Re: OT: Parlez vous Kazakh?
| From: | Isaac Penzev <isaacp@...> |
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| Date: | Wednesday, May 7, 2003, 5:51 |
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BP Jonsson cazdy:
<<Also this was exploited when writing Turkic languages with Arabic script:
_qaaf_, _ghayn_ and the "emphatic" dental letters were used in back-vowel words
while _kaaf_, _gaaf_ and the plain dentals were used in front-vowel words.>>
Hehe. That may explain why many Turkic Cyrillic alphabets include separate
characters for [q] and [R]... Certainly, tons of Arabic borrowing brought /k/
and /g/ phonemes to split, but I'm still sure, if you analyze an "aboriginal"
Turkic word, you'll find that phonemic opposition lies on vowels, not
consonants... That's why I doubt PT reconstructions using /q/ and /R/.
~~~~~~Yitzik~~~~~~