suffixes for adjectives: -tial & -cial
financial, commercial, beneficial
but: influential, essential, reverential
Why are some words spelt with 'c' and others with 't'? Is there a rule?
financial?Aha! Better idea (also to do with the history of lexicography, but as it concerns printers rather than scholars.) ;-) It was presumably easier for a caster of type to produce a ligature between n and t.
But students don't need to know this, if rule is '-cial unless preceded by n, in which case it's -tial'. (I don't at the moment say that it is a rule, but I can't think of a counter-example - in a modern text. There used to be a lot of variation.)
b
"Financial" is certainly problematic if we want to make our rule Latin-dependent. It never existed in Latin.financial?
I don't think BobK's rule was Latin-dependent."Financial" is certainly problematic if we want to make our rule Latin-dependent. It never existed in Latin.
My OED says that "finance" is from Old French.I don't think BobK's rule was Latin-dependent.
BobK?
I don't think BobK's rule was Latin-dependent.
BobK?
I was eponymising (?) the rule only for -ncial/-ntial words. It seems to be sound for these - so far I have found the only exception. Now there's a challenge for somebody!Oh dear, I seem to have acquired an eponymous rule ;-)
I was eponymising (?) the rule only for -ncial/-ntial words. It seems to be sound for these - so far I have found the only exception. Now there's a challenge for somebody!