Today while talking to someone who is learning Portuguese, I heard the word garçonete, which gave me lots of food for thought. Here's what I think about it:
Garçonete is the Portuguese feminine of garçom, waiter. Garçom comes from French garçon, boy, whose feminine form is (jeune) fille. What happened is that we Portuguese speakers added the French suffix -ette adapted to -ete to conform to Portuguese spelling rules to a word that in French could never accept such a suffix, for an existing different already exists. Thinking about this, I remembered what I've heard in English sometimes (and which I don't care for), usherette. That's a French suffix on a word that's not French! That's how languages work, I guess, lending to and borrowing from one another shamelessly.
I remember reading some time ago that some purists in the Portuguese language suggested garçoa ages ago as the feminine form of garçom, but obviously (and to my displeasure) that form didn't catch on.
No comments:
Post a Comment