Re: palatalized k again

From: tolgs001
Message: 21794
Date: 2003-05-12

>Tat is not the problem here George. The problem is
>that the /i/ made a lot of trouble

There's no [i] where you thing there is one.
Either there is a semivowel within a diphtong
or the consonant is pronounced in such a way
that in Romanian spelling one is tempted to
add an "i". Out of your examples, I keep
those relevant in this respect:

>'k'iept'
>'g'iezure'
>'g'ierme'

We feel like writing chiept, ghiezure, ghierme
with an "i" because (I repeat myself) the Romanian
alphabet doesn't have any letter or diacritical
for these special consonants, since these phonetic
aspects do not belong to the official/standard
pronunciation. After all, the Romanian alphabete
seems to be a phonetic one if you compare it with
the English, but it isn't a phonetic one though;
esp. when you try to jot down dialectal Romanian
you soon realize that there are sounds for which
there's no rendition -- except when using special
alphabets, such as API/IPA.

OTOH, in cases such as <bibol> + dialectal <bibol>,
<ghibol> [g^ibol], of course you have an "i" not
only in writing! That what we can write "ghibol"
can better be transliterated in... Hungarian, it
would look like this: "gyibol", where "gy" stands
for the modified-g (and for nothing else), and is
followed by a genuine "i" that stands for [i].

In Romanian scribbling even the semivowel-i is
non-existant: it was abolished 100 years ago. Up
to 1902, the semivowel-i was written not with a
dot, but with the same diacritical sign on it as
on the a for the schwa. Check it out: in old
printout stuff, you'll see double-i written in
differnt ways: one with a dot, one with the
diacritical "caciula".

So, don't you let yourself misled so easily by
what's written: it's no perfect... "wysiwyg". :-)

>"pi" but alternative "ki".
>Here is no palatalisation of any "cl".

In cases of this kind: picior-chicior, piept-chept,
piatra-chiatra/cheatra, piper-chiper, piersic-chiars&c,
a pieri-a chieri, piaptan/pieptene-chiaptan etc.,
indeed, there is no CL > C^. But the P alternates
with the same C^. You have to have C^, and only after
this you can have a Muntenian Sahara-dry velar-K.

Conclusion: p,b,cl,gl > che/chi,ghe/ghi only via
these intermediate sounds (in Romanian, in Aromanian
as well as in other Romance languages). That's the
message in a nutshell.

>It is to me a stragen change from
>labial to velar or palatal velar.

So it is to me. But this is what we've... inherited.
Why ancestors of ours felt like oscillating between
P,B <-> K^,G^ sounds? Perhaps it seemed to them okay,
logical, comfortable - I don't know.

What I know is that, to me, [k^atra, k^ars&c, k^ept,
but no k^iper and no k^ip&ru$!] are more... natural
pronunciations than those of your choice: piatra,
piersic, piept. This is because of one's sub/dialectal
background. As in any language; as, say, in German,
where someone from Munich or Vienna will never say
as a Hamburger or Berliner "der Zuch, das Fluchzeuch",
but "Zuk" and "Flukzaik", nor "zwanzich, dreissich"
etc., but "zwanzik, dreissik".

George