Interesting linguistics post, all about the r/s thing.

[conuly]

Now with 25% more bathroom graffiti!

Please thank squittycat for this.

What's really cool is that something vaguely similar happened in Latin (and I was just discussing this with my mother, too!) See, in Latin, the third declinsion kindasorta has the ending -s for the singular nominative case. So rex, regis is really regs, regis (with the stem being reg) except that voiced stops assimilate to unvoiced stops before s (so urbs is pronounced urps). This was true for the word honos, honosis, which meant honor. However, there was a language-wide change where s between vowels became r, so for a long time we had the irregular honos, honoris. And then the noun regularized into honor, honoris, giving us the word honor that we have today. It's still kinda irregular, but it's the third declension, nobody cares.

Comments

[squittycat.livejournal.com]

indeed, rex/regis was one of the other examples cited in that class. i think that the r/s thing actually goes all the way back to proto indo-european, not just proto-germanic, but i wasn't 100% sure, so i said proto-germanic to be safe.

Also, ever wonder about why all of the infinitive endings in Latin VOWELre? Except for esse? Yup, same thing.

[squittycat.livejournal.com]

eh, i meant to say "... in Latin are VOWELre." Interestingly enough, the accidentally ommited word is also of the form VOWELre.

[conuly]

Now I want to recite latin verbs. DAMN YOU!

[squittycat.livejournal.com]

eh, it might also be helpful to add that rex/regis was an example cited for a completely different phonological change. because it really has nothing to do with the r/s thing. :)

[conuly]

Though it'd be really cool if you could explain it as the same change...