Re: Brugmann's Law

On Čet, siječanj 17, 2008 2:26 pm, Piotr Gasiorowski wrote:

> On 2008-01-17 13:19, Mate Kapović wrote:
>
>> Actually, no. Polish is difficult to understand because they palatalize
>> almost everything and that renders it unintelligible.
>
> Or rather, the Polish reflexes of palatalised consonants are often
> different from those found elsewhere in Slavic.

This general palatalization was not characteristic for all Slavic, it's a
northern innovation. There is no point whatsoever to reconstruct
palatalized consonants for South Slavic.

>> Russian can be grasped when you get the idea of vowel-reduction (i.e.
>> that
>> voda is vada etc.), Ukrainian is easier since there is no akanie.
>
> Ah, but they have other funny things you have to get accustomed to, like
> o > i in newly closed syllables (<bih, nic^>, etc.)

Well, yes, you're right. I'm just theoreticizing now, I've never actually
had an opportunity to speak with an Ukrainian :)
I've spoken Croatian-Russian many times but that doesn't really count
since I did it with linguists only.

>>> He says
>>> Slovak is slightly easier for him than Czech
>>
>> Definitely true.
>
> For most Poles too, I think.
>
>>> "Hail to the Peace Duke"
>>
>> Huh?
>
> This particular pun (I've never seen it, but get it) would work
> throughout Slavic. Most of out swear-words have very ancient pedigrees.

I don't get it :-/

Mate