Re: English syllable structure

In 19th-Century English-language works on art, Chiaroscuro is often called
"clair-obscure", presumably deriving from a real (or maybe, just maybe
hypothesised) historical *kl rather than *kj. Romance often changed
voiceless stop+l into voiceless stop+j in such positions; *plan- (flat,
level) into piano, etc. The two variants (/tS/ and /kj/) are, despite the
orthography, really quite close in terms of the articulators, so it's not
all that surprising to find them as variants.
Mike
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tristan Alexander McLeay" <anstouh@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Friday, December 07, 2001 10:36 PM
Subject: Re: English syllable structure


> On Fri, 7 Dec 2001, Roger Mills wrote:
>
> > Kou wrote:
> >
> >
> > >From: "Fabian"
> > >
> > >> > > 'chiaroscuro'
> > (snip)
> > >> Most Italians round here (we have a big Italian community in town)
would
> > >> say /tSa.../. In the Italian dialect that dominates here,
orthographic I
> > >> turns /k/ to /tS/ and /g/ to /dZ/. Palatisation, I do believe.
> > >
> > >Kinda defeats the purpose of having the "h" in there, I should think.
"cia"
> > >gives you /tSa/, with the orthographic "h" bringing it back to /kja/,
and
> > >the Italian community by you ignores the "h" and goes back to /tSa/?
> > >Weirdness.
> > >
> > >So "che" and "chi" are read /tSe/ and /tSi/? How do they distinguish
from
> > >"ce" and "ci"?
> >
> >
> > I too found this a little difficult to believe.  Perhaps they've been
too
> > long exposed to Australian English ???  :_)
>
> I realise this is a joke, but ... since when do Aussies (even supposedly)
> palatise /k/? /t/ yes, but /k/?
>
>
> Tristan
>
> anstouh@yahoo.com.au
>
> War doesn't prove who's right, just who's left.
>                        - BSD Games' Fortune

Reply