>>course, Latin <vapor> could also have had some influence on a
>>local substrate word.
>
>Latin vapor? What kind of influence? p->b or v->zero ? (see also
>Romanian vas and Romanian acoperi :)
Take into consideration that the Latin pronunciation must've
been something like ['wa-por], and that related to this
variants such as ['wa-bor, 'wa-bur] might have been plausible.
A ['wa-bur] pronounced vapor is very closed to modern
Romanian abur ['a-bur].
Just compare the various real-life pronunciation of Italian
words in various regions (esp. towards the South regions of
that linguistic realm, where p tends to sound b and where
o tends to be replaced by u, e.g. Colombo - Columbu). So,
detach yourself a bit from reading such a word as vapor in
your own fashion, of a modern Romanian native-speaker, to
whom a written v is a [v] and a written o is a [o] (although
in your own subdialect they say am durmit, not am dormit,
which is a characteristic you also find in South-Italian
dialects; also see Romanian murit/-or, punte and myriads of
other examples, whereas the class. Latin ones have o in the
stead of u: morit-, pons, pontis, pontem).
> And next Albanian avull? What you would propose here: an
>Albanian "ll"-othacism? like r -> ll in Albanian?
>
>So habeam>ajea>ajb� : b->zero => zero->b? so a kind of
>'ping-pong-ping'?
v<->b common occurrence in many languages. <Sã aibã> has a
popular subdialectal variant (esp. in Southern Romania):
<sã aivã>. Look it up, it can be googled. (In German, you
can compare this with aber<->owa and äwer (cf. Google) and
lieber<->leewer (cf. Google), where the 2nd, unstressed,
syllable is pronounced almost as in Romanian in aivã [-v@],
and hoiwe (halbe "half"), Koiwe (Kalb "calf"), Lewerkas
['le:-v@-ka:s] (for Leberkäse ['le:-b@-ke:-z@] a specialty
containing meat, but neither "liver" nor "cheese") in the
Bavarian-Austrian dialect of German (cf. Google).
>in Latin rubeum > Rom roib, because 'there is no need of any
>additional hypothesis' isn't it? :)
The b<->v is by no means a... must. Some native-speakers
consider <sã aivã> a natural pronunciation, whereas the
same ones will deem <roivii> instead of<roivii> as unnatural,
namely an error. (Idem <robii> vs. *<rovii>.)
>marius
George