XPost: alt.usage.english   
   From: naddy@mips.inka.de   
      
   On 2024-04-30, Peter Moylan  wrote:   
      
   >> I don’t have a neat explanation as to why both Russian and Irish have   
   >> all the palatalisation you could want, though!   
   >   
   > In Russian it's clearer because of having, in effect, two sets of   
   > vowels.   
      
   But that is only an orthographic convention.  Apart from и/ы, the   
   vowels are pronounced the same.  The distinction is between palatalized   
   and unpalatalized/velarized consonants.   
      
   The various Slavic languages have different sets of such consonant   
   pairs, and they might reflect different historical processes (I don't   
   know), but the languages, such as Russian, with a more extensive   
   system have developed it through the loss of the yers.  The yers   
   were two extra-short vowels, one front, one back, and there must   
   have been allophonic palatalization before the front yer.  Eventually   
   the yers were lost from all Slavic languages, becoming either full   
   vowels or dropping out altogether, leaving many places where the   
   palatalization was now the only distinction, rendering it phonemic.   
      
   Romanian is well into developing palatalized consonants, mainly in   
   word-final position, and the process appears to be allophonic   
   palatalization before final /i/ (still written) turning phonemic   
   with the loss of that vowel.   
      
   I have no idea how Irish developed its broad/slender distinction,   
   but a similar process would be my first guess.   
      
   --   
   Christian "naddy" Weisgerber                          naddy@mips.inka.de   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
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