Re: Digest 2 Apr

In a message dated 4/3/01 4:15:04 PM, yl112@CORNELL.EDU writes:

<< That reminds me--how/why, insofar as the question is answerable, did
Latin v [w] go to v [v] in the Romance languages (or most of them, I
think)?  A friend of mine who sings (ecclesiastical) Latin sometimes and
has had Spanish was wondering and I don't know the answer. >>

    Well, they're closely related--even more closely in Spanish, since
there's no [v] in Spanish, only [b] and [B] (bilabial, voiced fricative, not
a bilabial trill).  And it does go back and forth.  For some reason, several
German professors here who were born in Germany can't say "village", they say
"willage" (English orthography), even though there is a [v] in their sound
system.  Somebody else has probably already responded to this in a better
fashion, though--I haven't gotten that far down the e-mail list.

-Jenesis