Re: Rum. sce/sci > $te/$ti

>But /stSe/ is a difficult combination.

You're right. That's why most of Romanians will pronounce
$ceptru in colloquial speech. However, any educated person
(i.e. with a good diction) will be able to utter a clearly cut
/ssssstSeptru/.

>Now, you seemed to be making the point that this change is not made in
>recent loan words, that the <sce> in 'sceptru' was not /St/.

Of course the change cannot go that far, since these words are
far too recent. And, on top of that, since such a word is *written*
"sce-" the "innovative" fancy is rather timid: the written language
has a quite... normative influence on spoken language. :)

>Richard.

George