Re: Latin <h>

Christophe Grandsire wrote:
> Actually, things are murkier than just "<h> became silent and that's it"
> :)) .  Indeed, <h> was already silent in Vulgar Latin even before the
> Empire. So the original Latin <h> was lost already before split. But sounds
> change, and /h/ reappeared in some Romance languages, to disappear again.
> In Spanish, it came from initial /f/ which turned into /h/ (except in front
> of /w/, which explains  Spanish <fuego> vs. <hablar> from Latin FOCUS and
> FABULARE, IIRC)
And before /r/, hence Francia rather than *(H)rancia.

And, for that matter, some dialects of Spanish use /h/ for {j}, so in
those dialects, /h/ has reappeared *twice*!  :-)  Seems as if they just
can't make up their minds about whether or not to have /h/ ;-)

ObConlang, Old Uatakassi had a phonemic distinction between /l/ and /r/,
which merged to /l/ in Classical Uatakassi.  However, many descedants
have, in turn, split /l/ into two phonemes /l/ and /r/.

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