Re: Sound changes

Hello,

> > 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.
>
> You must be true, because [T] and [f] are not so far too
> (acoustically). Russian has <arifmetika> for arithmetics.
Quite true. Though I suspect that the fact is that we didn't want _two_
alien sounds. By the time mass borrowing from Greek started, Eastern
Slavic (aka Old Russian) had for the unvoiced spirants only [x], [S] and
[s]. Then we introduced [f] from Greek (the only native word with [f] I
am aware of is _filin_ 'screech-owl'), and apparently the [T], being so
close acoustically, fell together with that, and not with [t] (though
now widely used for transliteration purposes) or [s]. Bulgarian, on the
other hand, has [t], as in _mitologiya_ 'mythology', cf. Rus.
_mifologiya_.

Pavel
--
Pavel Iosad               pavel_iosad@mail.ru

Is mall a mharcaicheas am fear a bheachdaicheas
                 --Scottish proverb