I spent most of the time this year with The travels of Mendes Pinto trying to identify place names. Those elements of a text that, instead of being searched in a dictionary, you would rather look for in an encyclopedia or an atlas.

Not that easy!

Batampina is just an example: very carefully described, with clear and well-known points of references (city of Nanjing), Mendes Pinto depicts his journey from Nanjing to Beijing through a so-called Batampina river. ...A river?! Not that I could track on a map!

Until I found the biggest network of navigable waterways and the longest canal of the world.

Public works and, as far as Mendes Pinto was concerned, minimum environmental impact.

I have been reviewing my translation of Pwyll yn Annwfn, the beginning of the first branch of the Mabinogi. I start to understand the story of Pwyll in a different way. At least this fragment. More like a subtle description of nature, an explanation of the world, a Weltanschauung; rather than history of old lineages, my first approach, I must acknowledge.

I spend much time reading these days. I built a simple reading rest with a piece of plywood and part of a hard board. Not a piece of art but it took me less than half an hour to find the elements and assembly them. It is cheap and, above all, useful. Almost a must when you have to stay long hours in front of a page.

So apart from going to the beach when it is sunny and taking a look at some plants (potatoes among them, of course) from time to time, unless I find a new job in a construction site (not many available now), I shall devote myself mainly to translation this summer.

I proceed with LENTURA in a similar way to LENTOR. A search in the dictionaries brings 12 results: 11 with the meaning of 'humidity'; 5 of these definitions specify that it is a 'humidity of the soil' and 2 relate this moist with the seasons. Only 1 dictionary turns up this trend and connects LENTURA to warmth, although it must be noted that LENTURA appears as a variant of LENTOR, that is, LENTOR is the defined headword.

Clearly, LENTOR and LENTURA can be regarded as different terms. LENTOR covers both meanings of warmth and humidity whereas LENTURA is much more specific, only related to 'humidity' and more specifically 'humidity of the soil that changes with the seasons'.


A search for LENTURA (with)in the corpus confirms this point. The lemma offers 130 results.

I limit my research to the first 57 entries (up to the year 1979). I must admit that the main reason for doing so is time, that is, I am doing this for the fun of it, but that doesn't mean that checking every single entry is not an arduous task ! ;-) Anyway, the span is wide and representative enough.

The data studied are the most valuable for diachronic analysis, too, as it is the precedent in a chronological succession.

So, here it is. This time I used all the context available from the very beginning. I only reviewed entries to confirm that I did not leave any unchecked and to pick up any particular points when further attention was required.


The first noticeable conclusion is that the semantic field of soil, ground, is absolutely dominant. While LENTOR could be found applied to plants and the sun, LENTURA is predominately present in the earth: 51% of the entries mention LENTURA as inherent to the land whereas this percentage is as low as 7% for LENTOR.

For the main and almost exclusive meaning of 'moist', entries where the semantic-tract is well-explicit (24) reveal (16) 'moist of the soil' as an element inherent of fertile lands, the weather not mentioned. From some examples it can be deduced that the LENTURA disappears with the summer season and under too much heat from the sun. In (4) cases this 'moist' appears to come in from the rain, (1) from the 'dew' and another (1) from the snow. For (1) entry, rather than simply moist, LENTURA appears as a flow or stream.

The range of meanings is reduced and apart from that of 'humidity or moist of the soil' (24) any other semantic tracts are almost anecdotal: only (2) entries are explained as 'warmth'. In (2) cases an idea of +vital-force could be inferred although never as distinctly as for LENTOR.


The number of ambiguous entries is very high (29), although the idea of +moist is almost always present; that is, as it happened for this category in LENTOR, a specific semantic tract could not be clearly inferred. The context is always more easily explained with the idea of LENTURA as 'humidity' or 'fertile land'. For instance the soil is mentioned in (11) entries. Only (5) appear associated to the semantic field of the body: heart, lips, womb, face, body. +Warmth explains the meaning of these sentences, although the idea of +humidity could also be present sometimes. I repeat, the context is not self-explanatory enough, so they are all left as ambiguous, although a more detailed study would bring more significative results.

From these results it looks like LENTURA and LENTOR even if belonging to the same semantic family (it is the same root) differ widely in the proportion of tracts of their semantic field. If we compare them in terms of WARMTH : MOIST : VITAL-FORCE we get 10 : 3.5 : 3.5 for LENTOR and 1 : 12 : 1 for LENTURA.


There is an easy grammatical explanation for this divergence: both terms differ in the suffix -A (LENTUR-A) most often a mark of gender in Romance languages. Not only. In Portuguese this morpheme can also come from an actual distinction in the physical object, measurable in terms of size or extension. Although it is an obvious, regular and intuitive derivation, it usually implies two different entries in dictionaries as the terms derived this way are not synonymous but quite distinct realities: related, yet bearing on well defined semantic boundaries.

Some examples: Portuguese POÇO is a well or a shaft whereas POÇA is a puddle or a pool.

RIO is a river, whereas RIA is an estuary, the tidal entry of the sea within a river.

Even if the divergence looks just grammatical, they are couples each term autonomous, different enough to be considered independent lexical units. It is the same morpheme with an obvious and easily inferred relationship: the appreciation of different measurable qualities in the real object sprout different terms.

They become lexical couples within a paradigmatic relationship, one term feminine, the other masculine; most of the semantic tracts are shared. The significant distinction is quantitative, feminine representing the object with the widest or bigger surface.


This morphological feature could well explain why LENTURA is applied to the soil (wide) whereas LENTOR is more likely to be vapour or dampness (small drops). However, it does not solve out why the proportions of each semantic tract differ so much. This proportional divergence shows a more advanced level of specialization for each term of the couple.

There is some meaningful morphologic information not analysed yet.
Both LENTOR and LENTURA can be explained within the following morphological sequence : ROOT + DERIVATIVE SUFFIX + INFLECTION.

The grammatical suffix or inflection has been already explained. The derivative suffix -/OR/ shows no difficulty: it is a morpheme for a common agent or instrument of action, quite common in European languages.


From here this process of specialization can be understood:

* The root LENT- holds all the common tracts.

* Derivation is made in terms of agent or instrument.

* When a particular agent or instrument becomes too distinct a new term shows up. Here a morpheme that usually indicates a measurable divergence is used.

* The tracts that are more operative remain relevant whereas the others become less evident. Thus, although the idea of LENTURA still can hold +warmth, +vital-force, it is more deeply, almost exclusively associated, with +moist and the earth, the agent or instrument.


To end up, and just as a way to justify the work of so many lexicographers that preceeded this study and made this short article possible: the fact that both terms hold a paradigmatic, all right, grammatical! relationship, almost forces to regard them as close synonyms, although research on the context shows up a high level of specialization.

That's also the reason why, despite too much rain, LENTURA and LENTOR did not split enterely: still waters run deep. Old LENT- remained equivalent to warm and (for instance!!!) fertile HUMOR. Too subtle, yeah, yet well enough to rise up the SPRING. Weather permitting, of course.

After having read Maitani?s article on LENTEN I thought of Galegan¹ LENTOR and LENTURA. Both appear as synonyms in the dictionaries since the 19th century. I did some research to find out if we are faced with the same term.


So first, of course, I took a look at the dictionaries. The older the better :-)

A definition can be found in Marcial Valladares (1884)²:

LENTURA: 'Dampness of the soil needed for the plants to grow. It changes if the seasons are more or less dry. It disappears during the summer.'

Most of the dictionaries have kept a definition related to 'humidity of the soil, dampness'. Valladares' definition seems to be wider and more specific so I decided to take a look at the real use of both LENTOR and LENTURA in texts other than dictionaries.


A first quick search for LENTOR at the corpus available on-line at Tesouro Informatizado da Lingua Galega brought (57) results. To my surprise the main meaning seems to be that of 'warmth' and not 'humidity'. I identified (8) entries as unequivocally related to the idea of 'heat'. Only (3) can bear the idea of 'dampness' associated to the concepts of dew, alder and elderberry. The other (46) are less specific and seemed too ambiguous to me to be used as examples, that is, no significant value can be unequivocally inferred. This gives us a low relevance of the data, with only 19% of significant results.

So I did a second search amplifying the context. Obviously this has resulted in a higher number of significant entries. The main meaning is still that of +warmth with (20) entries where this value can be clearly inferred and associated to semantic fields of the sun (7 entries), human body such as in warmth of a hand, breast, heart, womb (5), adjectives with the idea of 'moderate hot' (4), fire (2) and bed (2).

Within amplified context the main difference is that a new distinctive meaning shows up. It is that of fertilizing-strength or fertilizing-power or vital-force with (7) entries of which: (4) appear associated to the soil (fertile soil or land) and (3) stating LENTOR as an abstract fecundating power.

The idea of dampness comes much more blurred in this second turn. What I previously noted as clear appears more vague now. The lentor of the dew is accompanied with adjectives such as warm, the lentor of the alder is compared with the cheeks of a human body (some idea of redness and hence heat is implied) and finally the lentor of the strawberry appears more related to some natural phenomenon not experienced with the visual senses: it is compared with the ability of the mole (Talpa) to find its path in the darkness. Although some idea of dampness is kept, the value of +warmth could be also applied. With this second search I could add (2) more entries where LENTOR appears associated to the river shores and humidity, and another (2) with the idea of dew or vapour. Hence (7) entries are associated to +dampness.

There are (3) entries where I think the lemma does not match LENTOR. Two of them seem irregular derivatives of lento (slow) to me, and the other one appears to be a misprint of alento (breath). Although particularly in the second case it would be well worth studying possible influences and meaning-shifts by a relation of paronomasia, I think these entries, even if within an homophonic relationship, do belong to a different lemma and thus should be more carefully reviewed and noted if not ascribed with a different semantic tag within the corpus.

The rest of the entries (20) appear too vague to me yet. Sure the study of the semantic fields would allow a better ascription to more specific categories. The study of the authors could point out new contexts and thus lead to a better definition too. Probably the third review would solve out more entries kept as ambiguous by now.

The fact that I leave these entries as not relevant does not mean that the idea of +warmth or +vital-force is not present. It is only that I cannot unequivocally infer the meaning from the context. That is, the output is not self-explanatory enough. In fact within all these entries the idea of +warmth of +vital-force is the most probable meaning. Most of the concepts that appear whithin these non-self-explanatory-enough although non-contradictory with the meanings of +warmth and +vital-force instances are nature-related: nature, chestnut tree (Castanea sativa), dawn, morning, afternoon, sand, arable land, yet there are also some abstract names such as life, youth, love and instant.


So contextual results slightly differ or would lead to a more precise definition than the one given at the beginning of this article. From contextual data LENTOR seems to be the warmth and vital-force that brings or supports life in nature, particularly in vegetal life.

The following table illustrates the results:

Semantic tract	First search (entries) %	Amplified corpus (entries) %
+warmth	(8) 14%	(20) 35%
+dampness	(3) 5%	(7) 12%
+vital-force	-	(7) 12%
ambiguous	(46) 81 %	(20) 35%
non ascribed	-	(3) 5%

(1) For the position of Galegan dialects within Portuguese language vid. for instance: Cunha, C. & Cintra, L.: Breve Gramática do Português Contemporâneo. Lisboa: Edições João Sá da Costa (2002), pp. 5-17. ^
(2) Searchable on-line at http://sli.uvigo.es/ddd/index.html. A search for LENTOR brought the following results out from (7) different dictionaries: LENTOR is registered as the same entry or equivalent to LENTURA (4) times. It is also defined as 'warmth or moderate heat' (4), 'humidity' (4), 'slowness' (4). In my opinion LENTOR as 'slowness' is a case of homophony rather than the same lemma.^

"Of Baranduin Brandywine seemed a natural corruption in modern times. Actually the older hobbit-name was Branda-nîn 'border-water',(...) but by a jest that had become habitual, referring again to its colour, at this time the river was usually called Bralda-hîm 'heady ale'." J.R.R. Tolkien. The Lord of the Rings. Appendix F, Note on Brandywine.

When we have to name new objects we borrow concepts from already-known items. Metaphor is the figure of speech applied. It is easier to explain with new technologies. The Internet for instance. The Web itself is a concept brought from nature as it visually reminds ourselves of an abstract image of a network. We surf the web because the amount of information is so huge that it is like sailing in a vast ocean. Also, when surfing you are only on the surface. A synecdoche, pars pro toto, emphasizes the huge amount of information available related to what we actually access: we think of the ocean not only as a flat sea but as a whole mass with its plunging depths.

A similar approach can be applied to explain some types of plants. The way we give names in reality comes from previous concepts: so for the Sparganium erectum we have both Portuguese espadana and Welsh cleddyflys with a lexeme meaning 'sword'. Another point is why do we highlight and how do we select different proprieties of a given object. Portuguese (so does the scientific name) focuses on the leaf, Welsh adds its fruit to the metaphoric shape-description. More prosaic English bur-reed buries its poetic roots and lets the bursting burr grow up until it distinguishes the wind-shaken spear plant! I very much like the German name Ästiger Igelkolben where I understand a homage is given to a voracious hedgehog!

This thorny mammal is another example of term-transfering by comparison as it has been metaphorically named after flora too: Portuguese ouriço cacho (Erinaceus europaeus) means literally 'a piece of burr'!

I?d better stop before I switch from smile to laughter thinking of Old Celtic for man (Homo sapiens) and a sapientior woman, both metamorphosed into an operosus donkey (Equus asinus) and a ludens magpie (Pica pica)! Semantics here would bring us to a new kingdom and... Romance!

When you try to describe or express any action, object, idea, whatever, you need a vocabulary. The more accurate, the more exact your description. You also take for granted that your addressee will be able to decode what you have expressed.

As a construction worker, whatever the language used at the working environment, I am required to name a number of objects and actions.

When you perform a task you also gain skills to name tools, objects, processes. You are supposed and required to make a perfect job. However you are supposed but not always required to name everything properly. Let?s see some examples.

It is not only because sometimes it is cold and rainy, there are many hours left to leave, that irony could be used. I might not get it, perhaps it is only for the need of a smile from time to time. A 20/100 nail is an electrode. Deixis, hyperbole and an out-of-place metaphor allow intelligibleness. It would always be informal speech as well. The kind you would never use when addressing to technical staff.

Synecdoche and metonymy are common figures that deviate from an accurate definition. You just compare and use the name of a tool or object when you are faced with another one that resembles it or functions in a similar way. Please, allow me to bring some examples that are better understood within a diachronic context for the metonymy: a bird?s claw became a part of a hammer; a ploughed versus that defined the area where the buildings were to be constructed became a line of the text where the founders of the city were prayed in Latin. Let?s come back to synchrony for the synecdoche: If you cannot name a particular element or object you just name the generic. So a round wire nail, an oval wire nail, a lost head nail, a brad or a tack are just nails.

All this is to say that many times it is difficult to find the exact terms. So you express yourself the best way you can just for the sake of being understood. Thus when I began to refer to the action of shuttering or formwork, I used casting as the more specific term I had at that time. I cannot blame it on cold and rainy weather, nor apply for a particular figure to explain a deictically restrictive use.

But I can point it out.

Ptolemy mentions Iria as Iria Flaovia. The hypothesis I am working with is Flavia being a tautonym for Iria. Both names, at this stage, appear to mean "river": either a particular kind or "part of a river". It is just an hypothesis. Iria is too obscure: there are no occurrences enough to explain it in comparative terms: The more similar one would be Iria in Portugal, which is referred to as a river in 1142: " inter Leirenam et Heirenam rivulos".

The second term, Flavia, has been explained as an eponym of a Roman Emperor(Titus Flavius Vespasianus). As far as I could research this is quite a recent explanation and there are no classic texts to support such an hypothesis. Please do note that I haven't -I wish I could- reviewed the ancient sources. All I can say is that I am failing to confirm a Latin origin for Iria Flavia in historical sources. Or, I repeat, I could not track or found any evidence to support this Latin explanation.

So I am left with linguistic evidence only. Other occurrences do show a pre-Roman substract. Comparisons at both syntagmatic and paradigmatic levels are more easily explained from Celtic.


I would appreciate any HISTORICAL evidence of ANY toponym with the term Flavia/o being given by a Roman emperor WHEREVER in the Romania. Perhaps there is such a source and it is very well known, but I admit that I can not find it at present. I strongly, sincerely would appreciate it.

I keep my attention to flavia as a Celtic name.

I have just read my last article on the geminates again. Obviously I have mentioned the main patterns within Romance and Celtic languages.

In a more detailed explanation I should mention (all evidence supporting the Celtic thesis):

* there is mutation in word-medial context in Celtic. The main example is when adding a prefix to a stem.

* mutation can be just syntactic (syntactic phonetics as it is lenition in Romance) whith no grammatical value at all in Celtic. For instance after particles or prepositions, regardless of function or word type coming next.

* Grammatical mutation following Celtic pattern can be found in Western Romance. For instance to mark gender: the name Urraca (/g/ > 0 ) meaning, as in Britton Celtic, the woman or the wife.

The Journal of the International Phonetic Association (Vol. 37, N.2) published an article by PhD Rachid Ridouane discussing gemination. It has drawn my attention particularly for the good description of the contrast singleton / geminate not only in word-medial context but also in initial and word-final positions. The study is made for Tashlhiyt Berber ( Korean and Swiss German, particularly the dialect of Bern, appear in the bibliography as other languages for understanding the nature of geminates).

My approach to geminates comes from lenition in Western Romance languages. In comparative terms with Latin, the distinction geminate / singleton is lost, thus producing a readjustment of the plosives: voiceless are voiced and former voiced plosives are lost. The fact that the series of phonemes readjusted follow soft mutation in Celtic languages has been used as a statement to explain lenition in terms of substract. Hence sound change would be not accidental, even less random, but due to language contact.

I must point out something else: in Portuguese lenition reaches the series of nasals and approximants, much as does in Celtic languages. This is a point that I have never found when lenition is discussed.


The main argument against the Celtic explanation would be that lenition in Romance happens within intervocalic context (word-medial) while in Celtic languages mutation is word-initial. To make things more difficult mutation is grammatical in Celtic: it marks gender, for instance.


After reading the article mentioned supra on the Journal of the IPA I consider north-western areas of Africa (with geminates not only intervocalic but also word-initial and final) as I had already noticed for Swiss dialects (I have detected lenition in nasal and approximant series in the dialect of Bern although I could not systematize it) as zones where comparative studies with Celtic could be useful for the better understanding of lenition.

Again, although I do admit it looks like a harder and more difficult way to the finding of universals, I do keep language contact as the best way to explain sound-change.

Finally I could find motivation to keep my work on linguistics, (Iria my main subject yet: may be I should try, even if not as elaborated as I would like it to be, a compromise solution in order to be able to go on)... just a review on classical approaches to phonetics... not much.

I have been relaxing reading the first book I bought in my life... a young boy... a collection of poetry dealing with old myths, landscapes of wild nature, dolmens and fairies, written at the XIXth century. If there is something I come back once and once again in my life it is this work. The author is a publicist, just known for this only book.

There are surprises, sometimes, in this life. Two years ago I was reviewing a magazine with quite good stories, the kind of Walter Scott novels, written in Galizaland in the XIXth century. I got almost astonished with so good prose and essays, and a piece of sci-fi, a description, too much scientific I am afraid to be good literature, but amazing in its content, of an interplanetary travel, the same path the Cassini-Huygens did these years...

Oh my God! who were these people? I asked to myself. It is amazing what they were doing, I thought. And, to my surprise I found, yeah, the publicist again. My best companion, so many nights, teaching me on courage, passion, motivation, and... love, sure. :D

It has been three days, 9 hours, devoted to diachronic linguistics? Iria is so appealing that I have made up my mind: all I have been doing for many years can be focused just on Iria? so it is not a common approach? it is an approach I was looking for, so long !!!

Some points to begin with.

1.- None of the explanations given so far to Iria as a toponomy are satisfactory to me.

2. Iria is the survival, and much more, of what is thought as the most pure, genuine, Galizan roots. Not only for the place of Iria in history , but the meaning itself. It is a pre-latin name. Or at least, it comes from the very beginning of Gallaecia. Until now, all I can say is: it is an icon of Galizaland? I just fall on my knee.


Where I am going now:

I have to learn German, some Swiss German as well (very important for the development of Galizan-Portuguese), I began some basic research on the avant-gardes of the XXth century, the translation of the first branch of the Mabinogi is a priority, I need to review some languages I have worked with? and linguistics is just a small, very small, part of my life. I will try to keep my interest and devote myself to Iria for the rest of the year.

The context is Celtic. I?ll try to explain Iria from its natural, most likely source.

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