Re: OT: NATLANG: Romanian orthography question

On Monday, November 24, 2003 2:53 PM Mark J. Reed wrote:


> On Mon, Nov 24, 2003 at 10:12:48AM +0200, Isaac Penzev wrote:
> > Yes, it is an affricate. And it may be palatalised too: _unit,i-vã_
> > [u"n_jits)_jv@] 'unite!'
>
> What happened to the <i>?  Is it just there to indicate the palatalization?
Yes, you are right. Final _i_ indicates palatalization, if it is not stressed or
doesn't go after a vowel. E.g. _luni_ [lun_j] 'Monday', _cinci_ [tS)_jintS)_j]
'five', but _a vorbi_ [avor"b_ji] 'to speak', _copii_ [ko"p_jij] 'children'.

> > Re _ã_ (a-breve) - some ppl say it is not a mere [@], but rather [V] or even
> > [7].
>
> Well, since I've seen all three of those given as the pronunciation of the
> English short <u> in e.g. "cut", I'll just pronounce a-breve as if it were
> a short <u> and call it correct. ;-)
100%.

> >I often heard it as [7]. But it is clearly contrasted to _â_ and _î_ which
> > is [i\] (barred i in CXS).
>
> Uhm, "barred i in CXS"??  Oh, oh, you mean [i\] is the CXS equivalent of the
> IPA barred i.  Got it. :)
Yeah, now I see the phrase was clumsy. But I was in hurry, I'm sorry.

> So I assume there is an etymological distinction between <â> and <î>, and that
> at one time they represented two distinct sounds?
Surely the distinction is etymogically motivated, but I don't know if there ever
were distinct sounds in those places. I took only an introductory course :) We
may never know it, since for long time Romanian used Cyrillics where they didn't
distinguish _â_ and _î_!

See http://www.geocities.com/romanianlessons/
and http://www.megspace.com/education/romanian/
That's all I could find quickly.

Regards,
-- Yitzik

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