Re: Azurian phonology

Alex Fink skrev:
> On Sat, 18 Oct 2008 19:37:32 +0200, Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...> wrote:
>
>> Both Icelandic and Faroese have an aspiration
>> contrast rather than a voicing contrast, as does
>> Danish.  It is disputable whether there was a
>> shift from a true voiced--voiceless contrast
>> since even in Swedish and Norwegian
>> accents rather have a fortis vs. lenis stop
>> opposition [...]
>> Of course most accents of English have a
>> similar fortis--lenis system.  OTOH Scots
>> Gaelic has a system entirely analogous to
>> that of Icelandic and Faroese.
>
> Good to know, thanks.  So perhaps my "has shifted to" was a rash word choice.
>
> In any case, this only increases the incongruity of the Azurian spelling to
> me.  Among all these langs you've named not one does anything different to
> <p t c/k> for fortis and <b d g> for lenis...
Agreed. I shouldn't think that the Danish-inspired
Spelling used by the folklorist Svabo before the
present Icelanicizing orthography was invented by
Hammershaimb even used hC for preaspirated stops.
It certainly used <p t c/k> and <b d g> for
aspirated--unaspirated, since even Danish does
that! Maybe Lars II has a con-historical explanation
why Azurian is spelled amost in an IPA transcription?
And why it has such a Romance-soundunc name?
Surely there is a different native name?

BTW it seems unrealistic that hey changed the
spelling of /tS/ *from* <c> *into* <tj>;
surely it should be the other way around:
no West European before the 20th century
would have dreamed of using c for a palatal-
ized sound except before front vowels!
And if /tS/ be <c> then surely /S/ be <ç>! ;-)

/BP -- sometime Sanskritist

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