Re: USAGE: Yet another few questions about Welsh.

On Thursday, July 8, 2004, at 05:09 , Mark J. Reed wrote:

> MJR> 4. geminate voiceless stops became simple voiceless stops.
>
> RB> There is, however, a difference here. Geminate voiceless
> plosives/stops
> RB> became voiceless fricatives, e.g. catto- (cat) --> Welsh: cath,
> Cornish:
> RB> kath, Breton: kazh /kaz/ or /kah/ (depending on dialect <-- */kaT/);
> RB> Britto:nica (British [language])--> Welsh: Brythoneg, Cornish:
> Brithonek,
> RB> Breton: Brezhoneg.
>
> I assume from the orthography that an analogous process happened in
> other consonant groups as well -
No, no - orthography is not a good guide in most langs IME.

> for instance, <ll>=/K/ was presumably
> at one time /l:/,
No - in fact |lh| was an alternative spelling earlier in Welsh. There were
two contending methods of showing "modified use of consonant" (like the
E-o circumflex  :)
- one was to double the letter, e.g. dd, ff, ll etc
- the other was to use 'h', e.g. ch, dh, lh, gh /N/ etc.

(Occasionally, some writers introduced extra letters like, e.g. Greek
delta for /D/).

In the end the present mixed system was standardized.

In fact /K/ seems to have developed from earlier /sl/ and was the spirant
mutation of /l/. Later /l/ became generalized as the soft mutation, and /K/
  was used for both the spirant and the unmutated (base) form.

> and something analogous to the VL geminate step happened
> with the fricatives, hence <ff>=/f:/=>/f/ (while  <f>=/f/=>/v/).  Right?
No - pure spelling convention.  Welsh adopted the Old English |f| with its
pronunciation [v] (still preserved to this day in 'of') and |ff| with the
pronunciation [f] (still preserved to this day in 'off').  But this has
not always been so. In medieval Welsh some writers did follow Norman &
continental practice and use |v| and |f| as /v/ and /f/.  But the more
traditional |f| and |ff| had prevailed.

In fact in Proto-Welsh neither sound occurred. Except in some modern
borrowings, /v/ arouse from soft mutation of /b/ or /m/. Early VL /f/
became /hw/ in Old British and is /Xw/ in modern Welsh, e.g. Chwefror <--
Februariu-. But /f/ did develop from earlier /p/ in certain environments.
Once this had happened, Welsh started borrowing words in late Latin and
from Anglo-Norman with initial /f/, e.g. ffaith (fact), ffenestr (window),
fferm (farm) etc. This initial /f/ is never subject to mutation.


>> Cf. Old French:
>
> French  overdid it, I think.  Way too many things went to zero. :)
A practice the French found difficult to drop - most of the final
consonants still pronounced in Old French have since become zero, tho they
still write them   ;)

Ray
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