Re: Digest 2 Apr

> Muke Tever sikayal:
>
> > > I like phonology, but I don't know enough about historical phonology
to
> > > be entirely comfortable with the sound-changes I devise.
> >
> > Hehe.  My langs tend to have regular but likely-implausible sound
changes.
>
> I don't know.  There's some pretty weird stuff out there, like s > r,
> which is attested multiple times, but which I can't justify in my own
> mind.
>
I seem to recall one of my phonetics teachers (I'm studying English in the
University of Iceland, so the emphasis was on the differences between the
pronounciation of these two languages) saying that in some words, English
speakers might perceive 'r' as 's' in English when spoken with a strong
Icelanic accent... The Icelandic 'r' is a trill or a tap, and can be both
voiced and unvoiced. I presume it's the unvoiced 'r' that causes this
confusion. Maybe that's similar to how 's' gradually changed to 'r'?

Just remembered as I was writing this, in old Icelandic texts, the verb 'is'
was 'es', but today it's 'er'. The same development has occured in the
Scandinavian languages... Odd, I'd never spotted that before.

>
> Jesse S. Bangs jaspax@u.washington.edu
>
> "If you look at a thing nine hundred and ninety-nine times, you are
> perfectly safe; if you look at it the thousandth time, you are in
> frightful danger of seeing it for the first time."
> --G.K. Chesterton
Björn Kristinsson
bjornkri@hi.is
---
Common sense isn't.