Re: sound change question

--- "Thomas R. Wier" <trwier@...> wrote:

>
> > As for /m/, you could possibly merge it with /w/.
>
> Not a terribly common change in my experience;  the
> two sounds
> are acoustically quite distinct aside from the
> labialization,
> since /m/ has the nasal cavity available to
> resonate, and the
> /w/ has a velar articulation in addition to the
> labial one.

Happens all the time in Gaelic languages, where the
Old Irish nasalized fricative, represented by the
grapheme <m>, came from Indo European /m/. This
nasalized fricative became various /w/ or /u/ or
/zero/ in Irish and Scottish (not sure about Manx).

Here's an example or two:

Scottish Gaelic:
   cumhachd  /ku@xk/ or /kuw@xk/ 'power'
   an t-Samhain /@ntawIn'/  'November'

Irish Gaelic:
  samhlaigh /sauL@/ 'imagine'
  Samhain /saun'/
  (I'm not sure the meaning in English for this one)

Elliott Lash



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