Re: YADPT (D=Dutch)

Benct Philip Jonsson sikyal:

> At 19:13 8.11.2003, John Cowan wrote:
>
> >Not surprising.  Finnish and Bengali both have only /s/, but regularly
> >pronounce it [S].  In Bengali, at least, the close relatives use [s].
>
> Actually what happened is that Old IndoAryan /s\, s`, s_d/
> merged as a single sibilant in most Middle IndoAryan --
> usually written with the /s_d/ grapheme, but in some
> languages the /s\/ grapheme was used.  Later most NIA
> languages reintroduced an /S/ <> /s_d/ distinction through
> loans from Sanskrit, Arabic and Persian.  Now the funny
> thing is that the MIA forerunner of Bengali was an /s_d/
> grapheme language, but nevertheless the single sibilant
> phoneme of Bengali is [S] everywhere except immediately
> before a /t_d/!  BTW the Bengali orthography continues
> to distinguish three sibilants as if nothing happened
> since OIA.  Damned be the Bengali schoolkids!

Damned be the Thai schoolkids, as well, since they have to learn four
different symbols for /s/ for this same reason, and it's not even the
history of *their* language that's being preserved! Well, some of it
is--one of the four /s/ symbols represents an old /*z/, but the other
three are the graphs for Indo-Aryan silibants (heavy mangled, of course).


--
Jesse S. Bangs jaspax@u.washington.edu
http://blog.glossopoesis.org

"We're counting on our virtues,
Cause it's too hard to count the dead."
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