Re: Mercury and lead

--- In cybalist@..., Miguel Carrasquer Vidal <mcv@...> wrote:

> On Tue, 27 Mar 2001 08:36:09 -0000, tgpedersen@... wrote:
>
> >I love big textbook negatories. And the evidence? Actual instances

of

> >written <animalx>?
>
> <animals> = <animax> or <animaux>. This is *French* we're talking
> about, so of course thre's evidence aplenty. You might try
> http://www.princeton.edu/~lancelot/
>
> >Did scribes elsewhere in Europe use the letter x for -us-?
>
> Ligature <ls> was written more or less the same in any blackletter
> (Fraktur, Gothic) script. Only in French was it later reinterpreted
> as "x".
>
> =======================
> Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
> mcv@...

Hm! But anyway...
French has lost its -s's, and it is reasonable to assume it went the
usual path s -> s^ -> h -> nothing, along which path Portuguese (and
Andalusian and South American) has travelled some of way, so at least
at some time x stood for (or at least was read as) s^?

Torsten