Re: `Ayin as [N], was New to the List, too

>From: Vasiliy Chernov <bc_@...>
>Funny, I used this type of sound change, [`] > [N], in one of my
>(unpublished) conlangs descending from Arabic. Got this idea from
>simply experimenting with this sound, with additional inspiration
>from an Arabic grammar insisting that `ayn should *not* get
>nasalized...
Interesting!  The Quaelitz Elves living in Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan,
western China write in Arabic, and the 3ayn character reflexed to /N/
(Proto-Elvish has /N/, and Turkic languages like Kazakh and Uzbek also have
the phoneme and these are influential languages).  This is even true for
Arabic words, and even occurs word-initially.  A simple reverse 3-shaped
Arabic 'ayin is used, but sometimes three dots are placed above in the shape
of an ^ (as in thaa', sheen and extended Arabic zhaa' and vaa').  (I think
Malay did that before it converted to Latin script.)

The Elves of the former Soviet republics of Central Asia use Cyrillic, but
there's a move toward Latin among some.  It's a different orthographic
system than Pan-Turkic though.

>Does anybody know if any similar development is known from modern
>Arabic (Aramaic, Ethiosemitic) dialects?
Well I can't think of any.  But on a possibly related note, the Ogham script
has two consonants that are commonly transliterated as Q and NG.  These two
Proto-Celtic phonemes correspond to Proto-Indo-European *kw (the former) and
*gw/*ghw (the latter).  Proto-Celtic definitely had a *kw and it is
represented by Q.  Apparently Proto-Celtic converted a labiovelar, the 'most
backed' of the consonants, to a nasal, since voiced labiovelars (and really
voiced uvulars) are quite unstable.

Also, Nostratists consider Semitic g' (Arabic ghayn) and Kartvelian gh, both
being voiced uvular or velar fricatives, as derivatives from Proto-Nost. /G/
-- a voiced uvular *stop*.  It's hard NOT to fricativize the sound, at least
for me.

I outta check up on Arabic dialects; except I'm just not well-informed on
these matters...

DaW.
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