"Raymond A. Brown" <raybrown@...> wrote:
> At 2:12 am -0500 26/3/99, Nik Taylor wrote:
> >"Raymond A. Brown" wrote:
> >> All the evidence is that it was trilled much like the modern Italian=
,
Scots
> >> & Welsh /r/.
> >
> >What evidence would that be? Is it merely that the trill is the most
> >probable ancestor of the various Romance r's?
> =
> Well that is strongish evidence: Romanian, Italian & the various Iberia=
n
> Romances have the trilled apical /r/ and so does quite of southern Fran=
ce.
> But there is other evidence also which, unfortunately, I don't have to
> hand, from the ancient writers themselves when describing the sound.
> Although neither the Greeks or the Romans ever approached the
> sophistication of Sanskrit grammarians, they did give some useful insig=
hts
> into their language.
> =
As I remember, the description of the sound is "like a dog growling." So=
unds
trilled to me! The evidence which rules out uvular trills I don't rememb=
er
off the top of my head.
Speaking of French Rs, as I remember, Haitian French/Creole seemed to me =
to
change the uvular R to a labial approximant (w), so that it took me forev=
er to
realize that the fellow whose name was pronounced "On-Wee" was "Henri."
Ed
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