altamix wrote:
>Since it seems that the "np" does not exist in Rom (is
>there any in the old words?) one should accept due
>missing a better explanation the slavic "np" .
Of course there is "-np"! In all ("daco-")Romanian
subdialects, in reality, there's only one kind of
occurrence: __the nasal plus P__.
The fact that it's sort of a nasal pronunciation (agreed:
not as emphasized as, say, in Polish and French) is not
underlined in grammar books for average pupils/students.
In other words: you can very well pronounce "cumparat"
in such a way that your lips meet only once, for the
bilabial P; there's no need for a double bilabial: M and P.
OTOH, the emphatic pronunciation, where the
speaker clearly pronounces the M too, is actually limited
to exaggerated ways of talking: theater, radio-TV as
well as to the speech by all those to whom nobody
has told in their life that the nasalisation is something
*natural* and there is no need to give extra rendition
to the bilabial M.
At the same time, the above categories of people
will refrain from uttering NP simply because there
has been a... convention, a rule (for more than 100
years now), but actually only for the ***written***
words. This rule says that <<before B and P, you'll
always write M, and never N>>. But this rule has been
imposed by normative grammars - I mean by
people whom we can call regulators. The rule
actually does not reflect something inherent in
the natural way of speaking Romanian.
This is why in your opinion there ain't no "-NP-"
clusters in Romanian. (Although there are plenty
of people with poor orthography as well as dyslexics
who dare write e.g. "cunpãrat, cânpie, astânpãrat"
& the like, thus snubbing the aforementioned rule. :-)
George