Re: THEORY: questions

Tristan wrote:
> Nik Taylor wrote:
>
>> Rachel Klippenstein wrote:
>>
>>> Is there any sound that [h] is likely to change into?
>>
>>
>>
>> Well, there are a number of /h/ -> /k/ changes in borrowings from
>> languages with /h/ to languages without, for example, Chinese _Han_ to
>> Japanese _Kan_ (altho, Japanese later developed an /h/ of its own, but
>> at the time of borrowing, there was no /h/), thus Mandarin Hanzi (Han
>> Latters) -> Japanese Kanji.  /?/ seems reasonable, too.
>
>
> Japanese (and I think Spanish?) has done /h/ > /f/ (hence ha hi fu he
> ho). This seems to be an especially logical change around rounded vowels
> (so presumably it happened before Japanese /u/ unrounded).
AIUI, Japanese [p\] was until recently an allophone of /h/ (hence its
inclusion in the h-column kana), and has become differentiated due to
lexical borrowings (writing any /p\/-syllable other than /p\u/ is a
little awkward...you have to write katakana <fu> followed by a small
vowel katakana).