Gire

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Gire vel guire ut approximemus magis sono prolationis eius vel gaire ut Stephanus arabice gluten vel colla scribitur enim per gaim litteram non per gim.


Apparatus:

guire AC efjp | giure B {printing error}
approximemus A e | adproximemus C | aproximemus B fjp
prolationis ABC jp | prolacionis ms. e | prolaticans f
gaire | gayre B e
gaim AC f | gaym B jp | garim ms. e


Translation:

Gire or better guire, so that we get closer in sound to its Arabic pronunciation or as Stephanus writes: gaire. This word means in Latin gluten or in Greek colla {"glue"}, it is written in Arabic with the letter gaim and not with gim.


Commentary:

Gire:
Wehr (1976): ﻏﺮﺍﺀ /ġirāʔ/ "glue".

gluten/ colla:
Latin gluten and Greek κόλλα /kólla/ both mean "glue".


Stephanus in his Breviarium writes: kola … gari [[1]]


Gire or guire; Arabic ﻍ /ġain/:
For a description of the Arabic letters gim and gaim, i.e. ﺟﻳﻢ ﺝ /ğīm/ {as in English "judge"} and ﻏﻴﻦ ﻍ /ġain/ġayn/, see the appropriate section in G littera.

Simon is attempting to represent this sound ﻍ /ġain/, foreign to Italian, by improving on the ambiguity of the spelling "gire"', which could be read as /ǧire/ {/ǧ/ as in "judge"}. As early as in Vulgar Latin times /g/ before /i/ and /e/ had become palatalised to /ǧ/ {as in "judge"} and Latin gente and gigante were pronounced /ǧente/ and /ǧigante/. By inserting between the "g" and the "i" a merely written but never pronounced vowel letter "u", a letter that would prevent palatalisation, a spelling device was introduced that is still the norm in French and the Iberian languages, cf. French guerre - pronounced with "hard g" /ger/, Spanish guerra - pronounced with "hard g" /gerra/. Thus the spelling "gui" as in guire signals the pronunciation /gire/ {with "hard g" as in "gut"}.

The "hard g" sound is actually only a rough approximation, as Simon says himself, to the Arabic ﻍ /ġain/, which is sometimes compared to a soft gargle, and Stephanus' g-a-ire is probably just another attempt to achieve the same phonetic effect.


WilfGunther 22/11/2013


See also: Colla, Gluten, Kolla, Taurocolla


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