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

From:Mangiat <mangiat@...>
Date:Thursday, March 25, 2004, 20:20
> 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