Re: Questions and Impressions of Basque

Christophe Grandsire scripsit:

> >Interesting to note that, while Spanish transforms 'f'
> >into 'h', Russian transforms 'h' into 'g' (gospital =
> >[military] hospital).
>
> I thought they would rather transform it into [x], since that's what
> they do when trying to learn a language containing [h]...
Older borrowings show h > g, more recent ones h > x.

> We don't really know whether they even exist ;) . But I've always heard
> that Gascon was Ibero-Romance rather than Gallo-Romance...
Well, Ethnologue (which is the ultimate splitter taxonomy) divides
Ibero-Romance into Catalan, Occitan (which they reckon a taxon of
six languages), and "West Iberian", which last is divided into
Asturian, Castilian and four close relatives, and Portuguese-Galician.
So they agree with you, but of course they don't provide the evidence.

> It seems the three groups Ibero-Romance, Gallo-Romance and Italo-Romance
> are just one big continuum ;) .
In fact yes.  After all, you can walk from Gibraltar to Brussels to the
southernmost tip of Italy without ever crossing a "hard" language
barrier, at least in terms of traditional dialect.  (But take your
mountain boots.)

--
"How they ever reached any conclusion at all    jcowan@reutershealth.com>
is starkly unknowable to the human mind."       http://www.reutershealth.com
        --"Backstage Lensman", Randall Garrett  http://www.ccil.org/~cowan

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