On Tuesday, January 6, 2004, at 01:15 AM, Richard Wordingham wrote:
> I don't understand your comments about the <ñ> of _ñel_. Are you
> saying it is a palatalised /n/ ([n']) rather than the palatal nasal
> [J] (using the ugly SAMPA notation)? I agree the resemblance to
> the -gn- of French _agneau_ is partly coincidental - I think it's
> the merger of the combination of -gn- > -mn- and -éllu > -iel. I
> don't think the loss of the inital vowel was explained.
>
> (I don't think I ever did establish beyond reasonable doubt that -
> agn- and -amn- would not have merged.)
>
> Richard.
A further step in understanding this occurrence in Romanian
might be a closer look at the subdialects of Banat+Transylvania+
Moldavia. There, still *today* people use __intermediate forms__
containing [mñ], <mñel, mñère, mñírele, mñireasa, amñazã,
mñazã-zi>, i.e. in standard Romanian: <miel, miere, mirele, mireasa,
amiazã, miazã-zi> "lamb, honey, bridegroom, bride, noon, 'mezzo
giorno'". (AFAIK, out of these examples, only miel/mñel has a
3rd variant, without m, ñel. I'm not sure whether there is a
variant [ñaz&z] for "noon.")
In the same dialectal regions, a similar phenomenon around
[p]<>[k^]: <copk^il, pk^atrã> (copil, piatrã) etc.; in other
cases the [p] is dropped altogether <k^atrã, k^aptãn, k^ept>
(piatrã, piaptãn/pieptene "comb", piept "chest").)
[NB: the [ñ] and [k^] sounds are virtually not used, i.e. un-
known (or isolated in peripheral regions, adjacent to the
aforementioned) in the southern subdialectal regions Oltenia
and Muntenia (a.k.a. Ungrovlachia in OCS official documents).]
George