--- In cybalist@..., Miguel Carrasquer Vidal <mcv@...> wrote:
> Just wondering: does the Lith. spelling <y> derive from <ij> (=
<ii>),
> and then also <e.> from <ee> and <u_> from <uu>?:
Rather not. The orthography of early Lithuanian texts was quite
inconsistent to say the less (or rather chaotic), and the
quantitative differences were not rendered at all (in contrast to the
qualitative ones). Since narrow /e./ sharply differs in quality from
open /e/ in all Lithuanian dialects, it was distinguished from /e/ in
the most early texts, with various orthographical devices (under- or
above-dotted {e.} among them) being used. {y} and {ij} was used to
render [j] or Samogitian narrow [e.] (corresponding to today's
Standard Lithuanian /e/, /ai/ etc in some or all positions, /e./ has
merged with /ie/ yielding [ie] or [e..] in most Samogitian dialects)
- phonemes which differ from [i] in quality, but both have a
psychoacoustic characteristic of 'tension'. Such {y} and (much more
rare) {ij} emerged independently, {y} being inspired by Polish {y},
which didn't have a direct phonetical equivalent in Lithuanian, hence
the temptation to apply it to Lithuanian phonetical moments. As that
Samogitian [e.] was phonetically close to [i:], the {y} grapheme
little by little (since 18th c.) has developed a new phonetical
meaning - [i:], eventually stabilized in the beginning of the 20th c.
Sporadic use of {u_} (above-macron) or {u~} (above-tilde) registered
since 16th c., but was actually neglected up to the end of the 19th c.
Sergei