Bizarre Sound Changes

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Re: Bizarre Sound Changes

Post by Vuvuzela »

Jetboy wrote:
Could "American IPA" represent a shift in meaning of "IPA" from "International Phonetic Alphabet" to "Symbols we use for phonetic transcription," perhaps?
Perhaps only methods of phonetic transcription based in the International Phonetic Alphabet? Like, according to the IPA that shows up in monolingual English dictionaries, the word "red" begins with a trill, and thus they do not use "pure" IPA, but a variation, or else are trying to get you to talk like a racist interpretation of a Spaniard.

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Re: Bizarre Sound Changes

Post by Nortaneous »

You could probably count the number of people who write in completely standard IPA on one hand. All that matters is whether the point gets across, although it's definitely good practice to not fuck up things like j~y even when it's unambiguous, just so you're sure you're not going to fuck them up when it is.
TaylorS wrote:Nobody mentioned Western European /r/ > /R/, yet???
Everyone already knows about it. Would be interesting to see other examples of the change, though; hasn't it happened in a few Austronesian langs? (ninja edit: no, PA *R is not /R/, it was probably an alveolar trill, austro... er, austronesianists? are just dumb about keeping everything ASCII)
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Re: Bizarre Sound Changes

Post by Pole, the »

Jetboy wrote:Also, if anyone feels like cutting out steps, Latin -> colloquial Spanish has /s/ -> /e/ #_C.
French is a better example, e.g. étudiant. ;-)

Also, e: > wa / dunno where, e.g. soir, étoile.
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Re: Bizarre Sound Changes

Post by Soap »

Does anyone know if front rounded vowels have ever arisen from front unrounded vowels? e.g. i > y, rather than u > y. I need /y/ and /ø/ for a series of languages whose parent language has just /a e i o u/ and where getting them to arise from /o u/ would be difficult, but getting them from /e i/ would be easy and would make more sense because /i/ is much more common than /e/ and I intend /y/ to be much more common than /ø/. Another reason why I want to do it this way is because I'm thinking of having the proto-language /u/ shift to /ɯ/, and then only get /u/ back through a similar change. So it would be /e i ɯ/ > /ø y u/. The language has a lot of labialized consonants which I'm intending to make disappear, and which could be a cause for the rounding of the front vowels. But like I said, I'm not aware of a sound change like that in any language.
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Re: Bizarre Sound Changes

Post by finlay »

As far as I know, yes, it's particularly rare. But I think Cʷi → Cy is probably realistic enough.

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Re: Bizarre Sound Changes

Post by linguoboy »

Soap wrote:Does anyone know if front rounded vowels have ever arisen from front unrounded vowels?
There are a lot of rounding changes among front vowels in German dialects. Unrounding is more common, but rounding occurs as well, particularly in labial environments although it's not confined to them. For instance, although söben or söven for "seven" is common to all Low Saxon varieties, some have söss for "six" as well. (Change by analogy?) Similarly twölf "twelve" and ölben/ölven "eleven".

With all the Spanish changes listed, I'm surprised nobody gave [lː] > [ʃ] in Rioplatense. In my historical linguistics course, this was the poster child for how you could achieve "implausible" changes through a serious of very plausible steps.

You have [g] > [ʃtʲ] in some Latin words that ended up in Irish after passing through Norman French. E.g. *PAGIU(M) > page (['paʤə]) > páiste. And I always found the [ʣ] > [w] change in Catalan pretty wacky, e.g. PACEM > patz > pau.

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Re: Bizarre Sound Changes

Post by Nortaneous »

V'ënen Taut reflects Proto-Oceanic bilabials and labiovelars as linguolabials and bilabials, possibly through an intermediate stage of palatalized and velarized bilabials, as some other languages in the family have. Other langs take that a step further, and shift linguolabials to dentals, at least before unrounded vowels.
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Re: Bizarre Sound Changes

Post by Skomakar'n »

Serafín wrote:Historically, Spanish also had intervocalic lj > ʎ > ʒ, e.g. Lat. *aliu [ˈalju] > *ˈaʎo > Old Spanish oio [ˈoʒo].
Why are you mentioning only this, when the change has gone even further into modern Spanish [x]?
Whimemsz wrote:Jesus, guys, it's obvious he meant "Americanist Phonetic Notation," in which <y> is /j/, why is this such a big deal?
It wasn't entirely obvious. It's still stupid not to use IPA like everyone else in a forum like this. At least other messages in this thread related to y > u or u > y started becoming confusing after that message, because I wasn't sure whether anyone actually meant y anymore.
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Re: Bizarre Sound Changes

Post by Herr Dunkel »

ei > oa, anyone?
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Re: Bizarre Sound Changes

Post by linguoboy »

TaylorS wrote:Nobody mentioned Western European /r/ > /R/, yet???
Interchange between rhotics is hardly "bizarre". Some of the later outcomes of this might qualify, however; Brazilian Portuguese ends up with [h] and even mainstream French has [χ].
Elector Dark wrote:ei > oa, anyone?
I'm just so familiar with Upper German that this fails to register as any more "bizarre" to me than [au] > [e] ~ [ɪə]

Mandarin Chinese has [ai] > [iə], which is kind of wack.

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Re: Bizarre Sound Changes

Post by Travis B. »

linguoboy wrote:Mandarin Chinese has [ai] > [iə], which is kind of wack.
Then there's English dialects which made the change of Middle English [iː] > present-day [aː] - skipping a couple steps there, of course.
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Re: Bizarre Sound Changes

Post by Nortaneous »

Travis B. wrote:
linguoboy wrote:Mandarin Chinese has [ai] > [iə], which is kind of wack.
Then there's English dialects which made the change of Middle English [iː] > present-day [aː] - skipping a couple steps there, of course.
And MidE [uː] > something like [æɐ̯].
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Re: Bizarre Sound Changes

Post by installer_swan »

I'm not sure how bizzare this would be considered, but /h/ -> /g/ in Sanskrit/Indic loanwords in Tamil. So, I suppose it's not the sort of sound change you were looking for, but the effect of the phonology of neighbouring languages and bilinguals is also a part of historical sound change isn't it?
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Re: Bizarre Sound Changes

Post by Travis B. »

Nortaneous wrote:
Travis B. wrote:
linguoboy wrote:Mandarin Chinese has [ai] > [iə], which is kind of wack.
Then there's English dialects which made the change of Middle English [iː] > present-day [aː] - skipping a couple steps there, of course.
And MidE [uː] > something like [æɐ̯].
MidE [uː] seems to do weird things pretty commonly, such as becoming [æɔ̯] in Australian English.

Personally, I am used to the sporadic change of [uː] to [ɑ], more commonly [ɑɒ̯], when Canadian Raising does not apply (where then they become [ɑ̝] and [ɑ̝ɒ̝̯] to [ɑ̝o̯] respectively).
Dibotahamdn duthma jallni agaynni ra hgitn lakrhmi.
Amuhawr jalla vowa vta hlakrhi hdm duthmi xaja.
Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro.

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Re: Bizarre Sound Changes

Post by Travis B. »

installer_swan wrote:I'm not sure how bizzare this would be considered, but /h/ -> /g/ in Sanskrit/Indic loanwords in Tamil. So, I suppose it's not the sort of sound change you were looking for, but the effect of the phonology of neighbouring languages and bilinguals is also a part of historical sound change isn't it?
IIRC this is the canonical way loans containing /h/ are transformed when being borrowed into Russian too.
Dibotahamdn duthma jallni agaynni ra hgitn lakrhmi.
Amuhawr jalla vowa vta hlakrhi hdm duthmi xaja.
Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro.

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Re: Bizarre Sound Changes

Post by Ser »

Jetboy wrote:Also, if anyone feels like cutting out steps, Latin -> colloquial Spanish has /s/ -> /e/ #_C.
The colloquial Spanish of Caribbeans and some southern Spaniards, please don't generalize this to the rest of us. :P
Could "American IPA" represent a shift in meaning of "IPA" from "International Phonetic Alphabet" to "Symbols we use for phonetic transcription," perhaps?
Looks like it.

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Re: Bizarre Sound Changes

Post by installer_swan »

Travis B. wrote:
installer_swan wrote:I'm not sure how bizzare this would be considered, but /h/ -> /g/ in Sanskrit/Indic loanwords in Tamil. So, I suppose it's not the sort of sound change you were looking for, but the effect of the phonology of neighbouring languages and bilinguals is also a part of historical sound change isn't it?
IIRC this is the canonical way loans containing /h/ are transformed when being borrowed into Russian too.
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Re: Bizarre Sound Changes

Post by Nortaneous »

I can't not read that as Fappu Notter.
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Re: Bizarre Sound Changes

Post by Whimemsz »

Plains Algonquian languages (Blackfoot, Cheyenne, and Arapahoan), though they don't form a genetic group, are distinguished from other Algonquian languages by a lot of really unusual changes, some specific to each language and others diffused among several of them (the most bizarre changes being in Cheyenne and Arapahoan). The result is that you really have to know the correspondences to recognize just about any cognate in any of the Plains languages with equivalents in other members of the family or in Proto-Algonquian. Some of the changes are chronicled in various places in the Correspondence Library, but I'll highlight the most interesting/unusual/bizarre ones here.

Cheyenne and the Arapahoan languages share several. One is the merger of the semi-vowels *j and *w into *j (unconditionally in Arapahoan, postconsonantally in Cheyenne; this parallels the Hebrew change sirdanilot mentioned), which in most cases then further changed to n (perhaps by way of something like ) -- so Cheyenne and the Arapahoan languages often reflect Proto-Algonquian [PA] *j and *w as n! In fact, in Cheyenne, this also affected the automatic palatal offglide which developed between a *k (which was later lost) and a following front vowel, leading to the correspondence PA *k : Cheyenne n. In Arapahoan, word-initial *s became n as well. Another shared unusual change is the loss of *k (irregularly in Cheyenne), and in Arapahoan, the resulting shift of the labial stop *p to a velar *k (which later split into /k/ and /ʧ/; for more on labial-velar interchange, see below).

In Blackfoot, *k was not lost, but initial *t did shift to k (as in Austronesian!), e.g. koʔkó- "be night" (< PA *tepeskwatwi > something like *topskwawi- > etc). Blackfoot also changed *j to s and postconsonantal *j (and sometimes *w) to isi or isa in a number of cases, e.g. moʔksísi "armpit" (< PA *meθenkwi > something like *moθnkwi > > *moθnkji > > *moθnksisi > etc.) and mó:sa "anus" (< PA *mje:ji "piece of dung" > something like *me:ji > > *me:si > etc.). Cheyenne also has the change *j → t in some environments (as in sɪ́joto̥ "ghosts" < PA *ʧi:pajaki [the /j/ in the modern Cheyenne form is a later addition to break a vowel hiatus, and does not reflect the original */j/, which is continued by the modern /t/]). Gros Ventre has several unusual changes of its own, including the shift of word-final and *k to ʦ and *m to .

To summarize, we have changes like:

CHEYENNE
*j → t /$__
*w → *j /C__
*k → Ø
*j → n


BLACKFOOT
*t → k /#__
*j → s /__V#
*w → j /k__i
*ja, *ji → sa, si /C__#


ARAPAHOAN
*w → *j
*j → n /$__
*k → Ø
*p → *k
*s → n /#__


GROS VENTRE
*k, *θ, *m → ts, ts, bʲ /__#

The result, as I noted, is some extremely unusual and opaque correspondences/etymologies. For example, Cheyenne nɪtsɪ̥ "eagle" (< PA *keriwa > something like *kjeri > > *jiti > > *niti > etc.; cf. Ojibwe giniw) and -onɪ́sɪ- "try to" (< PA *kakwe:ʧi- > something like *kakje:ʧi- > > *aje:ʧi > *ane:ʧi > etc.; cf. Oj. gagwe:(ʤi)-); Arapaho ní:ʧí: "river" (< PA *si:pi:wi > *si:pi: > *si:ki: > *ni:ki: > etc.; cf. Oj. zi:bi), nóúbe: "fly (n.)" (< PA *sakime:wa "mosquito" > *sakime:j > *saime:n > *naime:n > etc.; cf. Ojibwe zagime:), and hené:ʧe:nóʔ "buffalo bulls" (< PA *aja:pe:waki "male ungulates" > > *aja:pe:jak > *ana:pe:nak > *ana:ke:nak > etc.; cf. Oj. aja:be:g); and Gros Ventre ʔóts "arrow" (< PA *aθwi > > *oθ > etc.; cf. Oj. anwi "bullet"), ʔé:je: "sparrow hawk" (< PA *ke:hke:kwa "hawk sp." > > *ke:ke:k > *e:e: > etc.; cf. Oj. ge:k:e:k), and bê:síbʲ "plum" (< PA *meʔʃi:mini "large fruit" > *meʔʃi:min > > *meʔʃi:m > etc.; cf. Oj. miʃ:i:min "apple").

The labial/velar interchange that happened in Arapahoan also has parallels in Austronesian, though in the other direction and with some complications: Sa'ban changed PMP to p, ʤ, or zero initially, p finally, and ʤ intervocalically (e.g., ajəŋ "spinning top" < PMP *ɡaiŋ; ʤɪntoʔon "star" < PMP *ɡituqən; peləp "skittish" < PMP *ɡiləɡ; bəlʔup "wasp" < PMP *bəluquɡ; and aʤiəp "rice sieve" < PMP *aɡaɡ). And it's happened other places too (and of course acoustically labials and velars are both fairly similar, and are generally described as sharing the feature [+grave]), so it's not totally outrageous, but it is still uncommon.
Last edited by Whimemsz on Mon Jul 02, 2012 3:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Bizarre Sound Changes

Post by Acid Badger »

linguoboy wrote:
Soap wrote:Does anyone know if front rounded vowels have ever arisen from front unrounded vowels?
There are a lot of rounding changes among front vowels in German dialects. Unrounding is more common, but rounding occurs as well, particularly in labial environments although it's not confined to them. For instance, although söben or söven for "seven" is common to all Low Saxon varieties, some have söss for "six" as well. (Change by analogy?) Similarly twölf "twelve" and ölben/ölven "eleven".
Some Modern High German front rounded vowels also come from Middle High German unrounded vowels, like in Würde < werde and Löffel < leffel. But again, I think, this is limited to labial environments.

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Re: Bizarre Sound Changes

Post by AnTeallach »

Scottish Gaelic has a habit of putting /f/ on the beginning of words which start with a vowel, because initial zero can be interpreted as grammatical lenition of /f/. You also get things like /h/ becoming /t/ for similar reasons.

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Re: Bizarre Sound Changes

Post by linguoboy »

AnTeallach wrote:Scottish Gaelic has a habit of putting /f/ on the beginning of words which start with a vowel, because initial zero can be interpreted as grammatical lenition of /f/. You also get things like /h/ becoming /t/ for similar reasons.
Both Irish and Gaelic also have examples of /f/ > /p/ by reverse lenition (e.g. Ir. plúr < OFr flour). A particularly screwy example of this is the word for "sister", which has the lenited form fiur in Old Irish due to labialisation of the [h] resulting from /s/. Modern Irish later replaced this with shiúr due to analogy with other /s/-initial words. But Gaelic started with the lenited form and got piuthar by back formation. So, in essence, you have have /sw/ > /pʲ/, which I'd say qualifies as pretty bizarre.

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Re: Bizarre Sound Changes

Post by Qwynegold »

Whimemsz wrote:
Qwynegold wrote:
Whimemsz wrote:I noted one (Ø → ŋ /#__V) in the correspondence library yesterday (the same change also occurred in some Samoyedic languages as well).
Maybe it was like Ø > ʔ > ŋ / #_V?
M...aybe? That's still pretty weird though.
It's rhinoglottophilia. :3 But yeah, that is weird.
Whimemsz wrote:(and of course acoustically labials and velars are both fairly similar, and are generally described as sharing the feature [+grave])
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Re: Bizarre Sound Changes

Post by Tropylium »

Soap wrote:Does anyone know if front rounded vowels have ever arisen from front unrounded vowels?
Mari. There seems to be a change *e :> *ʏ / _C*e. It also has *ë :> y in the same environment. (*ë is a non-front non-open unrounded vowel; it may have been anything from [ɨ] to [ʌ].)
Eg. *kere "skin" :> *kʏr ( :> /kər/ ~ /kyr/), *wete "water" :> *wʏt ( :> /wət/ ~ /wyt/), *sëne "sinew" :> /ʃyn/, *jëxe- "to drink" :> /jyæ-/ (cf. Finnish keri, vesi, suoni, juo-).

There are also dialects of Mansi that have *æː :> øæ, and dialects of Khanty that have *e(ː) :> ø(ː) when adjacent to a velar. Stuff like *wi :> *y also occurs in various Ugric branches: eg. *witte "5" :> Hungarian öt.

Other Uralic stuff that might be interesting for inspiration…
in all three of Finnic, Samic and Mordvinic (under various conditions): *ŋ :> ʋ~v (via *w)
Samic: *a :> uo / stressed
Samic: *t :> k / _#
North Samic: *θv :> ðf
Ugric + Samoyedic: *s :> *ɬ unconditionally. Mansi, Samoyedic, and about half the Khanty dialects then have *ɬ :> t.
Ob-Ugric: *rɣ, *lɣ, *sk :> ɣl, ɣr, ɣs / stem-finally, including word-finally
Hungarian: *jm :> *nʲm :> *nʲb (?) :> nʲv
Udmurt: *r :> dʐ / #_
Nganasan & Mator: *p :> x / _V (areal change; also occurs in Tungusic etc.)
Mator: *sʲ :> k (could have been either *sʲ :> [c], or *sʲ :> ʃ :> x :> k)
Selkup: *w, *j :> kʷ, kʲ / _V (most of the rest of Samoyedic has *w, *j :> b, dʲ)

Also from Siberia, I think the Yakut sibilant shift is somewhat interesting:
1) *s :> h
2) *j, z :> s
(Many other northern Turkic langs have *j :> tʃ.)
Qwynegold wrote:
Whimemsz wrote:Another change that's fairly unusual even if it's not totally bizarre, also occurs in Berawan languages: the onset consonant of open final syllables was geminated (*C → [+long] /$__V#), e.g. Long Terawan bittoh "stone" (PMP(?) *batu), binnəh "husband" (PMP(?) *bana), and sikkoh "elbow" (PMP(?) *siku); compare gitoh "a hundred" (PMP(?) *ʀatus), tana "earth" (PMP(?) *tanaq), or tukon "prop, support" (PMP(?) *tukud).
YES!!! I recently did this in a conlang without knowing of proper precedence.
This basically also occurs in Samic languages (this applies to all open 2nd syllables, regardless of if they're final). Except it applies to pre-existing geminates as well, so that eg. *tt in an open syllable becomes extra-long /ttt/.

(Estonian did the same, except only before a long final syllable.)

Moreover, the merger of lengthened *t and non-lengthened *tt was not entirely complete; a few dialects of Ume Sami have a four-way length distinction:
*tttt < *tt / _V.
*ttt < *tt / _VC.
*tt < *t / _V.
*t < *t / _VC.
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Re: Bizarre Sound Changes

Post by Ser »

Skomakar'n wrote:
Serafín wrote:Historically, Spanish also had intervocalic lj > ʎ > ʒ, e.g. Lat. *aliu [ˈalju] > *ˈaʎo > Old Spanish oio [ˈoʒo].
Why are you mentioning only this, when the change has gone even further into modern Spanish [x]?
The devoicing to [ʃ] is covered elsewhere, and I just don't find ʃ > modern x ~ χ ~ h that interesting. There's also a typo there: it should be aio [ˈaʒo]
Last edited by Ser on Mon May 21, 2012 9:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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