Andreas Johansson wrote:
>
>Quoting Tristan McLeay:
> > 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.
Say, how does this fit together with the MnE soft g as in "ginger" etc? A
2nd wave of palatalization perhaps?
> > > 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
Whoa. Didn't know Spanish <j> went thru [dZ] too; I lived under the
impression it was simply something like [j]>[C]>[x].
John Vertical