--- In cybalist@..., Piotr Gasiorowski <piotr.gasiorowski@...>
wrote:
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: richardwordingham
> To: cybalist@...
> Sent: Friday, July 12, 2002 2:11 PM
> Subject: [tied] Re: hal
>
>
> > However, apart from it being a potential Celtic change, this is
probably a red herring. The change is late enough for English to
preserve 's' in the River Severn, Latin Sabrina, but Welsh Hafren.
>
> Not necessarily a red herring; it could be an independent parallel
development of the same tendency (cf. umlauts in Germanic). The
Brittonic languages generalised the lenited variant of *s- ([h-]) to
all positions (<saith> is a rare exception) and the same may have
happened on the continent.
>
> Piotr
Or the conquering AngloSaxons might have heard a "slushy" /s/ which
they identified with their own /s/?
Tacitus, Germania:
". . ., to the right shore of the Suevi sea, we find it washing the
Aestii nations who have religious observance and demeanour of the
Suevi, but a language more like to that of Britain."
Which might be interpreted to mean that p-Celtic survived as a
Northern splinter group some time into the Germanic expansion around
0 CE (whatever the origin and cause of that); and that it had *s ->
*h?
I believe Modern Icelandic has developed a "slushy" /s/ ("Ísland");
on its way to /h/?
Torsten