Phonetic Merger in Spanish

The Spanish y of yo (I) and ll of lleno (full) have merged in most dialects. The two are now pronounced as a palatal fricative or approximant by most speakers. For those who maintain a distinction, the ll is a palatal lateral.

In most of Argentina and Uruguay, the sound is pronounced as a voiced alveopatal fricative. This sound is present in the words leisure, pleasure and treasure. Among younger speakers of Buenos Aires, this sound is often realized as a voiceless alveopalatal fricative as in fish, pressure and sugar.

A few parts of the Spanish-speaking world maintain the distinction between the y of yo and ll of lleno. The distinction remains in parts of Argentina, Ecuador and Peru, in most of Bolivia, and in Paraguay and the Philippines. In Spain the distinction has been lost in most of the country.

The original palatal approximant and palatal lateral of Spanish have merged in the speech of most speakers. This is the result of a process known as delateralization. However, a few areas still maintain the distinction.

Milk Porridge

Milk porridge is not as well known as sour cream porridge, but is a great alternative. Here is the recipe for this Norwegian dessert:

1 litre milk
200 millilitres flour
50 grams butter
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Slowly add the flour to the milk over medium heat. Stir until the mixture thickens. Lower the temperature and cook for five minutes. Add the butter and salt at the end. Serve with sugar and cinnamon .

This is a simple and tasty dessert. Enjoy!

Sponge Cake

Sponge cake is delicious and easy to make. Here is a Swedish recipe:

2 eggs
150 ml sugar
2 teaspoons grated lemon rind
300 ml flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
75 grams butter
100 ml milk

Beat the eggs and sugar until thick.
Add the flavouring, flour and baking powder.
Melt the butter and cool.
Stir into the batter.
Add the milk gradually.
Mix to form a smooth batter.
Pour into a buttered cake pan that has been sprinkled with breadcrumbs.
Bake for about 45 minutes at 175 C.

This cake is great with coffee or tea. Enjoy!

Post-nominal Article

Danish, Norwegian and Swedish are Germanic languages, but unlike English and German, they have post-nominal articles. In these languages, the definite article is placed after the noun and not before. This is relatively rare in the languages of the world.

The English definite article is placed before the noun. This can be seen in the book, the car, the house, the street and the wind. However, this is not the case in Danish, Norwegian and Swedish. Here are the phrases in these respective languages:

the book, the car, the house, the street, the wind

Danish: bogen, bilen, huset, gaden, vinden
Norwegian: boken, bilen, huset, gaten, vinden
Swedish: boken, bilen, huset, gatan, vinden

With common nouns, the suffix variant is -en, and with neuter nouns, it is -et. In these languages, the majority of nouns have common gender. However, the suffix variant is different for plural nouns. Here is a list of words for the cars, the days, the dogs, the houses and the streets.

Danish: bilerne, dagene, hundene, husene, gaderne
Norwegian: bilene, dagene, hundene, husene, gatene
Swedish: bilarna, dagarna, hundarna, husen, gatorna

Though Danish, Norwegian and Swedish are Germanic languages closely related to English and German, their use of post-nominal articles is quite rare in the languages of the world. They suffix the definite article to the noun. This suffix has three variants- one is for common nouns, one for neuter nouns, and another for plural nouns.

Latin Word Order

Latin word order is very different from that of English. The reason is that Latin uses case to indicate the function of words in a sentence. The result is that Latin word order is far more flexible.

Consider the sentence A dog bites a man. The noun dog is the subject and man is the object. This is determined by the position of the words in the sentence. If we changed their positions in the sentence and uttered A man bites a dog, we'd have a very different meaning. In Latin, however, the same sentence can be stated in six different ways.

The sentence A dog bites a man is Canis mordet virem in Latin. The Latin sentence only has three words because no articles are used in Latin. The word canis (dog) has the ending -is to indicate that it is the subject of the sentence, and virem (man) has the ending -em to indicate it is the object.

The result is that the sentence A dog bites a man can be expressed in Latin with different word orders. Here they are:

Canis mordet virem.
Canis virem mordet.
Virem canis mordet.
Virem mordet canis.
Mordet canis virem.
Mordet virem canis.

The usual word order of Latin is SOV. This corresponds to Canis virem mordet. However, as we have seen in the previous examples, the sentence A dog bites a man can be expressed with six different sentences. In contrast, only one sentence is possible in English.

English is classified as an SVO language. We see this in the sentence A dog bites a man. In Latin the usual word order is SOV. However, Latin is a language which marks nouns with subject and object endings. The result is a flexible word order.

Kir

Kir is the name of a popular French cocktail. It is very simple to make and has only two ingredients. To make it you need white wine and blackcurrant liqueur known as creme de cassis.

Here is the recipe:

Put two tablespoons of cassis in a wine glass. Add a 3/4 cup of dry white wine and stir.

Traditionally it is made with a white wine from the Burgundy regjon of France, but other wines are also used. If champagne is added instead of white wine, it's called a kir royal.

Similarity of Romanian and Spanish to Latin

Romanian and Spanish are both Romance languages. They are descended from Latin and show a number of similarities to Latin and to one another. Here is a list of ten words with the Latin, Spanish and Romanian equivalents:

chair sella silla scaun
cloud nubes nube nor
flower flos flor floare
fruit fructus fruta fruct
gold aurum oro aur
milk lactis leche lapte
sun solis sol soare
table mensa mesa masa
time tempus tiempo timp
tooth dente diente dinte

Most of the words on the list are very similar. The exceptions are the Romanian words scaun and nor. With the exception of the Spanish word oro, all the words begin with the same letter. A few Spanish and Romanian words are almost identical- they include mesa/masa (table), tiempo/timp (time), diente/dinte (tooth) and fruta/fruct (fruit).

The Spanish words for chair, cloud and sun show more similarity to Latin than do the Romanian words. The Romanian word for gold reflects greater similarity to Latin than does the Spanish word. With the remaining six words, both languages have words similar to Latin.

Romanian has word-final consonant clusters which do not occur in Spanish. These clusters occur in fruct and timp. Nine of the Spanish words end in a vowel, but only four of the Romanian words do.

The vocabulary list shows that Spanish and Romanian are descendants of Latin. The three languages share many similar words. In contrast to Spanish, Romanian permits word-final consonant clusters.