la leche

[Miguel Carrasquer Vidal]

On Wed, 21 Feb 2001 17:10:07 -0500, Rick Mc Callister
<rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu> wrote:

>	Corominas's remark that initial Spanish /c^/ is due to an "Arabized
>pronunciation" strikes me as truly odd given that Arabic doesn't have /c^/ nor
>to my knowledge ever did. Arabic does, of course, have /k/ as well as /q, x,
>h, H/.	If this was indeed from Latin, then something different was going on
>in Mozarabic.

Corominas says that the vowel /a/ is due to an "Arabized
pronunciation" of mozarabic *c^erko < CIRCU.  The initial consonant is
the normal mozarabic (i.e. Southern Ibero-Romance) reflex of
palatalalized Latin /k/ (as it is in Italian and Romanian), nothing to
do with Arabic.

>	Initial <x-> /s^-/ from Mozarabic and Old Spanish, of course,
>normally becomes <j-> /x, h-/ in modern Spanish.

>	As has been pointed out several times on this list, there is the
>truism that Spanish initial /x, h-/ < Old Spanish/Mozarabic /s^-/ < Latin
>/s-/ is due to Arabic influence --which also strikes me as a bit odd given
>that Arabic has /s/ & /S/ as well as /s^/.

But Arabic /s/ is dorso-alveolar, whereas Spanish /s/ is
apico-alveolar (sounding slightly hushing to a foreign ear).

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl