Re: Spanish and Italian _r_ and _rr_ -- for my Romlang #3

Re-reading my earlier post, I realized I mistakenly wrote:  "In Paulista
dialect, /4/ is [r]."  It should be "/4/ is [4]."

Also:  I forgot to mention that Carioca Portuguese pronounces /4/ as [h] in
syllable-final position prior to another consonant, as in "parto" ["pah.tu],
while Paulista Portuguese pronounces it [4] in this position.

In Spanish, /4/ in the above position is pronounced [4], although I've heard
it pronounced [r] in emphatic or hyper-enunciated speech in this position by
a few speakers.

The rules for elision of word-final _r_ in Catalan are complex, I believe,
and there are exceptions.  The general rule of thumb is that word-final _r_
is pronounced in monosyllabic words (but there are exceptions), and elided
in multisyllabic words (again with exceptions, I believe).

And while we're collecting Spanish compound words, don't forget my favorite:
 tocadiscos 'record-player', literally "(it) plays discs."

By the way, both Portuguese and Italian contain these kinds of compounds as
well, although in Portuguese you spell them with a hyphen between the verbal
morpheme and the noun, e.g., pára-raios ‘lightening rod’, literally ‘(it)
stops lightening-bolts’. (Note how, because of the hyphen, it isn't
necessary to double the _r_ to preserve its /r/ phonemic status as you would
in Spanish.  (Earlier Spanish example of guadarropas is NOT infinitive +
noun, but rather 3rd person present + noun 'guarda' (it keeps/holds) +
'ropas', the doubled _rr_ being used solely to indicate the phoneme /r/
rather than /4/.)

My favorite of these compounds in Italian is "rompiscatole" meaning a
'pain-in-the-ass', literally "(he/she) breaks boxes."

--John Quijada