Re: origin of the word "Bagat"

21
Ross wrote,
So, a hypothetical bagatella in Florence, then turned masculine in Bologna at some point - Bagattino (Pedini ms circa 1600), Bagat..
In Ferrara it kept its original name, which goes back to the first generation.
I have been puzzling about that for a week, as I still think bagatella is more likely to have started in Ferrara than Florence, because it turned masculine in Florence at some point there, too: it is Bagatello, in the Strambotto, also an alternate name in Minchiate (along with Papino and Uno). That same spelling and pronunciation, with the -o ending, spread to Lombardy, in the "Pavia" order. But I have had trouble giving what I think is a good argument. I finally have some sort of reply.

I think it's a linguistic thing. I am not a linguist, but that doesn't stop me. Put it this way. There is a card game with allegorical names for some of the cards. I don't know how many, because it wasn't said until around 20 years after our first confirmed reference to the game, that is, in Boiardo's poem and then the Sermo de Ludo. Let us suppose that one of them is of a sleight of hand artist, and he is called bagatella, for his tricks and the little things he carries around with him. This name either catches on or it is altered to bagatello. I would think that whichever it was, it would be fairly soon after the term was introduced, because once everyone starts using one term, it will be reinforced by continual repetition. Changes do happen in linguistic practice, but they occur over a longer period than just a few decades. In Ferrara we know that the came quite consistently to be called bagatella. So the name stuck. In Florence, however, it didn't stick. It got changed to bagatello, a name it continued to have and which even spread to Milan.

Now if bagatella is the initial word in Florence, and it gets changed to bagatello, that will have to happen fairly quickly, or bagatella will stick. But it's going to take a while for the game to catch on in Florence, enough that it is deemed worthy of export, and probably by the time it reaches that level, the name for the card will be set. Spreading to Ferrara, there is a very small window of time for it to go there with the name bagatella; it has to get there before the game is even established in Florence. Well, yes, it's possible. But there is all the time in the world to go from Ferrara as bagatella and get changed to bagatello in Florence.

There are empirical cases to demonstrate this process in real life. I can think of cases where established terms in England, for example, get changed when they go to America, in spelling or pronunciation. Colour to color, honour to honor. For pronunciation, the city of Birmingham comes to mind, in Alabama, named after the city in England. In all these cases it's the process of rationalization, which tends to happen in new places faster than in the old places.

Then for the other case, where a usage starts in place A, spreads it to place B, then changes in place A but doesn't in place B, where the places in question are autonomous entities, I can think of a few examples, too. Certain communities in the U.S. still use "thee" and "thou", or did, for a long time after these terms stopped being used in England and the rest of the U.S. Likewise "Old Believer" Russian communities in North America still speak 17th or 18th century Russian, whenever they left Russia. Also, some places in Quebec still use antiquated expressions, for example "froque", in instances where in France the usual expression is "manteau" (I know from leaving my coat in a restaurant and the waitress running after me: "Votre froque, monsieur!") But these are changes over a long period in which the two places are in relative isolation. The restaurant was in Chicoutimi; I don't know if the same speech exists in Montreal. From what a French person told me at the youth hostel, about how peculiar the speech was in Chicoutimi, I would think not. While individual Italian city-states did preserve their unique pronunciations and words, they did not in the mid to late 15th century change over the course of just a few decades. Even in Minchiate, for whenever we come to know the terms, "bagatello" is still used, although there are also "Papino" and "Uno." In Bologna, there was the change from "Bagattino" to "Begat." Again, this is a long time after, and probably from the influence of Minchiate, a compromise between "Bagattino" and "Bagatello," taking what is in common between the two words. Moreover, the cases of preservation rather than change when transferring form one place to another involved the resettlement of whole linguistic communities bent on preserving their culture from forces outside, where change is less likely to occur than otherwise. Perhaps you can think of better examples.

Re: origin of the word "Bagat"

22
Revisiting this topic, there is something to be pointed out about the quotation from Muratori that Ross quoted at viewtopic.php?p=11028#p11028 and Marco translated at viewtopic.php?p=11041#p11041: this is not actually Muratori himself, but Muratori as translated into Italian by his nephew. Translations do not always capture all the details of their original. The original is at https://www.google.it/books/edition/Ant ... sq=Bakatta. I owe this reference to Andrea Vitali, who cites it at http://www.associazioneletarot.it/page.aspx?id=386 (this part not yet translated into English, although I am working on it): Antiquitates Italicæ Medii Ævi sive Dissertationes de Moribus, Ritibus, Religione, Regimine, etc, Tomus Secundus, column 1142.

Here is a transcription of part of it (from Andrea's essay):
Nulla inter Linguas, olim Italis notas, offert mihi verbüm, quod voci, de qua agimus, sono literarum propius sit, quam Arabica. Ullis quippe est Bakatta, quod Italice redditum evadit Bacattare, Bagattare. Ab iis accepisse Mutinenses videntur hoc verbum, quum ajunt Bagattare & Abbagattare rem aliquam, idest eam sine studio, ас inepte ргаe festinatione conficere: pro quo Acciabattare Florentini dicunt. Dicimus etiam Bagatta-mestiere. Significat autem Arabicum Bakatta, Gollio teste, Festinare in sermone, vel in incessu, Corripere, Monere verbis, Rem disgregare, eamdemque colligere. Est Arabum Populo & alterum simile verbum, unico T. scriptum, idest Bagata, significans Miscere, Confundere, negotium, cibum, sermonem suum. Fieri potuit, ut olim Itali, qui ex Arabum gente dominante in Sicilia & Calabria, & ob mercaturam ac literarum studia, apud eos familiari, tot alias voces accepere. Bagattare quoque didicerint, eoque uterentur ad significandam Joculatorum, Agyrtarum, & Scurrarum artem, qui fabulis, ludis, ac rebus puerilibus, & nullius pretii, spectatores detinebant. Illos propterea Bagattare dixerint, eorumque ludos Bagattellas, diminutivo nomine efformato e Bagattare, nuncupare cœperint.
Running this through Google Translate, I get, with a few corrections:
None of the languages once known to the Italians offers me a word that is closer to the sound of the letters we are talking about than Arabic. It is for everyone Bakatta, which, rendered in Italian, becomes Bacattare, Bagattare. The Modenese seem to have received this word from them, when they say to Bagattare & Abbagattare to accomplish some thing, that is to say, to accomplish it without effort, as in the haste of a fool: for which the Florentines say Acciabattare. We also say Bagatta-mestiere. Now the Arabic Bakatta signifies, according to Gollio, to hasten in speech, or in walking, to rebuke, to admonish with words, to break things apart, and to gather them together. There is with the people of the Arabs another similar word, written in a single T., that is, Bagata, signifying to mix, to confuse, business, food, one's speech. It could be that once upon a time the Italians, who were of the Arab race dominant in Sicily and Calabria, and because of trade and literary studies, familiar with them, received many other terms. They also learned Bagattare, and used it to signify the art of Jesters, Agyrts [Acrobats?], and Clowns, who kept the spectators entertained with fables, games, and childish things, of no value. Therefore they called them Bagattare, and began to call their games Bagattellas, a diminutive name formed from Bagattare.
Compare to the nephew. Marco accurately translated it (Andrea didn't include the first sentence, which also exists in the original):
If you ask me the origin of that word, I have not found anything reliable: I can only propose a conjecture. The Arabic language has a word “Bakatta”, which adapted to Italian becomes “Bagattare”. According to Gollio, it means “to hurry when speaking or walking”. In Modena they say “Abbagattare” for the Florentine “Acciabattare” [to shuffle?]. The Arabs have one more similar verb, that is “Bagata”, with a single T. It means “to mix food, to confound business or speech”. It is not unlikely that the Italians borrowed “Bagattare”, as they did for many other words, from the Arabs or Saracens, who once ruled on Sicily and Calabria and had much commerce throughout our country. [So the Italians] called trifles and the tricks and games of jugglers “Bagattelle”.
Even though the translation of the Latin is probably not very precise, several differences seem apparent. First, Muratori gave an alternative spelling for the derived word, "Bacattare" in addition to "Bagattare". Considering that the Arab word uses the hard "c" sound, this is significant. Second, he gave a second set of meanings for Bakatta, which the nephew omits. And third, the last sentence is rather different. First, it includes other performers besides the Joculatori, and second, it describes them differently, as offering entertainment in the form of fables, games, and childish things of no value", not "trifles, tricks and games". The nephew has substituted "tricks" (furberie, also meaning "cunning") for "fables . . . and childish ..." Third, Muratori suggests that the term "Bagattare" meant the performers first and only later, in the diminutive form "Bagatellas", their games. This is an interesting point of view, and one seemingly obscured by the nephew (he also changed the spelling, to "Bagatelle"). It may well be that I have misconstrued the Latin. If I have not, it is possible that the nephew, thinking his uncle was wrong on this point, was trying to cover for him. These differences may not be important, but it seems to me we should at least know what Muratori actually said.
cron