Fricativ loss

[Bristel]

Can't /xʷ/ → /ɸʷ/ → /ɸ/ → /h/ → /∅/ ?

This is how it was described to me, I think, but I can't find if it is attested anywhere.

[Travis B.]

Can't /xʷ/ → /ɸʷ/ → /ɸ/ → /h/ → /∅/ ?

This is how it was described to me, I think, but I can't find if it is attested anywhere.

Proto-Germanic /xʷ/ > /xw/~/hw/ > (/ʍ/? >) present-day /f/ is attested in some Scots dialects, and that is roughly the first half of the shifting you detail above.

[Tropylium⁺]

Example for ɬ ∅ found: Proto-Kartvelian *ɬ Zan ∅ (and *tɬʼ h, interestingly enuff). Thanks, WP user Benfaremo!

[finlay]

Urgh, urgh, urgh, urgh, urgh, it's fricative.

*puke*

(And "enough". By the way, you do realise that I'm going to start following you around correcting your spelling now that you've pointed this out. Seriously, it's nauseating when you know someone's doing it deliberately)

[Tropylium⁺]

I could (cud?) fix the thre(a)d title (titel?) if y(o)u can promis(e) to pronounce it /frɪkətaɪv/ henceforth.

By the way, you do realize riling up grammar nazies (natzies?) counts as a type of fun?

[finlay]

Nazis, and spelling ≠ grammar.

Besides, it's a regular rule. English spelling doesn't like final v's, so you end up with a lot of -ives, but they're all /ɪv/. And it's a regular rule to turn it to /aiv/ when you add another suffix, like -al. Fricatival, for instance.

[Jetboy]

Oh, wait that was deliberate? I was actually just thinking that it's amazing that error's gone uncorrected for so long.

[finlay]

This is what we've told him: as an L2, you can't make mistakes like that. As an L1, you have a bit more leeway, but you look like a dick if you're doing something like that to make a point. As an L2 trying to make a point, you look like a double-dick.

[roninbodhisattva]

By the way, you do realize riling up grammar nazies (natzies?) counts as a type of fun?

This is actually a hobby of mine. Grammar nazis in general though.

They just love when I say 'froked out'.

[Nortaneous]

They just love when I say 'froked out'.

...er, what's that even supposed to mean?

[roninbodhisattva]

They just love when I say 'froked out'.

...er, what's that even supposed to mean?

Past tense of 'freak out'. I did it by accident one time, I assume by analogy with something like speak > spoke reinforced with the out right next door. It was just a speech error, but I found it funny so I use comedically now sometimes.

[Nortaneous]

it'd have to be "froke out" then, wouldn't it?

[hwhatting]

In fact, it's because Spanish was under continuous influence from liturgical Latin that these emerged. I mean, is "Hell" a more basic concept pertaining to religion than "God"? And yet in Dios we see retention of final /s/--a change so early it's posited for the Vulgar Latin stage!

What loss of final /s/? As you surely know, Spanish normally retains final /s/ - see the nominal plural (from the Latin Acc.) and the 2nd Sg. of verbs. The reason that Spanish nouns don't end in /s/ in the sigular is that they continue the Latin accusative. I don't know whether there is any evidence of whether Spanish ever went through a stage with a two-case system (Nom. + Acc.) like Old French and Old Provençal, but in any case it's reasonable to assume that for a word used so often in subject position and as an exclamation, the old nominative would be retained as singular form when the case system broke down, without recurring to influence of liturgical Latin (which may have helped, though). There are a few cases of nominative forms surviving as singulars in other Romance languages, e.g. French fils.

[roninbodhisattva]

it'd have to be "froke out" then, wouldn't it?

Yeah, well, I overgeneralized the past tense suffix.

It's a speech error....

[Xonen]

This is what we've told him: as an L2, you can't make mistakes like that. As an L1, you have a bit more leeway, but you look like a dick if you're doing something like that to make a point. As an L2 trying to make a point, you look like a double-dick.

Who's "we"?

Personally, I don't get it. I mean, an unusual spelling might look slightly confusing the first time you see it - but even then, people generally don't have a problem with it if they assume it to be just an honest mistake (or, as sometimes is the case in English, a British-American thing). And getting used to systematic differences really isn't that hard. But Heavens help if it turns out someone's using idiosyncratic spellings on purpose. Get your torches and pitchforks, we have a Heretic among us!

Of course, I'll agree that respelling -ive as -iv is completely unnecessary, since the present spelling isn't really in any way ambiguous. Similarly, enough is such a common word that it having an unusual spelling really isn't much of a problem - although then again, this is one of the few words whose alternative spellings I can actually imagine gaining some ground in the future. FWIW, the spelling enuff already produces more than eight million hits on Google.

[Ser]

It seems to be particularly common in the expression <'Nuff said>.

[Count Iblis]

In some (all?) West Germanic languages final z > 0. I'm not sure if that's a general rule or limited to nominative singular.

Proto-Indo-European apparently also had VRs# > V:R (sometimes called Szemereny Lengthening). Loss of syllable final s with compensatory lengthening seems to be pretty common.

[Dewrad]

Personally, I don't get it. I mean, an unusual spelling might look slightly confusing the first time you see it - but even then, people generally don't have a problem with it if they assume it to be just an honest mistake (or, as sometimes is the case in English, a British-American thing). And getting used to systematic differences really isn't that hard. But Heavens help if it turns out someone's using idiosyncratic spellings on purpose. Get your torches and pitchforks, we have a Heretic among us!

I suspect that at least some of the objection is based on pragmatic grounds. The relative disconnection between orthography and actual pronunciation in English means that native speakers feel relatively little urge to spell things "like they sound". Instead, native speakers modify the orthography for stylistic effect: "'nuff said" has a different connotation to "enough said". When we see a modification of spelling, we expect there to be a reason for it, that by spelling something different the author intends a certain effect. If there's no such stylistic effect intended, just an attempt to be "unique" or "different" (Io's "English", for example), then it's as jarring as someone deliberately flouting conversational conventions.

It's not just L2 speakers who get given a hard time for this: in fact, non-natives have it easier as people assume that they're just making a mistake rather than being a dick. Eddy's insistence on using <æ>, for example, has drawn him an absurd amount of flak over the years.

[finlay]

But eddy deserves everything that comes at him.

[johanpeturdam]

Well... [G] and [D] were both present in Old Norse, yet Faroese has lost both.

Word-finally they have totally disappeared, so words like blað and sag rhyme.

Inside words, they have depending on the surrounding vowels either disappeared or become glides /j/, /v/ or /w/. So, I think it goes: g -> G -> Ø and d -> D -> Ø. But I'm not certain at all.