>One of the reasons why I doubt that palatals behave differently,
>preceded by nasals, are the word <dorë> 'hand' < *g^He:r-so-,
>metathetic variant of suffixed form *g^He:s-ro-, because I think
>that
>Alb. verb <ngjesh> 'to press, to compress, to condense' (see also
>Latin <press> from *ghes-to-) I suppose is derived from prefixed
>unmetathetic form *n-g^Hes (*e >je, g-j>gj), besides many dialectal
>forms, like: i gjelbtë 'salted', i njelmtë 'id.'.
>
>Konushevci
In the context of <ngjesh>, let's also have a look
at some Romanian lexical occurrences:
(A) <a înghesui> means the same, roughly; there's the noun
<înghesuiala> made out of it, and means "crowd(ed)" i.e.
crowding together too many persons, who are... <înghesuit,
-a, -tzi, -e> (past participle of the verb). Then the
word <ghes>, as in the locution <a da ghes cuiva> which
chiefly means: "to nudge someone" & to impulsionate, to
stir up to do sth.
(b) <des> "dense" as well as "often" (if adverb); this
one has a verb "a îndesa," (+ îndesare; îndesat - this one
means inter alia "compact") which covers the meaning of the
Alb. <ngjesh> and perhaps much more (whereas <a înghesui>
mentioned above covers only *some* "com/pressing"
situations).
(<dens> is a mere "doublette" in Romanian, i.e. after
being included in the vocabulary as a neologism).
But in some (vast) Romanian subdialectal regions (roughly 1/2
of the Romaniandom) there is practically no difference
between <a înghesui> and <a îndesa>, except for the ending
(from the viewpoint of the native-speakers there).
Because only one kind of lingual-palatal sound is pronounced
in both cases, as I mentioned in the previous message when
referring to <gheara>. Thus, in those subdialects, the native-
speaker wouldn't know how to write "a-i da ghes" unless
told in school, since, for them, <ghes> and <des> are one
word -> phonetically (homophonous, and semantically *still*
akin).
So, in Romanian not every <ghe>/<ghi> thing has a
genuine [g] in it, etymologically.
George