Re: *oy vey*

--- Christophe Grandsire
<christophe.grandsire@...> wrote:
> En réponse à Andreas Johansson <and_yo@...>:
>
> >
> > That _vee_ is suspiciously similar to English
> "fee", which's Swedish
> > cognate
> > _fä_ means "livestock". Has Dutch been vary evil
> against labiodental
> > fricatives during some period of it's history?
> >
>
> In one word: no, but all other Germanic languages
> were :)) . Many English words
> beginning with "f" have a cognate in "v" in Dutch.
> In German the cognate is
> also written with "v", but since in German "v"
> stands for /f/, it doesn't
> count :)) . But the German orthography inclines me
> to say that what Dutch did
> was basically keeping voiced labiodentals where
> other languages devoiced
> them :)) .
>
> Christophe.
>
> http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr
>
> Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else
> play the leading role.
Comrie, in "The World's Major Languages" p. 140, cites
that in Dutch and German, initial fricatives became
voiced where they didn't in other Germanic languages.
For instance, Dutch "zien" /zin/ and German "sehen"
/ze@n/ are cognates of English "see" /si/.

From this I theorize that in German words like "vier"
/fir/ (four) and "Vater" /fa:tV/ (father), original
/f/ became voiced to /v/, then became unvoiced again
when /w/ shifted to /v/ in words like "wenn" /vEn/ and
"Wasser" /vasV/, which would explain the orthographic
quirk. But initial /z/ remained voiced after this
change, thus "sehen" /ze@n/, "sagen" /za:g@n/, etc.

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