It's more of a South-North split in this case. And it's not really a
"h" in Ukrainian, more of a "gh". They do have a separate "h" or,
rather, [x], that sounds quite different. Oh, and I wouldn't really
call it a "consonant shift", cause it's nothing like the Germanic
consonant shift, but Petr would be able to find a better term for it.
GK
PS: And no wonder you could understand Ukrainian after studying Polish
- Slavic languages are still very close to each other, kind of like
Spanish and Portuguese. ;)
>>>>>
The example that puzzled me arose with Slavonic languages. I notice a
consonant shift from g to h happening (or perhaps the reverse - I don't
know
which came first).
Example (one of many): Russian/Polish grad / gorod and Czech / Ukrainian
hrad / horod
What puzzles me is the way this seems to cut across the standard
linguistic
groupings, with Russian / Ukrainian in an Eastern group and Polish/Czech
classified as Western. It would seem more logical to me to have a "G
group"
and an "H" group (although I have a vague worry this would split Sorbian
down the middle).<<<<