Re: the lonely affricate

In lorya Fabian:
> Russian has a 'ch' but no 'j', at least in the script. They *might* use
> a written consonant cluster to round this out, I'm not too sure. But
> that does suggest that when the script was invented, such a sound did
> not exist. So Old Russian (1400 ad?) didnt have the sound.
So Russian has a 'ch' but no 'j', as does Spanish -- it seems that an unvoi=
ced
lonely affricate is more popular than a voiced one.  Kristian wrote me abou=
t
a language from Uruguay called Guarani which has a 'j' but no 'ch'.  Here
is the table of consonants as he sent it to me:

     p     t           k     ?
     mb    nd          g
                 dZ
           r
                 S           h
     v
     w     l     j
     m     n     J     N
    =20
A 'j', no 'ch', but the language seems to avoid voiced/unvoice pairs in
general.  It seems to have chosen the voiced option.  Interesting, though,
that there is a [S] to go with it.  The other option would be a [tS] with
a [Z], which looks like it would work out just as well -- though it might
conflict with the [v].

Josh

        _/_/      _/_/  _/_/_/_/   Joshua Shinavier            =20
         _/        _/  _/         Loorenstrasse 74, Zimmer B321=20
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 _/    _/  _/    _/        _/   Switzerland                 =20
_/_/_/_/  _/_/_/_/  _/_/_/_/   jshinavi@g26.ethz.ch

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