Re: German Spelling Reform (fwd)

For some reason Outlook Express doesn't always put in > in quoted passage=
s,
so I'll use >>> to mark the beginning of quoting and <<< to mark the end.


----- Original Message -----
From: FFlores <fflores@...>
To: Multiple recipients of list CONLANG <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Monday, August 9, 1999 8:37 PM
Subject: Re: German Spelling Reform (fwd)

>>>
Irina Rempt-Drijfhout <ira@...> wrote:

> It's not called a plural, though it's formed like it; it's called a
> "tussenklank" (intermediate sound) though it's not meant to be
> pronounced. What do you call a sound that isn't heard?
Spanish has the silent <h> everywhere, often in places where Latin
(or the original language in any case) didn't have it. There's this
terribly stupid rule that says that word-initial /w/ *must* be
preceded by <h>, so _hueso_ and _=F3seo_ are from the same root (it
begin with long /o:/ in Latin, diphthongized to /we/ in _hueso_,
but kept like /o/ in the cultism _=F3seo_.)

<<<
I don't think it's such a stupid rule. I read somewhere that the rational=
e
for it was to distinguish between /w/ and /v/ (or /B/ or whatever), back
when u and v were interchangeable. Thus ueso could be read either /weso/ =
or
/Beso/. Of course, nowadays u and v are separate, but I think initial
u+vowel looks strange (Italian doesn't seem to mind though).

What's really interesting is that at one time the rule to use hu- was not
that standard; sometimes people used gu- instead, thus dialectal variants
such as g=FCeso for hueso and g=FCevo for huevo.