Talk:parliament

ia
For the life of me, I can't work out where the -ia- comes from. Shouldn't Old French have given ? Mglovesfun (talk) 10:59, 2 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Anglo-Norman also had "parliament", but you're right it's weird. The OED says this: ‘The development of the forms in -ia- has not been fully explained, nor is it clear in which language they first developed. They perhaps arose by analogy with French verbs in -ier and Latin verbs in -iare and their derivatives (compare e.g. post-classical Latin maniamentum s.v. manyment: n., post-classical Latin merciamentum and Anglo-Norman merciament s.v. merciament: n., etc.).’ Ƿidsiþ 11:15, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

Relation to parliamentary system
A question: Is there an actual distinction between a parliament and a legislature? My intuition says that the former would be appropriate in a parliamentary (w/a prime minister) system, where as the latter is general. This article doesn't seem to suggest a difference. 104.229.139.131 18:41, 3 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I had a look at the OED. While one of the meanings of the word is the Parliament of the United Kingdom, and parliaments of other countries that share a historical connection with it, parliament is also used to describe legislatures which do not adopt the Westminster-style system. Thus, it does not appear that the meaning of the word is limited in this way. — SMUconlaw (talk) 19:44, 3 April 2016 (UTC)