Re: /S/ in old and middle High German; was: Vikings

On Wed, 24 Nov 2004 21:52:10 +0100, Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...> wrote:

>Sally Caves wrote:
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "John Cowan" <cowan@...>
>>
>>> In some cases, the cognates of these words
>>> already existed in English, as in the Norse borrowing "skirt" next to
>>> the native word "shirt".  (Words beginning "sk" are almost always
>>> borrowings, because a sound-change during the Old English period
>>> changed initial "sk" to "sh".)
>>
>>
>> Do you mean to say, rather, that in earlier OE the "sc" sound was
>> formerly /sk/?   I would think this was a continental change, and it
>> would take an expert in Old Saxon to confirm it.  Nevertheless, this is
>> interesting to me, and a subject on which I need informing, so I'm glad
>> you raised the topic.
>> I'm interested in the |sc| and |sch| spellings in Old and Middle High
>> German.  How confident are we that in the twelfth century |sch| was the
>> /S/ sound, and in what regions?
>
>Not very at all.  As far as I remember OHG had [sk] and MHG had [sx]
>just as modern Dutch.
I remember differently: |sch| was already used in OHG, and im MHG it was
pronounced [S]...

>MHG had two /s/ sounds, one laminal /s_m/
>corresponding in most cases to modern _ß/ss_ and one apical /s_a/
>corresponding mostly to modern _s_ /z/.  The apical phoneme had an
>[S]-like sound -- hence the Hungarian values of _s_ and _sz_!
>Now the apical vs. laminal distinction was lost or replaced by a
>voiced/voiceless distinction in most positions,
In order to avoid misunderstandings: The modern German distinction between
/z/ and /s/ isn't related to the OHG/MHG distinctin between /s/ (|z|) and
the [S]-like /s_a/ (|s|). What further complicates the matter is the former
existence of a distinction of length.

gry@s:
j. 'mach' wust

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