[fullquote deleted]
>It's Turkic characteristic to change /u/ > /o/: Arabic <burani>
>'some kind of meat' > Turk. <borani>, Persian <bustan> 'garden'
>> Turkish <bostan>, Persian <buza> 'some kinde of drink' > Turk.
><boza>, Per. <shurba> 'soup' > Turk. <�orba>, Persian <dust>
>'friend' (like in Dust-e man 'My friend') > Turkish <dost>,
>etc., etc.
I.e. in "Ottoman" Turkish, right? (Well, it might be seen as
a parallel to what's in Hungarian u > o, u-Umlaut > o-umlaut.)
>So, primary forms are always with <u>, until in Romanian and
>Albanian exists tendency to change /o/ to /u/ where first vocal
>is followed by nasals /m/, /n/, /gn/
In Romanian additionally or rather the tendency in these 3
environments to convert both u and o (and a) into circumflexed-i
(or circumflexed-a), which in Russian is written bI and in
Turkish as an i without the dot. (I can type them but now
I'm using my new Firefox 1.5 browser, and I'm afraid it won't
render the nonASCII fonts in the proper way.)
>and has nothing to do with any kind of Umlaut.
In Romance idioms/dialects in the Southern regions of
former "Romania" (I mean the ancient realm lead by SPQR), the
tendency is o > u; in various phon. environments Romanian can
be seen as the number one in this "top", ahead of the Sicily
and Sardinian isles and of Portugal. In the neighboring,
germanic world, there is IMHO a similar tendency in the South
rather u and u-Umlaut, in the North rather o and o-Umlaut -
the "border" running across Germany; cf. Mueller-Moeller,
gruen-groen (incl. Gr�nland), Fuesse (& Fiass)-Foe:ss/Foe:t,
Blut-Bloot/Blood; Blum(e)-Bloom; pan-German & North-German
komm! ("come (on/here)") vs. Bavarian+Austrian kumm!
("Lieber Gott, mach mich stumm, dass ich net nach Dachau
kumm!" was the popular adage betw. 1933-1945, as the
average German knew of the 1st concentration camp.)
And cf. pan+standard German was ("what") [vas], South
German (esp. Bavarian+Austrain) wos [vos, vo:s], and
Yiddish wus [vus, vu:s]. (North of a Cologne-Berlin line,
the dialectal "what" is wat [vat, va:t].)
>Konushevci
George