Re: "b" versus "g"

--- In cybalist@..., "Richard Wordingham" <richard.wordingham@...>
wrote:

> --- In cybalist@..., alexmoeller@... wrote:
> > I have in romanian "bine"= good.
> > But I have in sub dialect of romanians the same word whichi is
> > pronounced "ghini"
> > And here I wonder. I should understud if tehre should have
> > been a "vini" a "pini" a labial one .
> > But ghi? How can be such kinds of divagations explained in the
> > same language at all?
>
> This change, particularly in voiceless consonants, has already been
> described in http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/15344

and

> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/15380 . Indeed the
> latter describes it as a reversal of the change kw > p, though that

is

> not strictly true.
>
>
> Richard.

That's what I'd call a shibboleth-induced retrograde development. ;-)

http://www.angelfire.com/rant/tgpedersen/Shibbolethisation.html

cf Norwegian kvit, kval; Swedish vit, val; "white", "whale", from an
originally Swedish/Danish shibboleth hw-/w-,
Norwegian "overreacting". There are also examples of Irish converting
Latin words in p- to k-, loans that went through Welsh. Perhaps they
were aware of the p/q thing as a shibboleth between their languages?

Torsten