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From: hsbrand@cs.vu.nl (HS Brandsma)
Subject: Re: /S/ from /sk/ or?
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Date: Mon, 16 Oct 1995 11:02:27 GMT
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Erland Sommarskog (sommar@enea.se) wrote:
: rte@elmo.lz.att.com (Ralph T. Edwards) wrote:
: >(/S/ was previously acquired from /sk/)

: This is simple question that I maybe could easily get answered by
: looking it up, but I'm too lazy for that. But in words like "shoe"
: wasn't the cluster in Proto-Germanic rather /sx/ or /sh/ than /sk/?
: That makes sense with the spelling, not only in English but also
: German "Schuh" and most of all with Dutch "schoen" /sxu:(n)/.
: In Swedish it is "sko" alright, but I would guess this due to
: /x/ generally becoming /k/ in North-Germanic. (As an aside Swedish
: has /sk/ -> /S/ too, but only before front vowels.)

: But this is only armchair phonetics, I and would gladly appreciate
: comments from all you knowledgeable people out there.

: Erland Sommarskog, sommar@enea.se, Stockholm

In fact the standard view of what happened is this:
Old Germanic is /sk/ which is attested in all older stages
of the Germanic languages.
In North-Germanic this sk has survived in many dialects
except in some environments in Swedish and Norwegian(both),
where it became a type of /sj/(/S/) before front vowels.
(in Danish it still is /sk/ e.g. skib = ship).
In West-Germanic this sk changed to sX everywhere at first,
and remained this way in Dutch and some dialects of Frisian
(namely Saterlandic, Schiermonnikoogs and Terschellings).
In West-Frisian this sX changed back to sk again in the 
large majority of the words, so now it is /sku:x/= shoe
(BTW the Dutch word is /sxun/ with a short u, Dutch doesn't
have a long u sound except in loans), /skIp/= ship etc.
In some Dutch dialects this /sk/ is also retained, and maybe
there it was never changed to /sx/ in the first place.
In all other languages the /sx/ developed further into a 
/sj/(/S/) sound, which we find in English, Standard German,
and North-Frisian dialects. In English this change must be
quite old as Old-Nordic loans with /sk/ are not affected by 
it (compare shirt and skirt).  

Hope this helps

Henno Brandsma(hsbrand@cs.vu.nl)

