Re: sound change

>===== Original Message From Constructed Languages List
<CONLANG@...> =====
>In a message dated 5/6/01 7:14:34 PM, nsampat@IX.NETCOM.COM writes:
>
><< I was wondering, are words used often more or less prone to sound change?
>Is there a safe generalization for this, or is the tendency radically
>different for different situations?
>
>Assuming the second is true, is there likely to be a set of rules that will
>determine the proneness-to-change of a given word, given sufficient
>information? >>
>
>    I vote for often-used words being more prone to sound change.  It
>certainly explains the irregular German, Spanish and English verbs and some
>of the irregular root changes in Arabic.  Anyhow, it's just what I've heard
>and what I've seen and I ain't seen and heard much as of yet.
It's my impression that commonly-used words are more likely to experience
irregular sound changes such as haplology, apocope, etc. [as opposed to
regular changes like the Germanic sound shifts or whatever].

But then, rare words [in a literate society] also experience irregular sound
changes sometimes, through the phenomenon of spelling pronunciations, both in
native words and learned borrowings.  If I borrow, say, old Greek
'stere/wma'[1], it'll sound completely different in English (and different
again in Spanish, or Hadwan...)  Words borrowed by voice also tend to carry
across funny: cf. Spanish <vaquero> to English <buckaroo>.

[But I'm digressing...]

     *Muke!
[1] ObConlang: Translates in Hadwan as <jirmístron> [ZIr"mIstrUn].

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