🚀 go-pugleaf

>Subject: Re: Bulgarians - descendents of a Finn...
>From: jbm@hal.trl.OZ.AU (Jacques Guy)
>
>hubey@pilot.njin.net (Hubey) writes:
>
>
>>The Chuvash language is known as a 'lir' Turkish vs almost
>>all the rest which are 'shaz' languages. The 'sh', 'a' and
>>'z' in most Turkic languages become 'l','i','r' in this
>>group.
>
[...]
>
> Z to r is also strange; once again, it's usually
>the other way around as far as I know, e.g. French chaire
>--> chaise, and, if memory serves, Latin r --> s.
>Off-hand, I can't think of cases of a regular change of
>sh into l, or of z into r. Could it be that it is Chuvash
>that has been the conservative one, phonologically?
>

z > r is attested in the development from Proto-Nordic to
Old Icelandic. E.g. in masc. nouns nom. sing. the endings -os
and -is (as in Greek, cf. Latin -us/-is) became Proto-Germanic
-az/-iz, which gave proto-Nordic -aR/-iR (where R is supposed to
be a voiced palatal fricative), which gave Old Icelandic -r
(gastis > gastiR > gestr ('guest'), cf. Latin hostis, Church
Slavonic gostu - and Gothic gasts).

Svein Lie