Re: NATLANG: Welsh <mh, nh, ngh> and French vowels
| From: | Mangiat <mangiat@...> |
|---|
| Date: | Thursday, March 25, 2004, 20:20 |
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> Date: Wed, 24 Mar 2004 06:54:34 +0000
> From: Joe <joe@...>
> Subject: Re: NATLANG: Welsh <mh, nh, ngh> and French vowels
>
> Trebor Jung wrote:
>
> >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? And where do all of French's
> >
> >
> I'm not sure, I'm not a native speaker of Welsh, but I tent to
> pronounce then [m_0_h, n_0_h, N_0_h]
>
> >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).
No, they do. All "dialects" here in the North-West of Italy have them (both
front rounded vowels and nasal vowels). Lombard /y/ comes from VL *[u] (/u/
comes from *[o]); /2/ shows up in open syllables where Latin had a short
/O/: rota > roeuda /'r2:dA/ (IIRC Ligurian and Piedmontese both have "reua"
/'r2:A/, or even /r2:/). Nasals are phonemic in many dialects; Milanese was
one of them: _can_ /kA~/ "dog" vs. _cann_ /kAn/ "reeds" (they weren't in the
dialect of my town, Como: /kAN/ vs. /kAn/).
Luca