At 5:35:53 PM on Sunday, July 8, 2007, Rick McCallister
wrote:
> I've read that Scots Gaelic and Icelandic are the only
> languages in Northern or Western Europe to devoice
> voiced stops and aspirate unvoiced stops. Is this
> true?
I believe that Icelandic, Scottish Gaelic, Faroese, Saami,
Finland Swedish, and some northern Norwegian (and possibly
Swedish) dialects are the only languages in NW Europe with
normatively preaspirated stops.
The most common view seems to be that preaspiration goes
back to PScand., and that Saami and ScGael. got it from
Scand. However, I've also seen it maintained that Saami is
the source.
Brian