At 10:41 am +1300 7/1/00, andrew wrote:
>Am 01/04 19:51  Raymond Brown yscrifef:
[...]
>> >The spelling haber strikes me as unusual.  I would have expected
>> >something like *aver.
>>
>> Unless, as in Spanish, both 'v' and 'b' are pronounced alike, in which case
>> 'haber' might've been "restored" spelling.
>>
>For the initial h- alone I think it must be a restored spelling.  The
>'h' would have to be silent.

Indeed - I assume Artyom is following western Romance practice where 'h' is
merely silent reminder of what used to be (more than two millennia ago, in
fact as it seems /h/ was dying out in popular speech before the end of the
BC period).  The Italians, however, have almost entirely dropped the lot
from writing as well.

[snip]
>>
>I have yet to come to terms with that shifting stress.  I managed to
>avoid it in Brithenig.  There are also the odd, but common, survivors like
>dico - dixi - dictum which I had in mind.

French shows the tendency towards levelling of forms.  Had this not
happened we'd have had, e.g.: j'aime ~ nous amons; je parole, nous parlons.

There is no reason to suppose that such a process was carried even further
in Brithenig.

>
>> The fun the Romancelangs lose by dropping noun cases, they sure make up for
>> with their verbs   :)
>>
>I have no disagreement there - hours of fun!

Yes, particularly if you stray into the odd by-ways and find things like a
preterite in Catalan formed by 'to go' + infinitive. So that we, e.g. :
vaig trobar un amic = I met a friend
BUT
vaig a trobar un amic = I am going to meet a friend    :)

I seem to recall the The Rheto-Romance dialects have some interesting forms
also.

Ray.

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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
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