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2011-04-18 14:20, thomasruhm skrev:
African latin does have 'b' instead of 'v' very often. I too read that the vowels are like in Sardinian. Some words in african latin where found on broken vessels at Bu Njem.
The thing is that interchange between intervocalic B and V only tells you that they had merged, not into which sound they had merged, since the spelling of the merged sound will be randomly chosen between what are now two equivalent possibilities. Compare the random distribution between _b_ and _v_ in modern standard spelling of Iberian languages, or the random distribution between _t_ and _d_ shown by speakers of American English who are poor spellers, for whom these consonants have merged between vowels. Actually there is a small tilt in the direction of _t_, perhaps because writers are aware that _t_ is more common than _d_, and so they have a greater chance of being correct if they write _t_, in spite of the actual sound being more like their realization of _d_ in other positions. The same goes for merger between high mid and low mid vowels in Swedish: the result of the merger is high mid vowels, but poor spellers are just as likely to use _�_ and _�_ as _e_ and _u_, or any cross-over combination; to them these are just random alternative spellings for the merged sounds, although individuals and groups of individuals will show a preference for one or the other. /bpj