Re: NATLANG: Welsh <mh, nh, ngh> and French vowels

On Wednesday, March 24, 2004, at 02:05 AM, Trebor Jung wrote:
[WELSH]
> How do you pronounce Welsh <mh, nh, ngh>? Are they /m_0, n_0, N_0/, /m_h,
> n_h, N_h/, or something entirely different?
[mh], [nh] & [Nh]. Unlike other digraphs such as |ch|, |dd|, |ff|, |ng|,
|th| etc, they are not reckoned as separate letters in Welsh but as _two_
letters each, namely: |m| + |h|, |n| + |h| and |ng| + |h|.

The letter |ng| BTW is called 'eng' and placed between 'g' and 'h' in the
alphabet.

The combinations are normally triggered by a preceding word, e.g. yn
(in) + Casnewydd (Newport) --> 'yng Nghasnewydd [@Nhas'nEw1D]; fy (my) +
tad (father) --> fy nhad [v@n'ha:d].

In colloquial speech 'fy' is often silent, leaving only the nasal mutation;
  then pronunciations like [n_h], [m_h] and [N_h] are probably more
accurate; but the aspiration is quite marked. Also in spoken Welsh "they"
is |nhw| [nhu:] or [n_hu:] (literary Welsh: hwynt [hujnt])

Forget any books/ webpages that tell you they are [m_0], [n_0] and [N_0].
Having lived in Wales for 22 years, I can assure you that the aspiration
is strong; any devoicing is concomitant upon he aspiration.

[FRENCH]
> And where do all of French's
> weird (in relation to other Romance languages) vowels (/y, 2, 9, O/, the
> nasal vowels etc.) come from? They don't exist in other Romance languages
> (except Portuguese, and that's only the nasal vowels).
Nasal vowels of the Portuguese type probably existed in VL. If they are
not phonemic, then they'll be unstable and will appear in some dialects
and not others. One of the distinguishing marks of Brit English versus
American English is that our American cousins have a marked tendency to
nasalize vowels adjacent to /m/ and /n/ - we Brits don't. The fondness of
northern French for nasalized vowels is sometimes attributed to 'Celtic
substrate influence' - but I'm skeptical about that. It was, I think, a
regional feature of VL.

> Wait a minute, aren't
> /2, 9, y/ reduced diphthongs,
Yes and no. Where /2/ and /9/ occur now are the result of reduced
diphthongs but in earlier French they were part of diphthongs and
triphthongs; they are not the result of running two other sounds together.
  They did form the nucleus of earlier diphthongs; the semivocalic part has
been dropped.

But /y/ was, in most words, was never a diphthong; it developed from VL /u/
  (= CL /u:/) by fronting. This again has been attributed to Gallic
influence; maybe, as Brittonic /u/ became /u\/ (i.e. high mid rounded) -
but the shift of /u/ --> /y/ is not exactly uncommon, e.g. it happened in
the Ionian dialects of ancient Greek and, through the influence of Athens,
  eventually become the standard pronunciation of the Greek Koine.

To return to /2/ and /9/. They occurred in Old French where VL has
stressed /o/ and /O/.

But before preceding, perhaps it will be as well to look first briefly at
the vowels of (western) VL.

Early Latin had five vowels /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/ and /u/ which could occur
either short or long (whether you count this as 10 phonemes, i.e. 5 short
vowels + 5 long vowels, or as 6 phonemes if you count just five vowels and
/:/, is one of those things that phonologists like to argue about :)

This, of course, was preserved in Classical Latin. It seems that long
vowels tended to be tenser than short vowels, rather as in standard modern
High German pronunciation. In the spoken language something quite
different was developing. By the VL of the Empire it would seem that vowel
length had ceased to be phonemic, vowels being lengthened in (unblocked)
stressed syllables, but short elsewhere. But the older _qualitative_
differences, which were just concomitant upon quantity, now became
phonemic, so we have _nine_ phonemically distinguished vowels in VL of the
early Empire, namely:

/i/ <-- /i:/
/I/ <-- /i/
/e/ <-- /e:/
/E/ <-- /e/
/a/ <-- both /a/ and /a:/
/O/ <-- /o/
/o/ <-- /o:/
/U/ <-- /u/
/u/ <-- /u:/

As for the Latin diphthongs, |ae| and the rarer |oe| appear to have become
monophthongs as early as the Republic  period, being pronounced probably
as [E(:)] and [e:] respectively. Mis-spellings such as 'baene' (= bene)
and 'daeder' (= dederunt _or_ dede:re "they gave") and 'braeuis' (= breuis)
  show that 'ae' was for all intents and purposes [E], i.e. in VL 'ae' was
treated the same as short-e, and 'oe' the same as 'long-e'.

The diphthong |au| appears to have remained a diphthong (cf. modern
Romanian 'aur' <-- auru(m)) and its monophthongization took place
independently in various Romance languages and dialects.

The full system of nine vowels was preserved, at least in stressed
syllables, only in isolated parts of the Romance speaking areas, such as
in Dacia and some Sardinian dialects. In continental western VL of the
later Empire it was reduced to seven vowels, thus:

/i/ <-- /i:/
/e/ <-- /i/ and /e:/ (and 'oe')
/E/ <-- /e/ (and 'ae')
/a/ <-- /a/ and /a:/
/O/ <-- /o/
/o/ <-- /u/ and /o:/
/u/ <-- /u:/

It seems that in stressed unblocked syllables VL /O/ and /E/ tended to
become rising diphthongs as they still are to the present day in Italian,
e.g. VL /nOvo/ (CL: nouu(m)) "new" --> nuovo /nwOvo/; VL /pEdE/ (CL: pede(
m)) "foot" --> piede /pjEde/ (cf. Spanish: nuevo, pie).

It will be noticed that in the case of /O/ Spanish shows dissimilation, i.
e. [O] --> [wO] --> [wE]. A similar dissimilation took place in Old French
but, unlike Spanish, the vocalic nucleus remained rounded, thus: Old
French 'nuef' [nw9f] = "(brand) new" (mod. french 'neuf').  Thus Old
French remained, so to speak, at a half-way house between Italian [w0] and
Spanish [wE].

(BTW Spanish extended this diphthongization to stressed /O/ and /E/ in
blocked syllables also, unlike French & Italian, e.g. VL pOrta "door" -->
puerta (Fr, porte, It. porta); VL dEntE "tooth" --> diente (Fr. dent, It.
dente))

In northern France stressed /e/ and /o/ in unblocked syllables tended to
become falling diphthongs cf. southern Brit & the American pronunciations
of 'say' and 'go' which in some parts of Britain are still pronounced [se:
] and [go:]. Thus stressed VL /me/ --> 'mei' [mej] --> 'moi' [moj] (the
spelling stops with 12th cent. French!)*; and VL stressed unblocked
/o/ --> /ow/ --> /2w/, written as 'eu', e.g. VL /nE'potE/ "nephew" (CL:
nepo:te(m)
  "grandson") --> neveu [nev2w].

*Something similar happened in Welsh where old Brittonic stressed /e:/ and
VL /e/ has become |wy| [uj], e.g. eglwys <-- eccle:sia. We may suspect
that Gallic speech habits were responsible for the changes /e/ --> /ej/
and /o/ --> /ow/ in the VL of north Gaul.

At the end of the 12th cent. Old French had a rich range of diphthongs,
both oral and nasal, and nasalized versions of all five 'classic' vowels.
During the 13th cent the diphthongs start being reduced. By the end of the
13th cent it would seem that [w9] had become simply [9] (except possibly
in some dialects where spellings like 'buens' and 'cuens' are still found)
  and [2w] became simply [2], both sounds being spelled 'eu'.

(BTW the old [oj] changed from a falling diphthong to a rising diphthong
during the 13th cent. so that by the 14th it was [wE] and remained so
until the popular [wa] supplanted it after the Revolution).

Lastly, I don't know why /O/ is included among "French's weird vowels". It
was part of VL and remains to the present day in stressed syllables in
Italian, e.g. uovo ['wOvo], buono ['bwOno], povero ['pOvero], parlò p[par'
lO]. It's not peculiar to French.

I hope the above helps.

Ray
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