3 ms·
The Spanish pronunciation of orthographic z as /θ/ is rather late, post-16th-century. So, I would presume that French could have borrowed the word earlier than
by Mediterraneo10 5y ago
The Spanish pronunciation of orthographic z as /θ/ is rather late, post-16th-century. So, I would presume that French could have borrowed the word earlier than that.
- asveikau 5y agoI believe it was /ts/ and /dz/ before that, depending on if Old Spanish had ç or z. It's not like it went from [s] to [θ], which I think is what some people assume.
- Mediterraneo10 5y agoYes, there were affricates originally, but in the meantime there was first deaffrication to /z̪/ (and then devoicing, etc.).
- asveikau 5y agoWikipedia for Old Spanish says there were two distinct variants of z: The affricates /t͡s̻/ and /d͡z̻/ were simplified to laminodental fricatives /s̻/ and /z̻/, which remained distinct from the apicoalveolar sounds /s̺/ and /z̺/ (a distinction also present in Basque). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Spanish#Sibilants https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Spanish#Sibilants That's pretty interesting. I don't have any experience distinguishing between sounds like that but reading around I start to wonder if I might produce such differences without being aware of it.