Re: [tied] Romance brother

On 2007-05-27 15:34, tgpedersen wrote:

>
> Is g- > h- regular in Lat. germanus > Sp. hermano, and if not, what
> happened? And how about Pt. irmão (e > i)?

It's regular, but it's actually germanum > yermano > 'ermano with
Mod.Sp. zero. The Old Spanish /j/ that developed from palatalised /g/
eventually disappeared before unstressed /i/ or /e/, as also in gela:re

> helar, whereas gelum > hielo, generum > yerno, gemmam > yema, gypsum
> yeso, etc., preserve the glide before a stressed vowel. I'm not sure

if the spelling with <h> is completely artificial in <hermano> and
<helar> or corresponds to a residual glottal glide at some intermediate
stage.

Piotr