Re: Request for help, Spanish

Christophe Grandsire wrote:

> > What are the pronunciations of {ll} and {y} in different dialects?
> > Particularly in Mexican dialects.
>
>         I know that {ll} is pronounced [l_j], [j] or [S] and {y} is pronounced
> [j] or [i]. I don't know about other pronunciations.
>From my almost totally ignorant position about Spanish, I've noticed
there's also a dialectal form [dZ] for <ll>.  Whenever I watch Spanish
television (hey, _Sabado Gigante_ is funniest not knowing the words!),
I've noticed some of the commercials would have "Llame ahora" as
['dZame a?'ora].

>         I like [sju'a], but it depends on how far in future you want to put
> this language. [sju'a] is more likely to be recent than old. For an
> older stage of the language, I'm thinking of something like:
> [sju'a]->[Su'a]->[Sua]->[Swa]. The change [sj]->[S] is very likely to
> happen IMHO, as it generally happens also synchronically (try to
> pronounce very fast a word with [sj] -I can't come up with one at the
> moment-). In fact, I even think that it could happen at the same time or
> even before the loss of intervocalic stops, so [Su'a] would be more
> likely than [sju'a], even at an early stage of the language.
Right, BUT:  palatalization is, I think, dependent in large part on the
amount of aspiration giving to the consonant involved.  For example,
in Phaleran, dialects which highly aspirated _tyei_ (2nd person singular/
plural exclusive pronoun) and related forms shifted the initial consonants
to [tS], while those which kept the old Phaleran three way contrast
of /d/ : /t/ : /th/ preserved the [ty] cluster.

So, if your /s/ is highly aspirated, then that would be a reason to
think it would shift to [S] before [i] or [e].  Otherwise, you might
want to keep it as is.

(Okay, okay:  that argument's kinda absurd, since it's arguing from a
conlang. Details, details...)

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Tom Wier <artabanos@...>
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Website: <http://www.angelfire.com/tx/eclectorium/>
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Denn wo Begriffe fehlen,
Da stellt ein Wort zur rechten Zeit sich ein.
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