tgpedersen wrote:
[João:]
>> Is g- > h- regular in Lat. germanus > Sp. hermano, and if not, what
>> happened? And how about Pt. irmão (e > i)?
>>
>>
>> It's not regular. Latin geminus > Portuguese ge^meo; Latin generalis >
>> Portuguese geral. The anomalous shift could be explained as
influenced
>> by phrasal lenition: teu germanu > *teu yermanu
> Given the etymogies Piotr mentioned, are your sure your etymologies
> are not learned loans from Latin?
My impression is that Portuguese generally retained the glide in
unstressed initial syllables and hardened it into /z^/, which is what
one sees in Port. joelho : Sp. hinojos (< genuc(u)lum 'knee'), Port.
giesta : Sp. hiniesta (< genistam 'broom plant'). But I'm not sure about
the details and the relevant literature is out of my easy reach at the
moment. I may be missing something, but either João is right about
phrasal effects, or perhaps irmão has been influenced by a
Castilian-type dialect.
Piotr
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