Re: English [dZ]

Quoting Tristan McLeay <conlang@...>:

> English inherited many /j/ from Germanic and Indo-European. These are
> typically spelt <y> in English and have cognates in other Germanic langs
> with <j>. Hence, En. <year> /jI@/, De. <Jahr> /ja:r/; En. <yea> /j&i/,
> De. <ja> /ja:/, En. <young> /jaN/, De. <Jung> /jUN/. (During Old
> English, these sounds were spelt with "g" and a following front vowel
> thus OE <geong> /juN/, by analogy with the below.) I think most of most
> other Germanic langs' /j/ come from this source, though I'd expect
> Frisian to have some palatalisation too, breaking I think might've
> caused some in the North Germanic langs etc. etc...
North Germanic lost alot of inherited /j/'s - the Swedish cognates of "year" and
"young" are _år_ [o:r\] and _ung_ [8N] - and acquired tons from breaking - eg
Swedish _hjärta_ "heart", _mjuk_ "soft" (cognate with "meek", IIRC).
Oftentimes, the /j/ has since merged with another consonant, eg _tjära_
['s\&:r\a] "tar".

> In the history of English, during a pre-English stage, the phoneme in
> Old English called /g/ most often had the realisation [G]. (As I
> understand it, during OE /g/ was only [G] around liquids.) Around front
> vowels, it was palatalised in Old English; this sound eventually merged
> with inherited /j/. I can't think of an cognates OTTOMH here.
>
> In the pre-Old English stage when /g/ most often had the realisation
> [G], the geminate /gg/ was pronounced [gg]. This also had a palatal
> form, [ddZ]. In Old English, [gg] and [ddZ] were spelt <cg>. You can see
> this in words like "ridge" or "bridge", which in OE were _hrycg_ and
> _brycg_. I don't know what the German forms (or any other Germanic lang)
> would be, but they'd probably have a /g/.
If I'm right that "ridge" and "bridge" are cognate with Sw. _rygg_ and _brygga_,
they indeed have /g/ (or /g:/, if that's your prefered analysis).


> In MnE, because these are all
> word/syllable final (no geminates word initial in pre-Old English),
> these are generally spelt with <dge> or the like, not <j>.
>
> I think that's basically complete as a summary of the origin of
> English /j/ and /dZ/.
>
> > > No. In Old French |j| was pronounced /dZ/, and |ch| was pronounced /tS/.
> [...] In France the
> > > earlier affricates were leveled to simple fricatives sometime in the
> middle of  the13th
> > > century.
> >
> > Huh.  Wouldn't have guessed that - I can see /j/ -> /Z/ -> /dZ/, but
> > /j/ -> /dZ/ -> /Z/ is not exactly a monotonic-feeling sequence.
>
> I presume there was a palatal stop in between, and probably also a
> palatal fricative...
Still makes more sense than Spanish, which went something like
[j]->[dZ]->[Z]->[S]->[x] (->[h] in many dialects).

                                                Andreas