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Re: A funny linguistic subway experience + some questions about

From:Raymond Brown <ray.brown@...>
Date:Wednesday, December 6, 2000, 6:44
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] =========================================