I have an answer, though it may disappoint you. The number of
languages which fit the strict guidelines of your question are very
few indeed. I would only feel comfortable, given the guidelines,
numbering my answer at "1." However, I will provide an explanation of
my research and you can judge what is and what is not close enough.
The languages which come closest to qualifying are naturally those of
the Romance family. However, none of the other languages which derive
words from Latin 'modicus, modicum' use the neuter spelling. All use
some spelling derived from the nominative 'modicus,' generally with
the -us ending shifting to a vowel. Furthermore, all are used as
adjectives and not nouns as in English so cannot be said strictly to
have the same definition.
Examples with definitions:
French: modique - que est peu considérable, en parlant d'une somme
d'argent (Le Grand Robert) My translation = "What is barely
considerable, in speaking about a sum of money"
Occitan: modic, -a = modique (Lavalade's Dictionnaire
français-occitan)
Corsican: mòdicu = modique (Dizziunariu corsu-francese)
Spanish: módico, -ca (Diccionario del español actual)
Catalan: mòdic, mòdica (Diccionari català valencià balear)
Galician: módico, a = módico (Diccionario enciclopedico
gallego-castellano)
Portuguese: módico - que é pouco considerável, que tem poco valor
(Machando's Grande dicionário da língua portuguesa) My translation =
"What is barely considerable, has little value"
Brazilian Portuguese: módico (Nôvo dicionário brasileiro melhoramentes
ilustrado)
Italian: mòdico - che non ha intensità, fermezza, durata (Grande
dizionario della lingua italiana)
And the list goes on really... Sicilian, Romanian, and Romansch very
likely have the same word.
However, when I searched English-Romance Romance-English dictionaries,
the authors almost always recomended a different X translation for
"modicum" than the ones above, usually related to the word "minimum."
They also provided a more complex definition for the Romance
adjectives above than simply translating them to "modicum."
As for Latin itself, I was not able to find a definite answer to the
question "Was 'modicum' used as a noun in classical Latin or is it
merely an Latin-derived English word. With the evidence of the above
Romance languages only to speak from, I would guess 'no.'
I could not find any non-Romance European languages with words derived
from that Latin root. I searched major Dutch, German, Serbo-Croatian,
Polish, Czech, Magyar, Finnish, Estonian, and Turkish dictionaries.
By the definition of the question, non-Roman alphabet languages are
out, but I searched anyway in dictionaries of the ones I am capable of
transliterating, and there are no Latin-derived terms in Hebrew or
Russian.
The only other thing which I think remains a possibility are words
adopted into communities where English has become a primary learned
language, such as many Native American / First Nations languages. If
'modicum' is used in these languages though by a bilingual speaker,
who can really tell what language the word is being used in?
So, the answer to the question as it is now stated is likely the same
answer as "How many languages are English anyway?" In my brief
research here I have seen 'modicum' in American, Canadian, Australian,
British, and Scots contexts.
Thank you very much for your question. This has been quite fun to
research!
surajambar |
Clarification of Answer by
surajambar-ga
on
15 Mar 2003 10:41 PST
That being said, actual usage is often different from that which is
found in the dictionary. I used Google Language Tools at
://www.google.com/language_tools? to search for the word 'modicum'
online with language specific searches in Roman alphabet languages.
Most of the searchable languages have several pages with the word
'modicum' in them, but these are usually either Latin or English
quotations on pages mostly in the searched language, pages misassigned
to the language, or sites about Latin or English texts. See Catalan:
://www.google.com/search?lr=lang_ca&cr=&q=modicum&hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1
Croatian: ://www.google.com/search?lr=lang_hr&cr=&q=modicum&hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1
and Indonesian ://www.google.com/search?lr=lang_id&cr=&q=modicum&hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1
for examples of these non-instances of modicum.
There are however, exceptions. I have found the word modicum in
non-English, non-Latin linguistic contexts in the following languages
and on the following pages:
Czech: http://www.usaf.cz/odbor_statu/royd/ustava.html
German (one usage in a 17th century document):
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Coffeehouse/3112/texte/abraham1.htm
(note, 'modicum' is one of the glossed words which must be translated
into modern German as 'mäßig, bescheiden, mittelmäßig'
Spanish (the best fit): Hits include phrases like "el modicum de
identidad colectiva," and "un modicum de información," used
respectively on Spanish and Costa Rican pages. However, the modicum
of Spanish language pages which use the word in Spanish are far fewer
than those who use it in Latin.
I have also now realized that 'modicum' has been used as a noun in
Latin. Psalm 37:16 in the Vulgate reads "Melius est modicum iusto,
super divitias peccatorum multas (Better the modicum of the righteous
than the wealth of many of the wicked).
So my final answer is:
Dictionary: 2 (Latin and English)
Usage (somewhat more cautious): 5 (English, Latin, Spanish, Czech,
17th century German)
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