--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "P&G" <petegray@...> wrote:
>> Latin had no /h/ (it lost it very early on). Therefore, no native
>> Romanian words have /h/, and no substrate /h/'s would have survived
>> among a Romanized population.
>
> If Latin did lose the /h/, it restored it by the Classical period,
> although there was confusion over it. We have a poem by Catullus
> mocking someone for saying things like "Hionian Sea" instead of
> "Ionian."
Usually, romanists interpret that as hyperurbanism proving it was
no longer pronounced, not as restoration of it. During Classical
period, aspiration was mostly used only by educated persons. For
lower class people imitating them one has the observation of
Gellius: "rusticus fit sermo [...] si adspires perperam". The
guys trying to imitate educated people were a minority and since
they had no regularity in using initial aspiration, they had no
lasting impact on vernacular. See for ex. Renzi/Ambrose "Manuale
di linguistica e filologia romanza":
"La tendenza ad eliminare l'aspirazione è attestata già in età
repubblicana, come si deduce da alcune grafie errate come <Oratia>
per <Horatia>, e da un passo dell'oratore Nigidio Figulo (I sec.a.C>)
che ne condanna l'abuso (cioè l'uso ipercorretto). L'ipercorrettismo
<hire> per <ire> a Pompei prova come nel latino volgare del I secolo
d.C. la <h-> non si pronunciasse già più. Tutte le lingue romanze
infatti l'hanno perduta."
> Mostly, <h> in Latin words has an etymological justification.
In written language, of course. It was no more pronounced than
French "h", for instance.
> It was the much later loss in the later Empire which would cause
> its absence in Romance languages.
Temporary reinstation of the phoneme in CL hardly had any serious
effect on VL (out of some wise guys making a fuss of themselves by
inconsiderate abuse of it).
Regards,
Marius Iacomi