zompist bboard

Zomp, I was curious about the real-world inspiration (if applicable) or the motivation for some of the stranger sound changes in Almean languages. In particular, I was wondering about the cases in Cuezi and Cadhinor where certain consonants voice or devoice in apparent response to a combination of the quality and the length of the following vowel. Maybe I’m just ignorant, but I’ve never heard of this sort of change outside of these cases. I was also interested in the ct > zh(t) change in Verdurian, especially the fact that the result is voiced. I kind of like that there are some more oddball changes in the history of Almean languages; I just feel like my understanding of them is missing something.

Well, two general caveats:

* Cuêzi/Caďinor were reworkings and often had to be stretched to more or less fit existing material.
* Real life sound changes can be frigging weird. It's fine to stick to the more common changes, but there are some really weird ones out there. A neat one from the numbers page: in the New Hebrides family, *vati '4' > yeð in one language, θarr in another.

For ct > ʒ... well, look at Latin: ct > Italian tt (boring), Spanish ts, Portuguese it or ut (noite, doute). Argentine Spanish has j > ʒ — lleno > [ʒeno]. So a progression ct > it > jt > ʒt seems possible.

As for the fortitions... er, well, they do happen, even if lenition is far more common.

Weren't there a lot of weird fortitions between Classical Latin and modern Romance? As well some fortition in general in the history of any given extant Indo-European language.