[tied] Re: Note on palatals

> Then I read somewhere about velarization of this sound in Swedish,
>so I acted presumptuously and made the statement that this sound
>is /xW/ or something like it. What actually is this sound? Is it a
>bilabial fricative? Is it formed by applying the upper teeth to the
>soft flesh below the lower lip? The times I have heard it, it has
>always been a mystery to me.

It's a mystery to fellow Scandinavians too, I can tell you. 'Sju
tusen sju hundred sjuttisju sjösjuka sjömän' is a common tongue-
twister (777 seasick sailors).

> Otherwise Danish provides a good example of changing palatals into
> velars: "Kjöbenhavn" was spelt and pronounced like
> Swedish "Köpenhamn" in eastern Danish dialects, but this was
> repressed by influence from Jutland with a plain K pronunciation in
> the XIXth century.

Nope. From German. Standard (older) jysk still has /kj/ and /gj/.

When I was a student I had a job a ministery registering claim
regarding a new zoning law. At that time, it was obvious that most
locals of the two kommuner of Skjern and Gjern wanted to write them
Skern and Gern (thus getting rid of the embarassing /j/ and
conforming to perceived Copenhagen pronunciation). In the meanwhile
they seem to have accepted the 'local' form.

>Somewhat surprising since this was the poor,
> undeveloped part of the country.

Be surprised no more. What I proposed was that the depalatalisation
was due to German (tysk) not Jutland (jysk) influence. The frequent
morphological alternation k ~ c^ and sk ~ s^ which eg. Swedish
developed would have been something the German-speaking classes in
Copenhagen never mastered, thus inducing the rest of the Danes to
depalatalise too, although this would actually be a mark of
Germanness.

>Torsten has in past postings
> explained it as an anti-German shibboleth after the wars in the
> XIXth century.

Well, sort of. Se above.

>And has suggested that satem and centum similarly
> might be due to a shibboleth before the split (if I remember
> correctly).
>
> Lars
>
> --------------
>
> If this was anti-German, why did they revert to non-palatal

pronunciation, which is characteristic of German? Perhaps I have
misunderstood his point.

See above.

> If centum and satem was a shibboleth before the split, does this

imply that there was only one velar/palatal series, not separate
velar and palatal?

>
> Andrew

It means that there was a velar/palatal and a labiovelar/velar
series, the allophones determined by context (before /e/ palatal and
velar respectively, otherwise velar and labiovelar). Some languages
(the satem ones) generalised the latter alternative, which made the
two series a shibboleth to the remaining languages which then
generalised the former alternatives, becoming kentum languages. By
this proposal all roots containing 'plain' velars are loans from
other languages.


Torsten