Re: Sound changes

Julien wrote:
>
>At 15:33 20/08/2002 +0100, bn wrote:
>
>>well, you have the gaelic spelling |dh| pronounced
>>/G/, which is hardly far off . . . ! ( i don't know if
>>|th| was ever /x/ )
>
>
>I don't know gaelic, but here it's not impossible to suppose that it is
>just the friction that was moved, from the teeth to the velum, I mean
>almost directly : pronounce a dh, then open it so that it becomes an
>approximant an pronounce a gh : you'll see that this is easy to  go from
>one to another, given the position of the root of the tongue. But of course
>this may have happened differently.
English's had an change [x]>[f] in words like "tough". _Acoustically_ these
aren't very far appart, so the change prolly began as a mishearing. The
Gaelic thingie may have a similar explanation.

                                         Andreas


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