usual and extensive of which is 'pasta' (lit. The most usual term for, both formal and informal, is 'dinero'. In Spain, 'papeles' (I've always heard it in plural) was one of the various colloquial ways to call the sum of 1000 pesetas. It was much later that pesetas became the official monetary unit. I read that 'peseta' comes not from French but from a similar Catalan development (as the first coinage of a peseta coin, this is, one fifth of a peso, happened in Barcelona in 1805, so it's likely that that particular coin got a Catalan name).

Pecunia potentia meaninig