>Chris Bates scripsit:
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>>2)The language actually sounds quite nice, nicer than I imagined for
>>some reason... although I have difficulty getting the distinction
>>between s, z and x right. It does seem strange though that Basque has s,
>>S and... I don't know what the X-SAMPA representation of <s> is, but
>>lacks f. Did basque f --> h (many Spanish speaking people around the
>>Basque country pronounce f as h in their spanish), or has basque never
>>had an f?
>>
>>
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>Well, Larry Trask (who certainly ought to know) says that Basque
>orthographic "f" represents a labio-dental voiceless fricative, so in
>what sense does Basque lack f? It's true that most, though not all AFAIK,
>of the Basque words beginning with F in Wiktionary are borrowings.
>
>As for the f > h story, in Ibero-Romance all inherited /f/ went to
>/h/ and then zero (this was long after inherited /h/ went to zero)
>except /fw/ which remained unchanged. This change was only recognized
>orthographically when /f/ reappeared as a result of borrowings from
>Latin: e.g. _horma_ 'cobbler's last' was written _forma_ in Old Spanish,
>and is descended from Latin FORMA; when it needed to be contrasted with
>borrowed _forma_, the spelling _horma_ was adopted.
>
>Trask also says that the "Castilian is essentially Latin as spoken by
>Basques" theory doesn't hold up, though he doesn't give the details on
>his Basque page at
http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/users/larryt/basque.html .
>I have read parts of his 1996 book in preprint, though not the whole
>thing, and have no trouble recommending it. The list of "Basque is
>related to X" debunkings is particularly hilarious.
>
>--
>John Cowan jcowan@reutershealth.com www.reutershealth.com www.ccil.org/~cowan
>If a soldier is asked why he kills people who have done him no harm, or a
>terrorist why he kills innocent people with his bombs, they can always
>reply that war has been declared, and there are no innocent people in an
>enemy country in wartime. The answer is psychotic, but it is the answer
>that humanity has given to every act of aggression in history. --Northrop Frye
>
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