[tied] Re: Mercury and lead

--- In cybalist@..., Omar Karamán <diogenes@...> wrote:

>
>
> tgpedersen@... wrote:
>
> > --- In cybalist@..., Omar Karamán <diogenes@...> wrote:
> > >As to 16th century Spanish, this is what was told:
> > At that time, x was pronounced as sh, and j as zh (the voiced
> > equivalent). This is the same situation as in Portuguese today

and in

> > older French (I have no date for this), e.g. <chevaux>, pl. of
> > <cheval> would be pronounced cheváush (sort of portuguese-like
> > inflection, yes?).
> > At a certain time sh -> kh, and zh -> kh, the present day
> > pronounciation of the letter j. Since now both the letters j and x
> > were pronounced the same, the letter x was generally replaced by

j in

> > Spanish orthography.
> > Examples: The original Aztec pronounciation of Mexico (Aztec

word) is

> > Meshiko (forgot about vowel lengths and such). In Basque you see

the

> > spelling tx- for ch-, which makes sense as t-sh-. The state of

Texas

> > was originally spelled Tejas, pronounced Tezhas.
> >
> > Torsten
>
> In South American Spanish, x and j represents very different

sounds. In

> Uruguay, Argentina and Chile, for example, both are very different

in

> fact. x is something like /ks/ and j is the velar fricative that I

told

> about and I don't know how to represent (I am not a linguist). After
> all, believe me, I
> am a native Spanish speaker and I can distinguish very well each

sound:

> they
> are not equal.
>
> Omar

You are a native 16th century Spanish speaker? I was talking about
the Spanish that was spoken around the time of the conquest of Mexico
and the changes that supposedly took place in that language.
You should note also the spelling of Aztec and Mayan place names in
Spanish, the letter x in those names should be pronounced s^. That's
why the letter x was chosen by the Spanish when these names were
first written in Spanish, because that was how the Spanish pronounced
it then.

Torsten



Torsten