Re: Voiced affricatives in English dialects [was: re [tied] Animate

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Gordon Selway <gordonselway@...>
wrote:

> A discursive contribution, only to point out that the voiced
> affricatives [z for standard s, v for f, the 'th' in eg 'thumb' as

in

> 'the', not as std. 'throat'] which it is suggested occur in

Somerset

> (and I suppose they may still do so in out-of-the-way parts of the
> county) were once very much more widespread in south-

western/western

> English, but have been receding at perhaps five km a decade for the
> past couple of centuries.
>
> I do not recall it occurring in the speech of my father, or of my
> uncles fifty years ago, though some
> archaic features were present. Text books suggest iirc that it
> stopped being the usual pronunciation in the Forest of Dean and

south

> Herefordshire about 150 years ago, and in Worcestershire a century
> earlier, though as I have none to hand I cannot verify my

references.

>
> The phenomenon may occur with the initial consonant of a component

of

> a word: 'Zummerzet'.
>
> With kind regards,
>
>
> Gordon Selway
> <gordonselway@...>
>

Thanks for the information! Was it once widespread enough that one
might hypothetically characterise it as a distinguishing feature
between Saxon and "Anglian", given the historic settlements of those
groups?

Torsten