Re: Questions and Impressions of Basque

Philip Newton wrote:


> On Fri, 3 Sep 2004 00:36:48 +0400, Alexander Savenkov
> <savenkov@...> wrote:
> > Some words are especially exciting because of those transformations.
> > Imagine the word кът (k't). With time, in Russian it became кот (kot,
> > which stands for cat) while in Ukrainian it became кит (kit). But kit
> > means whale in Russian! Then, guess, what is whale in Ukrainian? No,
> > not kot. It's кыт (kyt).
>
> From your pronunciation, I would have expected кіт (kit) for "cat" and
> кит (kyt) for "whale" in Ukrainian; AFAIK и is "y" (/i\/?) in
> Ukrainian, and I'm not sure how much ы is used.
You're right, Philip. I just didn't want to spam the list traffic with those
details.
'Cat' is _кіт_ [kit], and 'whale' is _кит_ [kIt]. They do not originate from
_кътъ_ , because otherwise it would give "fugative o" in Ukr., as in
'dream': OChS _сънъ_ > Ukr. _сон_, Gen.sn _сну_, but _кота_.
Ukr. и (y) is difficult to describe. The best approximation is [I], but
indeed it stands for Ru. [i\] everywhere.

Yitzik