Hallo conlangers!

I so far haven't commented on Britainese because I know too little about
Romance dialectology to contribute much of value. But this is the most
interesting romlang project I have ever seen!

On 24/02/2018, 15:50 Raymond Brown wrote:

> Salvete omnes!
>
> I thought it might be useful - at least in clarifying my thoughts - if I
> summarizes things vis_à_vis Germanic borrowings as I see them.
>
> *************************** Initial [w] ******************************
> This has long been part of Britainese and has good Romance predecents
> from the languages of northern Gaul, sse subsection '3.2.2 Germanic /w/
> retained' on:
> http://www.carolandray.plus.com/BART/consonants.html
>
> There has been no counter-arguments given on this list.  So this stays.

We have w > gw in most western Romance, and also in Welsh, though, so
one may expect this shift in Britainese as well. Yet, retention of /w/
would be an interesting _Alleinstellungsmerkmal_ of Britainese. After
all, the w > gw shift in Welsh is connected to its initial mutation
system, which Britainese, if I am informed correctly, does not have. And
English of course did not undergo such a change!

> **************************** Initial [h] ****************************
> The evidence from Picard, Walloon and other dialects and, indeed, from
> French itself, are evidence enough that early Britainese would have
> retained [h] in Germanic borrowings.
>
> The questions are:
>
> 1. How long would the soud have been retained?  It appears to have hung
> on in French till the 15th century.  It is still there in Picard and
> Walloon.  My feeling is that it would also still be there in Britainese.

If Picard and Walloon have retained /h/, it would probably also be
retained in Britainese; after all, English and Welsh did so, too.

> 2. How would this effect spelling?  Clearly <h> = [h] would remain.
> Would there have been a tendency to omit inherited silent <h> in words
> of Latin origin?  AFAIK the only Romancelangs to have done this are
> Italian and Romanian; Romanian does have <h> but only in words of
> non-Latin origin.
>
> 3. If silent <h> is retained then we have a language in which one has to
> learn which words have this redundant letter.  We would get something
> aking to French 'h-aspiré' ~ 'h-muet', except in Britainese 'h-aspiré"
> would be aspirated.  :)

This is an interesting option!

> Of course we could have [h] falling silent and a replication of the
> French  'h-aspiré' ~ 'h-muet' situation but that IMO would be a fairly
> blatent bogoism of the type I wish to avoid.

Sure! Britainese is not French!

> ******************************* Initial [θ] *************************
> This is a sticking point.
>
> There is no doubt IMO that /ð/ would have existed in early Britainese,
> just as it did in early French in our time-line (OTL).  It has been
> argued, however, by And and others that /ð/ is unlikely to have
> persisted in the absence of /θ/.  Thus it would eventually either have
> disappered or shifted to [z].
>
> It has been suggested that /θ/ may have occurred in Germanic borrowings,
> e.g. _thoail_ (or _thwail) <- Old Saxon _þwhahila_ (cf. Old French _
> toaille_ <- Frankish _*þwahlja_).
>
> There is no precedence for this in other Romancelangs where, as we see
> in the French example, Frankish /θ/ is rendered /t/.  But, it should be
> observed that /θ/ was not preserved in continental Germanic; it either
> shifted to /t/, as in Scandinavia, or shifted [θ] -> [ð] -> [d]; so,
> e.g. we see that Proto-Germanic _*þrijiz_ now survives as: Swedish,
> Norwegian & Danish _tre_, Dutch _drie_, German _drei_.   It is,
> therefore, not suprising IMO that continental Romancelangs do not have
> [θ] in their Germanic borrowings!
>
> But Germanic [θ] survived in Iceland and Britain, thus: Icelandic
> _þrír_, English _three_.

Yep. Welsh also has it. And I see no reason why a Romance conlang can't
retain a sound just because other Romance languages have lost it.

> Clearly the Ingvaeonic settlers in Britain would have preserved [θ] in
> BART just as they did in OTL.  So it could be argued that just as in OLT
> [θ] and [ð] survived in the Germanic language of Britain (i.e. English)
> while continental Germanic languages lost these sounds, so in BART [θ]
> and [ð] were retained in the Romance language of Britain, i.e.
> Britainese, but not in many of the continental Romancelangs (tho infact
> as we have seen some Romancelangs do have [θ] and [ð], but not in
> Germanic borrowings)?

Retention of [θ] in Germanic borrowings is an interesting trait to have.
Does Britainese also have borrowings from British Celtic, where this
sound may also occur?

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