Re: A problem solved?!?

At 3:07 pm -0500 17/2/99, Brian Betty wrote:
.......
>
>Oy, I'll have to argue against this one. Medieval Spanish X and J were /S/
>and /Z/, like in modern Portuguese. So Ojala' would be more likely "in
>sha'llaah" with weird initial variations (shift of IN to O) or something
>under the abnormal wear and tear of being an expression borrowed from
>Arabic. I could see the Arabic in+S >oZ (the nasal voices the S) more
>easily than /XWL spontaneously becoming Z-L.
>
>Or am I smoking crack? Opinions, people?
>
Not at all - medieval {x} and {j} were /S/ and /Z/.  The country to the
south of the USA was originally /meSiko/.  The changes /Z/ --> /S/ and then
/S/ --> /x/ occurred after the medieval period.

If anyone's ben smoking crack, I'd guess it'd be someone looking for /x/ in
the original Arabic expression  :)

The loss of a nasal before an affricate is pretty widespread in many
languages (Old English and colloquial Greek both come to mind immediately).
Also one must recall that to the native Spanish "insha'llah" would not
resolve into meaningful morphemes but be treated as a single morpheme and
an unstressed initial vowel might easily be modified by analogy with some
native expressions.

Ray.