Re: Tasratal: phonology

En réponse à John Cowan <cowan@...>:

>
> In Castilian proper (that is, the Castilian of Castile itself), this
> same "s" is
> or was used for written "s", which probably accounts for the Basque
> orthography.
> The phonological influence most likely runs the other way, since no
> other
> Romance lg has this "s" that I know of.
>
AFAIK, the influence of Basque on Spanish has been quite important. The fact
that Spanish vowel system has only three degrees of height (high, mid and low)
contrary to other Romance languages like French and Italian (and I think
Portuguese) which phonemically distinguish mid-high and mid-low, has been
attributed to an influence of Basque (which has also only three degrees of
height). I don't know what this hypothesis is worth though.

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.