From: Philipp Reichmuth (reichmuth@web.de)
Date: Wed Jul 07 2004 - 05:22:37 CDT
>> Constantinopel hayssen die Chrichen Istimboli und die Thürcken
>> hayssends Stambol;
>
> The Greeks had no problem with initial consonant clusters but the Turks did,
> so it is much more likely that the Turks added the initial I to a Greek
> word starting with ST, just as Spanish and French add initial E before
> such clusters.
Are you sure about the Turks and the initial consonant clusters? I
always thought it depends on the actual cluster structure. Modern
Turkish at least has loanwords such as "brokoli", "graten" or the
notorious "spor" where the problem is the word-*final* cluster, not the
word *initial* one. While Turkic roots usually do not begin with
consonant clusters, it appears to be OK in loans.
The situation is a bit difficult because of the Persian and Arabic
adstrata in Ottoman Turkish. Both Arabic and Persian definitely do not
allow word-initial consonant clusters at all, which led to a lot of
words with auxiliary vowels in Turkish. However, these words already had
the auxiliary vowels when
Philipp
-- Was für Japan ist der Tenno, ist für Frankfurt Brezel-Benno. - Brezelverkäufer in Frankfurt/Main
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