Urban lithp mythp (Re: Indo-European question)

At 11:50 am -0400 19/6/01, David Peterson wrote:
>In a message dated 6/19/01 6:37:24 AM, thorinn@DIKU.DK writes:
>
><< How about if he consistently pronounced the unvoiced sound as /s/, and
>the voiced one as /T/? Some people find /s/ much easier to pronounce
>than /z/. >>
>
>    No, the *letter* /z/ was supposed to be pronounced [s], not [z].  There
>is no [z] sound in Spanish.
>
In modern Andalucian & south American Spanish, yes.  But even more telling
against Lars' theory is that the voiced sibilant would change, if it were
going to, to /D/, surely.

In fact there's no mystery about the modern Castilian /T/.  It derives from
the Old Spanish affricate [ts].  All that's happened is that the afffricate
has lost its initial stop onset (not an uncommon occurence) but the
resulting fricative has retained the dental position of [t], hence [ts] >>
[T]; in Andalucia it is simply [ts] >> [s].

Tho it is slightly (tho not much) more complicated in that Old Spanish had
two dental affricates: {cz} or 'soft-c' = [ts]; {z} = [dz].  The latter, at
some stage, became devoiced and merged with [ts] before changing to [T] or
[s].

Similarly, at some time {j} or 'soft-g' = [Z] became devoiced and merged
with {x} = [S] before the latter changed to [x].  Hence the old {Mexico}
[mESiko] >> [mexiko] and got respelled in Spanish, tho not elsewhere, as
'Mejico'.  But AFAIK no king or other noble has been credited with this
change.

Oh the power of urban myth  ;)

Ray.



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