Re: Proto-Semitic (was Re: markjjones@HOTMAIL.COM)

On Sat, 12 Mar 2005 10:54:11 +0100, Carsten Becker
<naranoieati@...> wrote:

>From what I remember of a paper me and a friend had to do
>about Portugal in 6th grade, the numbers from 1 to 10 are
>similar to the following (Janko Gorenc: In *Portugese*,
>which is NOT a conlang):
>
>/um/, /dOI)S/, /t4ES/, ?, ?, /sEI)S/, ?, ?, ?, ?
>
>There seems to be a shift from /s/ to /S/ at least at the
>end of words. That'd explain why Portugese essentially
>sounds like Russian spoken by a Spanish.
:P

Seems like Portuguese is undergoing further lenition of /s/ in some
environments.  In the future, some "progressive" dialects may
have /x/, /h/, or the like where /S/ is heard today.  Supposedly, such
sound-changes occurred in the histories of the Slavic and IndoIranian
languages.

- Rob