Re: A funny linguistic subway experience + some questions about

At 5:30 pm +0000 5/12/00, feuchard wrote:
>e skrive Raymond Brown:
>
>> >Is <dydd> a native Welsh word, or is it also from Latin?
>>
>> >From ancient British and, ultimately, from same PIE origin as Latin
>_dies_,
>> but borrowed directly IIRC.  The -dd- /D/ is derived from an earlier /jj/
>> --> /Z/
>>
>> The Breton cognate is _deiz_
>> [...]
>
>Interestingly, Breton uses the form _di_ for days of the week, not deiz:
>disul
>dilun
>dimeurzh
>dimerc'her
>diriaou
>digwener
>disadorn
I assume di- is a shortened prefixed form; the final /D/ in the Welsh
almost disappears when prefixed to the day names.

The word for Thursday in interesting.  In full it would be _diez Iaou_ like
the Welsh _dydd Iau_ (Jove's day); that has a colloquial alternative
_Difiau_ /'di:vja1/ - it would seem that /Dj/ or /zj/ being made easier to
say in both cases.

>> >
>> >My hypothesis was that diumenge < *diomenga < *di(es) domenica, with the
>> >initial d of *domenica dropping because of its intervocalic position.
>This
>> >happens a lot in Spanish and French,
>>
>> Yes, in French at least we had /d/ --> /D/ --> zero
>
>Really? I hadn't noticed. Do you have any examples of this? I know that we
>have the intervocalic change /t/ --> /d/ --> /D/ --> zero, as in MATUREM -->
>madhur --> meür --> mûr or VENUTA --> venude --> venue or ESPAT(H)A -->
>espedhe --> épée etc.
That's the one I meant - I just started from the late VL /d/ and didn't go
back to the original /t/ that began it all  :)

Ray.

=========================================
A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
=========================================