Re: [tied] Re: s > Hungarian zs, Polish z., Czech z^

On Thu, 16 Nov 2000 09:40:49 -0000, "Piotr Gasiorowski"
<gpiotr@...> wrote:

>As Miguels' point about the origin of Hungarian "s" and "sz" is
>completely valid, the only possibility that remains seems to be a
>phonetic mismatch between Hungarian and Slavic dentialveolar laminal
>[s] and the High German sound (most of the names you mention were
>borrowed via German). Perhaps at the time the HG realisation of /s,
>z/ was apical and somewhat retracted (like Scottish /s/ as pronounced
>by Sean Connery, for example), while /S/ was more palatal than now.
>Of course I'm only guessing here.

Old High German certainly did distinguish apical and laminal sibilants
in, let's say, "Basque" fashion. That was what I was hinting at
earlier. If I'm not mistaken (I can't find any explicit mention of
"apical"), the letter <z(z)> in OHG texts can stand for an apical
spirant /s'/, its geminate /s's'/ and an affricate /ts'/ or /tts'/
(all from Gmc. *t and *tt), whereas <s(s)> stood for laminal, but
slightly shibilant, /s/ (clearly /S/ before stops, as in modern
German). The Isidor text from the 8th century distinguishes these as
<zs>, <zss>, <z>, <tz> and <s>. Maybe Hungarian orthography was
inspired by this.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...