On Sat, Dec 27, 2003, at 11:44 AM, m_iacomi wrote:
> In Daco-Romanian, that's right. But not in Aromanian dialect, where
> /e/ > /i/ is a perfectly common feature you being now made aware of.
BTW, the [e] (actually: [e:]+[æ]+[ö]) <-> [i] correspondence
is very strong in the common Hungarian-DacoRumanian vocabulary
(loanwords & al. words + names).
OTOH, e > i is extant in other environments as well. Within
the Daco-Romanian dialect, a frequent feature, especially
outside Muntenia. But even there, where <de> tends to be
<dã> [d&], <di ce> "why?" is highly frequent. (A map of the
Daco-Romanian dialect will show that the replacements of [e]
by [i] are the most frequent in Transylvania and Moldova,
decreasing towards the plains in a South-East direction.
For example, <laptili>, instead of <laptele> "the milk", is
also typical in regions that are in radical opposition to
Moldova, e.g. west of Apuseni Mountains (i.g. towards the
Hungarian border) as well as Oltenia. Moreover, the
pronunciation [SaptiSpe] for "17" that has become extremely
frequent all over Romania (and which is bad style in official
stiff upper lip Romanian :-) has spread coming from Muntenian
regions where the native-speakers are the most conservative
ones with respect to preserving the [e] unaltered, as com-
pared to other subdialectal and dialectal groups. Moreover,
the same people influenced the next colloquial phonetic
occurrence: "18" [optiSpe], that coexist with [optusprezece].
None of these forms is warranted historically, regionally,
but millions of Romanians are fond of these pronunciations
that you'll never find rendered in written. (And to my own
gusto, "optusprezece" is a... monstrosity; I'd rather
accept [op$pe & ob$pe] as well as the typical Muntenian
<opspce> [opsptSe] :-))
These are only a few ad-hoc examples for the relationship
[e]<->[i]. Perhaps there is some Romanian scholar systematic
listing of this, I dunno.
Then, an [i] can easily become
an [I]; then, [I] and [&] are like... Castor and Pollux.
(Even in Turkish, which is full of [I]'s, [I] rather sounds
as the [&] in my ears. So... nimic nu este bãtut în cuie. :-))
> You certainly have a _big_ difficulty to understand what a crucial
> argument is and the peremptory proof of AR form and Italian word.
BTW, how's the 1st vowel to be seen in French <depuis>?
As an [&] ("e caduc")? Anyway, even this Romance variant
illustrates that there was... freedom to choose the vowel
after the [d] once that there were no Caesars any longer to
issue stiff orders in that respect. :-))
> Marius Iacomi
George