Re: A funny linguistic subway experience + some questions about nouns of days and months

On Mon, 27 Nov 2000, Christophe Grandsire wrote:

> First, and
> that's the least strange of his dialect's features, all final /s/'s were
> deleted. Second, he didn't have the /T/ sound but used /s/ instead (at least I'm
> sure he wasn't from Castilla. There they tend to over-use /T/ where /s/ should
> be used). Third, s between two vowels was voiced /z/ (so he was pronouncing
> "nosotros": we as /nozotro/).
These are all characteristic of Southern Peninsular Spanish.

> But the strangest feature of it all was that
> instead of using "hacer" /aTEr/ for "to do", he was consistently using /fazEr/,
> which made his Spanish dialect sound strangely Portuguese.
> So now I'm wondering where he came from in Spain. From the features I described
> in his speech, I would say, somewhere in the south of Spain, near the Portuguese
> border. But I may be completely wrong. It could be anywhere... Do you have any
> idea? I'm thinking of the Galician dialect, but I have no idea what it looks
> like...
Galician is spoken north of Portugal, and it is really a dialect of
Portuguese.

> Then comes the French form samedi /sam'di/. It seems
> completely off this system. Does it derive from, say, sábbata dies, or does it
> have another origin?
I have no clue, but I'm reminded of German "Samstag".

--
John Cowan                                   cowan@ccil.org
One art/there is/no less/no more/All things/to do/with sparks/galore
        --Douglas Hofstadter