09-10-03 16:36, João Simões Lopes Filho wrote:
> But, for example, French have difficult in pronnounce English "th". If
> a hypothetical French community that is annexed by an
> English-languaged country, is it not plausible that this population will
> maintain a shift T > s, or f, or alike?
But native French-speakers experience such a problem precisely because
their first language has no /þ/ or /ð/, not because of any innate
predisposition against non-sibilant dental fricatives. It's a trivial
case of interference between L1 and L2 phonetics. Of course it may give
rise to substratal effects in appropriate circumstances, but there's
nothing genetic about the kind of shift that you described. The mismatch
between the two phonological systems accounts for any such interference.
Actually, /þ/ and /ð/ are rather difficult even for young
English-speakers; they are among the last phonemes acquired by children.
Piotr