Re: Romanian Swadesh list -> 10% substratual

Hello George,
Your interpretation of 'tri' as :

'[trij] or [triy] that contains a diphtong' is pure Science
Fiction.

I tell you as a native speaker of 'tri'.

May I ask?
Are you a native romanian or not?
If yes, where are you from Romania to arrive to this
interpretation?
If not, where you have read about this?

Regards,
marius

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, g <george.st@...> wrote:
>
> > > 1. Romanian 'trei' :
> > > - also with its form 'tri'
>
> <tri> is misleading: there, where Romanian native speakers
> use this variant (IMHO more than 50% of the population), the
> real pronunciation always contain a diphtong: [trij] (or [triy]).
> Which is naturally closed to <trei> [trej].
>
> I.e., this regional <triy> has to be pronounced differently
> from the prefix <tri->, e.g. <tridimensional, trigonometrie>.
>
> But, although the current Romanian writing is quite a...
> phonetic one, it isn't able to render the [ij] diphtong. An
> awkward rendition is there in certain cases, by the double
> "i" writing (e.g.. plural endings, and plural endings plus
> the definite article). Up to circa 1900 there was a graphical
> rendition of the diphtong (an "i" + an "i" with a different
> diacritical sign), but it was abandoned. The consequence is
> that most of Romanian native-speakers have difficulties in
> correctly writing words that contain these 3 kind of "i"-s:
> [i], the... "aspired" [i] that's no [i] at all (extant in that
> weird, typically Romanian plural ending, esp. for the
> masculine), and the diphtong [ij] which many people don't
> even perceive as a diphtong, and must be... taught in school
> that it is a diphtong and not the simple [i]. (Of course,
> during the time period when Romanians used their own
> Cyrilic alphabet, there were no such reading/writing
> problems because of the usage of more appropriate fonts.)
>
> George