Re: Vamos a hablar claro

On Jul 24, 2:47 pm, Harlan Messinger
<hmessinger.removet...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Du¹an Vukotiæ wrote:
On Jul 24, 1:58 pm, Harlan Messinger
<hmessinger.removet...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Du¹an Vukotiæ wrote:
Quite casually, Spanish returned Latin fumus to its oldest form
(hum-), though with the silent /h/.
So now you agree that Spanish "humo" came from "fumus", which is
what I said in the first place. Then all of the rest of this "dim"
business had nothing to do with that.

Go back and read my posts again: I never denied the Latin to Spanish
(f => h) sound change.

You, 18 July: "In case of fumo and humo, we cannot say that f => h sound
change is impossible. On the contrary, but in this specific instance
(fumo => humo) such a process seem to be hardly feasible."

Obviously, I didn't finish my thought here. Namely, I wanted to say
that, maybe, from some reason, educated people replaced /h/ or /th/
to /f/ (in Latin), while the large masses of the general population
continued to use those words (humo, heno, horno) with the initial /h/.
However, there is a problem with other Latin words, where initial /f/
has been evolved from the bilabials /p/ and /b/ (falcon => halcon
etc.), and it showed that such a Latin /f/ to Spanish /h/ sound shift
took place without a clear reason. As I already asked, how could we
explain forte => fuerte in comparison with fornu => horno (oven)?

DV

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