USAGE: East Slavic historical phonology (was: Questions and Impressions of Basque)

On Tue, Aug 31, 2004 1:47 PM Christophe Grandsire wrote:

> >Interesting to note that, while Spanish transforms 'f'
> >into 'h', Russian transforms 'h' into 'g' (gospital =
> >[military] hospital).
>
> I thought they would rather transform it into [x], since that's what they
> do when trying to learn a language containing [h]...
Older borrowings, esp. those made through German, or of Latin and Greek
origin, use [g] for [h]. It may be explained by the fact that standard
pronunciation of /g/ hesitated in a continuous spectrum between [G] and [h\]
in 17th-18th cc. In Northern and Southern Russian dialects [G] survived till
nowadays, Ukrainian has [h\], Standard Modern Russian revived [g] in early
19th c. from Central dialects (but look: Pushkin still rhymes /dux/ and
/drug/ that means he pronounced the latter as [drux] from underlying
/druG/!)

Newer borrowings, esp. from English, indeed [h] > [x].

-------------------------
On Tue, Aug 31, 2004 2:35 PM Andreas Johansson wrote:

> My understanding is that [x] at some point replaced [g] as the replacement
of
> foreign [h] in Russian. It appears to be a pretty recent thing; I've seen
both
> _Gitler_ and _Xitler_* in WWII stuff.
No. It happened in late 19th c., but for German words and names it lasted a
bit longer. Still, I've never seen *Xitler in Russian, only in Bulgarian
where it is standard.

> Judging from my atlas, Ukrainian has something spelt transliterated as 'h'
where
> Russian has 'g' - Chernihiv for Chernigov, and so on.
It is [h\], and it regularly corresponds with Russian [g] in all native and
some loaned stems.

> * I'm not sure about how the Russians pronounce the 'i', but I'm hoping
for near
> cardinal.
Russian /i/ is a pure cardinal vowel strongly palatalizing any preceding
consonant (including /x/, that may sound as smth close to [C]).

----------------------
On Tue, Aug 31, 2004 3:21 PM Philip Newton wrote:

> That's my understanding, too. So older words such as "Gamburg" or
> "Geynrikh Geyne" have [g] for [h], but newly-borrowed words would tend
> to use [x]. (Unless the word is already well-known in a form with [g],
> e.g. "Gelmut Kol" even though Kohl lived after [x] was more commonly
> used, but "Gelmut" was an established spelling of "Helmut".)
True. I'm not a specialist in History of Russian, but from what I know, the
shift happened somewhen in the "Silver Age" (that is ca. 1890-1917).

> IIRC, Ukrainian has [g] only in onomatopoeia and some loanwords,
Yes.

> and
> uses (used?) a special letter (g-with-upturn) for this,
It is officially returned to the alphabet by 1990 spelling reform, but in
practice almost nobody but radical Nationalists use it.

> which was
> abolished (when it became part of the USSR?), though some are trying
> to reintroduce it.
It was abolished in 1933 when the Bolsheviks regime stopped the so called
"policy of Ukrainization".

> The letter for [g] in Russian is regularly
> pronounced [h] in Ukrainian, AFAIK.
No. It is [h\] - a VOICED glottal fricative.

---------------------
On Tue, Aug 31, 2004 3:52 PM Philippe Caquant wrote:

> My wife (Ukrainian) says 'Gitler', and 'Gyugo', for
> Hugo (Victor) (and 'Gavr' for the French port of Le
> Havre). True, I sometimes told her that she pronounces
> "havarit'" rather than "govorit'" when we speak
> Russian, but it seems that she is not really aware of
> it, she *thinks* she pronounces it the Russian way.
> And I *think* this is not quite true.
Most people here are completely unaware about "two ge's" problem, that is
about existance of [g] ~ [h\] opposition.

> It's really a mistery to, how such different sounds as
> 'i' and 'o' can be used alternatively in similar words
> between Russian and Ukrainian. Kiev airport, Borispol,
> is Borispil in Ukrainian. If, as I believe, '-pol'
> comes from Greek 'polis' (city), than I wonder why the
> Ukrainian changed that 'o' into 'i'. Or maybe it comes
> from Russian 'polje' (field, ground)?
In this case (as in some others) _-pol_ originates from _pole_ 'field'. And
according to a dead phonetic law it produced _-pil_ in Mn Ukrainian. The
same is true about _Ternopil'_ and _Myropil'_. By analogy some people
pronounce _Symferopol'_ as *[sImfe"4Op;il;], but this is 100% wrong - it's
indeed from Greek _polis_.

Respectfully yours,
Yitzik

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