Re: Origin of Spanich /ch/ and /j/

Pablo David Flores wrote:
> Then /S/ became /x/. Maybe the distinction was lost later and there were
> /x/ and /G/ for a while; I'm not sure.
The devoicing occurred before the velarization.  So, /S/ and /Z/ merged
to /S/, *then* /S/ became /x/

> It'd be nice to know why the older instances of /tS/ didn't become /kx/...
Well, /S/ -> /x/ is odd enough.  :-)  Besides, fricatives and affricates
are different types of sounds, you might as well ask why /t/ -> /k/
didn't occur.  :-)

Altho, if /tS/ *had* become /kx/, I suspect that that would've
simplified pretty soon to /x/, so that "ch" and "j" would merge, so we'd
have words like "jico" or "mujajo", and "eight" and "eye" would be
homophones.  :-)

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