Re: Sound changes

On Tue, Aug 27, 2002 at 10:17:05AM -0400, Douglas Koller, Latin & French wrote:
[snip]
> Yes. Other sobriquets include "dai4ggi2" (Tai(wanese) language),
> "bbin4nan4ue7" (Southern Min speech), and "ho7lo2ue7" (I imagine the
> characters are along the lines of what the Japanese call "ateji", but
> the standard usage is (heron-old-speech). HS, while I conclude the
> first one is out, does your dialect allow the last two terms?
I'm not sure :-) "bbin4nan4ue7" is used mainly by the older generation and
those from mainland China. I might've heard "ho7lo2ue7" before, but it
doesn't really ring a bell. Strangely, "dai4ggi2" is more recognizable to
me than the other two.

Besides, the Hokkien spoken where I come from has changed quite a lot. As
I've already mentioned, there have been tone shifts (high falling became
high rising), and many sound changes as well. For example, final [N=] in
the lower tones appear to have shifted into [u~i~]. The prime example is
[N=] "yellow" --> [u~j~i~]. Other examples are [mN=] "door" --> [mui],
[pN=] "rice" --> [p~u~i~], [sN=] "sour" --> [s~u~i~].

The [N=] in higher tones seem to be preserved, though: [sN=] (high
falling) "to play" or "to waste", is still [sN=] but is now high rising
because of the tone shift. Also there is a slight semantic shift: [sN=] is
now exclusively "to waste". "To play" is now [tsit1 to:] -- I'm not sure
where this one came from. An alternative word for "play" is [i:2], which I
suspect comes from [li2]?

Then you have [li2] "you" which has become [lu] (which I find quite
fascinating; how does a tense front vowel become a back vowel so
dramatically?) And [gua], "I", is slowly being replaced by [wua].

Finally, "ue7" [uE] has become [ua], and "abe7" (not yet) has become
"abue7" [abwE:]. And [b@:], "not", has become more rounded: [bo:].


T

--
Let X be the set of all the things not described by this sentence...

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