Re: OT: Mismatched phonologies / accents

>I have the following initial phoneme inventory for
>consonants:
>
>/  p      t     k    /
>/  p\ B   T D   x G  /
>/         s z        /
>/  m      n          /
>/  w      l      j   /
>/         r          /
>
>I need to try and hammer a Gallo-Romance based
>language into that shape, and there are a few Romance
>phonemes I'm struggling to fit.
>The whole point
>here is I am trying to establish an 'accent', i.e how the Romanic sounds are
>mispronounced by a Germanic speaker beacuse he lacks the correct phomenes in
>his inventory.
>Could /tS/ and /dZ/
>'jump' straight to /x/ and /G/? Given the choice of sounds available, /tS/
>and /x/ certainly seem to be the closest sounding, but dZ sounds equally
>close to /G/ and /j/ to me (assuming I try to avoid the 'un-Germanic'
>palatal /tj/ and /dj/).
>I'd also completely fogotten about /L/ My guess is that would go to /j/,
>although maybe /r/ is a possibility there?
>Pete
A very similar issue is actually attested in Proto-Balto-Finnic, which lost
many of the same phonemes you're interested in under Germanic influence. In
Finnish the shifts were (generalizing a bit)
anything palatalized > corresponding non-palatalized (so /l;/ > /l/, /n;/ >
/n/, /s;/ > /s/ etc)
/S/ > /h/ (probably /x/ at the first stage)
/ts/ > /s/ initially, /T/ elsewhere
/tS/ > /s/ initially, /t/ elsewhere (also /h/ sporadically)
/kt pt/ > /ht/ is probably also of interest.

/tS dZ/ > /x G/ looks IMO, too, very unlikely to occur in one step. I
believe either the sibilation or the plosion of the affricates is going to
stay, so maybe /ts tS/ should in this case go to either /s/ or /t/ both, and
/S/ to /x/ or /s/ (but definitly not /T/). What to do with the voiced
sibilants is looking more difficult; plain /s/, or /z/ if you do decide to
have that, again might work for all three, and if you have [d] as an
allophone of /D/ in some positions, so could that for the affricates. If you
don't, maybe even /t/. /Z/ > /j/ sounds OK but the same for /dZ/ might be a
stretch.

It might also not be entirely out of question that /tS/ > /k/ and, again, if
[g] exists, /dZ/ > that.

/L/ I assume would go straight to /l/. KISS! :) Speakers of a foreign
language are not going to worry about their non-distinctions undoing
previous sound changes or producing homophones. In Finlänt, foo önatör, moo
karent iksämpöl, vii häv tis ting koolt rälli traivör inklis vits is
pööfektli häpi tu tiskaat ool voising tistinksöns änt ö houl pants of atöös,
and manitsiis to iiven ket antastuut, okkeisönäli enivei, iiven tispait ool
tät. ;)

John Vertical

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