Re: re Voiced affricatives in English dialects [was: re [tied] Anim

At 5:10:45 PM on Friday, September 5, 2003, Gordon Selway
wrote:

> On the "Saxon -v- Anglian" dichotomy, it's worth recalling
> that (a) the areas are close to Wales and Cornwall (if
> Devon is thrown in), the eponym of the royal house of
> Wessex had a Welsh name, the DNA research carried out for
> the BBC in connection with their "Blood of the Vikings"
> series last year showed a higher level of similarities in
> the DNA tested in the south-west of England to that tested
> in Wales than elsewhere in England, there was a
> chiropodist who asserted that there are similarities in
> bone form between her local (ie from families with long
> roots in the area) patients in Herefordshire and
> Worcestershire and those in Wales, but not between those
> patients from outside the counties and people in Wales.

On the other hand, Middle English voicing of /f-/ is found
not only in the Southwest and southwest Midlands but also,
and I believe more strongly, in Kentish, which in Bedan
tradition would derive ultimately from Jutish dialects. But
(1) Orrin Robinson, at least, takes the view that most OE
dialect differentiation was political in origin and occurred
in England, and (2) I have no idea how far back the voicing
can be traced.

> Not sure what to make of this. I''m not sure how far the
> voicing of stops which is one of the features of the
> change form Brittonic to Welsh (eg Lat. 'medicus' (?or Br
> 'medicos') -> W 'meddyg') was areal. And I'm certainly not
> suggesting that 'language is in the genes'!

Jackson (LHEB) dates British lenition to the later 5th
century. It would also have affected the British
pronunciation of Latin, so that Latin <medicus> would
already have been /meðigus/. But this was voicing of medial
and final stops, not of initial fricatives.

Brian