Re: CHAT: Historical linguistics, and soundlaws

On Wed, 24 Mar 1999, Tom Wier wrote:

> (9) Dissimilation: important, but I think less common than assimilation.  Basically
> where two sounds differentiate in some way.  For example, the Dutch word for
> "shoe" is pronounced [sxo:n] (where the [x] is as in the last post).
<pedant> [sxun]; [sxo:n] is "schoon" meaning "clean" or
(old-fashioned or Flemish) "beautiful". </pedant>

> When Dutch
> settlers arrived in South Africa, a soundchange occurred in their then isolated
> communities changing it to [sko:n].  [s] and [x] are both fricatives, while [k] is
> articulated the same as a [x], but it's a stop consonant.  So, this was an example
> of a dissimilation of manner of articulation, though not place.
The [sx] -> [sk] dissimilation also exists in a number of Dutch
dialects, especially in Noord-Holland (where some of my ancestors
came from). People brought up with [sk] who learn non-dialect Dutch
at school tend to be hypercorrect and pronounce words that *do* have
[sk] (such as _bioscoop_ [bio'sko:p] "cinema") with [sx] as well.

I don't know whether the South African [sk] is a real dissimilation
or a reflex of the dialect of some of the settlers.

   Irina


               ira@rempt.xs4all.nl (mailing list address)
                     irina@rempt.xs4all.nl (myself)
     http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt/irina/frontpage.html (English)
    http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt/irina/backpage.html (Nederlands)