Re: Numerals query again

From: g
Message: 27055
Date: 2003-11-11

On Tue, Nov 11, 2003, at 11:16 AM, m_iacomi wrote:

>>>> SaptiSpe
>>>> optiSpe
>>>
>>> These are Alex' forms. Generally, there is no /i/ but a neutral
>>> sonant (vowel) phonematically linked usually with /1/ which breaks
>>> the horrific consonant group [(p)tS]. As alternative, one can just
>>> throw away the [t] and get /SapSpe/ and /opSpe/ respectively.
>>
>> Well, the vowel you try to expalin in such sophysticated way is a
>> simply short "i".
>
> For Alex' ears and in bad Romanian, yes.

<$apti$pe> "17" and <opti$pe> "18" - which are indeed "bad Romanian"
variants (i.e., *bad style*) - are chiefly typical for regions in
South Romania (in the province known in Romanian as Muntenia). These
coexist with the variants (also typical of this subdialectal area):
<$aptespce>, <optspce> (along with <unspce, doispce/douaspce, treispce,
paispce, cinspce, $aispce, nouaspce>, which tend to be quite obsolete
today, i.e., rather encountered when older people use them). Pan-
Romanian contracted varians (and accepted as in the standard language
as well): <un$pe, doi$pe/doua$pe, trei$pe, pai$pe, cin$pe, $ai$pe,
$apte$pe, opt$pe, noua$pe>.

(Further bad style variant for "18": <optusprezece>, <optu$pe>,
<optîsprezece>.)

> The simplest way would be to make a long [a:] (/pa:sprezec^e/) but
> quantity distinction is not relevant in Romanian. So one has to
> replace the [a:] by some diphthongue; the first one to come in
> mind and the easiest to pronounce in those phonetical conditions
> is [ay].

Not quite similar, but evoking some similar habit of linguistic
... laziness, the word <parale> used in the sense of "money"
(the initial meaning, a certain Turkish coin, is forgotten by
the Romanian native-speaker, since out of use in the 19th c.).

Slang, influenced by some kind or another of Roma ways of talking,
re-"created" this word as (usu. sing+plur) <parai> [pa-'raj]
(I guess some time only 20-25 years ago), which is shorter than
[pa-'ra-le] and avoids bothering with the 3rd silable, where one
has to clearly utter an [l] followed by a full [e] -- instead, a
mere semivowel [j] will do.

OTOH, not all reflexes of words as contracted-shortened variants
really have to follow specific patterns/rules according to some
... sacro-sanct orthodoxy: "mutations" really occur (and quite
often, and esp. when users have difficulties with the rules
residing in their native-speaker competence, esp. when haunted
by some aspects of dyslexia, of oto-lingual disabilities and/or
lack of education); it depends then on the... "market", i.e.,
whether there is a critical mass of users who then take on
and spread the new coinage out of joke or of slangy mood...

> Marius Iacomi

g