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From: Peter Moylan <peter@pmoylan.org>
Newsgroups: alt.usage.english,sci.lang
Subject: Re: Somewheres
Date: Mon, 2 Sep 2024 23:29:18 +1000
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On 02/09/24 16:13, Madhu wrote:
> * (jerryfriedman) <f5140de8d161885842798961deb38a46@www.novabbs.com>
> : Wrote on Sun, 1 Sep 2024 19:27:48 +0000:
>
>> On Sun, 1 Sep 2024 8:37:16 +0000, Paul Carmichael wrote:
>>
>>> El Sun, 01 Sep 2024 09:49:19 +1000, Peter Moylan
>>>
>>>> As a singer, I have been told to de-emphasise any final 's'. In
>>>> fact, most of the choir is asked to leave it silent.
>>> That's how people speak here. "Los olivos" are "loh'holivoh".
>>
>> Also here in el Norte (of New Mexico).  People even say "ahina" for
>> "así", which people from other parts of the Spanish-speaking world
>> think is funny.
>
> Does the dropping of the final S go back to Greek or Hebrew?

Crossposted to sci.lang, where people might know the answer.

Is there a natural tendency for languages to lose final syllables or
final consonants? This thread has provided examples in Spanish. French
lost a lot of final consonants (in speech, but not in writing) centuries
ago. Some southern Italian dialects have dropped a few final vowels, but
this does not extend to northern dialects or the mainstream version of
the language. Portuguese seems to drop all sorts of things.

Those are all examples in Romance languages. I can't think of any
examples in Germanic languages, and I don't know enough about other
language families.

The well-known example in English is the "dropped g", which reduces an
-ing ending to -@n. But that's not actually the dropping of a consonant,
it's the replacement of one consonant by another. The average English
speaker doesn't notice that, because we're not used to thinking of "ng"
as a single consonant.

-- 
Peter Moylan       peter@pmoylan.org    http://www.pmoylan.org
Newcastle, NSW