> Petusek wrote:
>
> > The prothetic v- is a strange phenomenon, indeed. It's still very
I should have written "interesting" rather than strange :-)
Piotr wrote:
> Many rural dialects in Poland insert a prothetic [w] of post-Common
> Slavic origin (therefore not [v]) before any initial /o/: [woko],
> [wokno], which only goes to show that filling an empty onset with a prop
> glide is a natural thing to do. Polish normally leaves old *u from *au,
> *ou alone (<ucho> 'ear', <ul> 'beehive', etc.), and contrasts, say,
> <l/óz.ko> 'bed' with <uszko> 'ear (dimin.)' as /wus^ko/ vs. /us^ko/ (the
> latter usually with an initial glottal stop), but Old Polish hesitated
> between <uj> and <wuj> /vuj/ 'uncle' (with old prothesis) and now we
> only have the latter form.
I see. Interesting.
> After the nearly complete elimination of /a-/ from early Polish,
> loanwords with initial /a-/ must have sounded as if they lacked
> something. In names like Agnieszka (= Agnes) or Ambroz.y (= Ambrose)
> there's no prothesis in standard Polish, but the regional dialects often
> show /ja-/ (Jagnieszka/Jagna, Jambroz.), demonstrating the latent
> productivity of j-prothesis. Cf. dialectal Jewa (standard Ewa = Eve),
> and, with further complications, even standard Jadwiga (= Hedwig). About
> the 16th/17th c. loanwords with /a-/ were often embellished with a
> prothetic glottal glide, e.g. armata ~ harmata 'cannon'.
>
> Piotr
Yes. Similar things happened in Old Czech. Hence, we have Jindr^ich in the
Czech version of Henry. I can remember that Czech had a word with prothetici
h- too, but I must find out what word it was...
There's a Czech dialect that uses prothetic h- instead of v- or literary
(?-) (i.e. "hokno" vs. "vokno" vs. "okno", "Holomo:c" vs. "Olomouc".
For those who are interested, I live in a place where three different
dialects meet. Silesian (some features common with the neighbouring Polish),
Vallachian (most archaic) and Haná (most progressive). The most striking
differences concern the vowels:
¨
Lit. Czech bouda "house"
Vallachian: bu:da
(Silesian: buda (loss of quantity, penultimate accent))
Bohemian: bouda (diphthongization)
Hanakian: bo:da (monophthongization)
Lit. Czech u:ski: "narrow"
Vallachian: u:sky:
(Silesian: uski (loss of quantity, penultimate accent))
Bohemian: ouskej (dipht.)
Hanakian: o:ske: (monopht.)
Lit. Czech by:ti "to be"
Vallachian: by:t^i
(Silesian: byt^ (loss of quantity))
Bohemian: bejt (dipht.)
Hanakian: be:t (monopht.)
Hence:
Vallachian /u:/ (= Silesian /u/) = Bohemian /ou/ = Hanakian /o:/
Vallachian /y:/ (= Silesian /y/) = Bohemian /ei/ = Hanakian /e:/
In Bohemian dialects, since the phonetic difference between /y(:)/ and
/i(:)/ disappeared a long time ago, there's a tendency to diphthongize not
only /y:/ > /ej/, but also /i:/ > /ej/, especially after non-palatal
consonants and in initial (stressed) syllables, e.g. ci:t^it "to feel" >
cejt^it.
Silesian is special to certain extent, as it forms a continuum with the
neighbouring Polish dialects (penultimate accent, loss of vowel quantity).
Example:
Lit. Czech: F 'Pust^ejovje 's^ust^i: 'listi:
Silesian (In Puste^jov): F Pus^c^ej'ovje 's^us^c^i 'lis^c^i
Best,
Pet'usek