Re: Blah blah blah natlangs

Hi all :) (finally back from voyaging through China, and other mischiefs),

On Tue, 17 Jul 2001 00:37:50 -0500, Justin Mansfield <jdm314@...> wrote:

>    Note also the spurious [k]s in Medieval Latin, where words like
><nihl> and <mihi> ended up as <nichil> and <michei>. Since intervocalic
><h> may well have represented [?] in Classical times, this could be a
>case of /?/ > [k[... but in fact it's just as likely this was an attempt
>at pronouncing [h]. This case is also special because it involved
>non-native speakers trying to pronounce a dead language.
I have a countertheory: the orthographic forms <nichil> and <michei>
represent Greek influence; I gather Greeks have long tended to equate [h]
with their native /x/, whose Greek script character ("chi") is rendered by
Latin <ch>. This would also be supported by the <ei> in <michei> -
orthographic <ei> has long represented /i/ in Greek script (since Koine, I
think; Attic Greek <ei> was /e:/, supposedly). So <nichil> and <michei>
could be an error originating among native Greek users of Latin - IMHO :)

Regards,
Óskar

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