Re: [T] -> [f] (was: Chinese Dialect Question)

On Sat, 4 Oct 2003, Mark J. Reed wrote:

> On Sat, Oct 04, 2003 at 07:22:24AM +0100, Ray Brown wrote:
> > Quite why Mark can't imagine the falling together of /f/ and /T/ to just
> > [f] (and /v/ and /D/ to /v/), I don't know.
>
> I can *imagine* it easily enough - I just wasn't aware of it. :)
> And I've been conditioned through my elite-speaker prescriptivist
> education to regard it as an error committed by the ignorant. :)
I should point out that using it doesn't sound particularly ejekaited
here, either. It's just that won't stop teachers and such from doing it,
and given the relative classlessness of Australia, where a highschool
dropout can go from being a trucky to one of the richest people in the
country (Lindsay (sp?) Fox, owner of Linfox), that kind of person might
still use it...

> > The change also occurred in pre-Latin
>
> Oh, sure, but that's a historical change.  Seeing it happening
> "in real time" in one's own language is different.
One thing that's funny is the way I can't understand changes that haven't
really happened 'in real time' in my own language. For instance, the way
[tj] > [tS] seems like a perfectly natural course of affairs, and it
amazes me how a language might *not* do that; on the other hand, [kj] >
[tS] (even via [c]) I simply cannot get.

--
Tristan                  <kesuari@...>

Yesterday I was a dog. Today I'm a dog. Tomorrow I'll probably still
be a dog. Sigh! There's so little hope for advancement.
                -- Snoopy