In romanian, a more isolated romance language, "mancare" means food and "a manca" is to eat.
Well "manger" is "to eat" in French and "mangiare" in Italian which apparently both come from latin "manducare" so maybe the Romanian word comes from here?
Meanwhile French "manquer" and Italian "mancare" seem to come "From Latin mancus, from Proto-Indo-European *man-ko- (“maimed in the hand”)."
Actually we still have "manchot" in modern French to mean one-armed which I always assumed came from "manche" (sleeve) but seems to actually have a different etymology.
That's all sourced from the wiktionary by the way.
Re:Bosnians who speak medieval Spanish
by personlurking on Friday October 19, 2018 @02:03PM
(#18258652)
The "man-ko-" term seems to confirm why, as I mentioned at the top, mancar in Portuguese came to mean to limp. To say someone is "manco" is effectively to say they're maimed in some way.
"Sleeve" in Portuguese is "manga", which in turn is also the word for mango, the fruit. The Latin "manica" meant "sleeve", while the name of the fruit originally comes from an Indian language, into English, via the Portuguese.
Etymology is quite the rabbit hole!
In Italian "monco" means missing an arm, which comes very close to it
In Catalan too. Mancar. https://mdlc.iec.cat/results.asp?txtEntrada=mancar&operEntra...
Re:Bosnians who speak medieval Spanish
by buckminster on Friday October 19, 2018 @11:11AM
(#18257218)
And English manky.
French also uses “manquer”, and there are traces in spanish (such as a manco being a person that lacks an arm).