Possible phonological changes (was: Rate of change)

[Rick Mc Callister]

>----- Original Message -----
>From: <X99Lynx at aol.com>
>Sent: Friday, June 15, 2001 7:13 AM

>>     Then he went on to point out that European Portuguese has the rolled r,
>>     but (Northern) Brazilian Portuguese has an /h/ reflex of /r/, to which I
>>     added that the Puerto Rican Spanish rolled ("double") rr is often
>>     pronounced as a velar like in French etc.  The implication is that
>>     Brazilian may have passed through this stage in the evolution of r > h.

>[Ed Selleslagh]

>Isn't there a little confusion here? Isn't the Brazilian Portuguese r that's
>pronounced as uvular r, as [rx] in final position, or as [x] or even [h], the
>original rr (cf. Spanish), the rolling r (>3 taps)? Not the single r
>(originally one tap, now often more). [Note that double r is not always
>written as such, as orthography is different according to position in a word,
>e.g. initially or finally].

	I think that's what he meant. Some varieties of Brazilian
Portuguese use /h/ for trilled /rr/. I've heard it from people from the
South as well, from Rio Grande do Sul and Rio de Janeiro. The northerners
I've met used a type of uvular /R/. I've been told that /rr/ is also
trilled in parts of Brazil


>Did you mean that Puertoricans use the Brazilian pronunciation of double r?
>I wasn't aware of that.

	Not all Puerto Ricans, but some. It was a rural pronunciation but
is now found among urban working class people of rural origin in Puerto
Rico and New York --or so I've been told by Puerto Ricans. It's also found
among some Dominicanos and --I've been told-- among some Orientales (Far
Eastern Cuba). You hear a lot among Hispanics from all over who have
settled in New York and lived among Puerto Ricans --including one of my
Costa Rican brothers-in-law

>Maybe Portuguese influence stretched farther north than I thought: in
>Curaçao Papiamento there is a considerable Portuguese base, but that's still
>far more to the south than P.R.

>In the mid-southern Andes (parts of Perú, Bolivia, N. Argentina), the double
>r is pronounced [Z] (French j), strongly reminescent of Polish rz or Czech
>r-hacek, which - as far as I know - have the same origin (rolling r). All seem
>to be results of retroflexion.

	This is common all over most of Spanish-speaking Latin America
outside of the Caribbean and northern Mexico: Costa Rica, Guatemala,
western Panama, southern Mexico, parts of Highland Columbia & Venezuela,
parts of Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, etc.

Rick Mc Callister
W-1634
Mississippi University for Women
Columbus MS 39701