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Re: Lenition

From:Muke Tever <alrivera@...>
Date:Tuesday, June 25, 2002, 1:34
From: "Christian Thalmann" <cinga@...>
> I was quite flabbergasted myself, but I do have a theory by now. =P > > I assume those people somehow confound hardness with loudness.
The contrary, actually, is easier to explain: "soft" means "quiet" in English--"speaking softly" is talking in low tones, or even whispering [= devoicing]. (I dont know if this is association occurs in French or the other non-anglophone langs on the list.) Since "soft" is the opposite of "hard", hardness gets transferred to voicing by analogy when people talk about "soft" and "hard" consonants in pairs. *Muke! -- http://www.frath.net/