Re: Questions and Impressions of Basque

Christophe Grandsire wrote:

> En réponse à John Cowan :
>
>
>> Older borrowings show h > g, more recent ones h > x.
>
>
> Interesting. A bit like Japanese early borrowings from European
> languages using strictly Japanese syllables (borrowing for instance [tu]
> as [tsM] and [ti] as [tSi]), while newer borrowings now keep those
> syllables (like "paatii" [pa:ti:]: party).
Yeah, the Japanese phoneme inventory seems to be undergoing a change,
with [P] splitting off from /h/, and [ts] and [ch] splitting off from
/t/. It's not really a sound change, though, because the new phoneme
distinctions only appear in loanwords.