XPost: alt.usage.english   
   From: a24061@ducksburg.com   
      
   On 2024-09-02, Peter Moylan wrote:   
      
   > Crossposted to sci.lang, where people might know the answer.   
   >   
   > Is there a natural tendency for languages to lose final syllables or   
   > final consonants? This thread has provided examples in Spanish. French   
   > lost a lot of final consonants (in speech, but not in writing) centuries   
   > ago. Some southern Italian dialects have dropped a few final vowels, but   
   > this does not extend to northern dialects or the mainstream version of   
   > the language. Portuguese seems to drop all sorts of things.   
   >   
   > Those are all examples in Romance languages. I can't think of any   
   > examples in Germanic languages, and I don't know enough about other   
   > language families.   
   >   
   > The well-known example in English is the "dropped g", which reduces an   
   > -ing ending to -@n. But that's not actually the dropping of a consonant,   
   > it's the replacement of one consonant by another. The average English   
   > speaker doesn't notice that, because we're not used to thinking of "ng"   
   > as a single consonant.   
      
   The -ing suffix in Modern English is a fusion of two Old English   
   suffixes, one similar to German -ung & the other to German -end. I'm   
   not sure of the extent to which that encouraged the development of the   
   current -in'/-ing situation.   
      
      
      
   --   
   With the breakdown of the medieval system, the gods of chaos, lunacy,   
   and bad taste gained ascendancy.                ---Ignatius J Reilly   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)