Re: Droppin' D's Revisited

On Fri, Nov 24, 2000 at 04:51:41AM -0500, Jeff Jones wrote:
> On Thu, 23 Nov 2000 21:23:19 +0000, Raymond Brown <ray.brown@...>
> wrote:
>
> >At 12:46 pm -0500 23/11/00, Oskar Gudlaugsson wrote:
> >[....]
> >>
> >> According to what I've read, all cases of orthographic <ens> were
> >> pronounced without the nasal even in Classical Latin.
> >
> > Absolutely correct - this is stated by several Roman writers.
>
> Well, Hale and Buck agree with you. But I'm not so sure this applied to
> vowels that weren't already long, at least in Vulgar Latin. After all,
> Spanish has <pienso> and other forms from Latin short <-ens->. I also note
> that my references say that the (resulting) long vowel was nasalized.
Spanish <pensar> "to think" (the verb to which <pienso> belongs) is a learned
borrowing; the regular outcome is <pesar> "to weigh."

--
Eric Christopherson / *Aiworegs Ghristobhorosyo