#sound changes

C+j clusters evolved into palatalized consonants twice.

In the first palatalization the velar stops *k and *g palatalized and became true palatals /c/ and /ɟ/, while *j was simply dropped after other stops.

The second palatalization occured after high vowels were lost, creating new C+j clusters. This time the alveolar stops *t and *d palatalized into alveolo-palatal affricates that later simplify to fricatives /ɕ/ and /ʑ/.

The problem:

I want more alveolo-palatals.

Proposed solution:

have the velars palatalize in both cases.

The question:

How should I go about it?

Should I go with option 1:

1st palatalization: *kj *gj > c ɟ

2nd palatalization: *kj, *tj, *gj, *dj > ɕ, ʑ

Or 2:

1st palatalization: *kj, *gj > *tɕ *dʑ > ɕ ʑ

2nd palatalization: *kj, *tj, *gj, *dj > c, ɕ, ɟ, ʑ

This one is going to be a long post but hopefully it's still approachable even if you don't know about linguistics. I often make posts like this in my free time so let me know if you want me to post them to Tumblr more

Context: Other (Asian) Tonal Languages

One of the most well known features of Eastern and South-Eastern Asian languages is tone, the use of pitch to distinguish different words. In this map, white languages have no tones, pink have simple tones, and red have complex tones

Still, just in case you somehow don't know what tone is or just need a refresher, here are some examples from actual languages:

Mandarin Chinese 1. Flat 媽 mā ("mother") 2. Rising 麻 má ("numb") 3. Dipping 馬 mǎ ("horse") 4. Falling 罵 mà ("to scold") 5. Neutral 嗎 ma ("question marker")

Vietnamese 1. Flat ba ("three") 2. Low Falling bà ("grandmother") 3. Dipping bả ("bait") 4. Broken Rising bã ("residue") 5. Rising bá ("to embrace") 6. Mid Falling bạ ("to strengthen")

Japanese Even Japanese can be described as having tones. In English, stressed syllables are louder and longer than the surrounding syllables. In Japanese, stressed syllables have a higher pitch than other ones. "Pitch accent" can also be described as a simple tone system. While a controversial idea to some linguists, I think this makes perfect sense. In essence, Japanese only has a High and Low tone

Korean "Stop" Series

There's a class of consonants known as plosives or stops. They're called that because you completely stop airflow when you say them. Compare /s/ to /p/ (as in "sit" versus "pit"). When saying /p/, you build up air before releasing it

One more important thing to know, consonants can be said with an extra puff of air. We call these consonants aspirated. Hold your hand out flat, with your fingers together. Touch the tips of your fingers to your nose. If you say "spit" and "pit" back and forth you'll feel the difference. With "pit" there is a very strong puff of air that hits your palm. This is the aspirated sound [pʰ]. With "spit" it's a normal [p]. English doesn't distinguish these sounds, but Korean does

Korean has three sets of stops. Aspirated ㅍ /pʰ/, Plain ㅂ /p/, and Tense ㅃ /p͈/. This last one is fascinating. Natives I've asked have describe it as being pronounced "forcefully", calling it "narrow" or "strong". However, this is very different from reality. In truth the plain series is also aspirated, just less so. In speech, the series of sounds are actually Very Aspirated ㅍ [pʰʰ], Aspirated ㅂ [pʰ], and Plain ㅃ [p]

Gyeonggi Dialect

Around Seoul, there has been a merger of Aspirated and Plain stops. They are both said with the same amount of air. Words like "reward" 포상 /pʰosʰaŋ/ and "compensation" 보상 /posʰaŋ/ are now both pronounced [pʰo̞sʰaŋ]

However, a new contrast has emerged in this dialect. Historic Aspirates leave behind a high tone while historic Plain stops leave behind a mid or low tone. So they can still be distinguished by this feature. We have 포상 /pʰosʰaŋ/ [pʰo̞˥sʰaŋ] versus 보상 /posʰaŋ/ [pʰo̞˧sʰaŋ]

Conclusion

like, the only time you get consonant-y-vowel is in words like pure, cure, mute, feud, beauty, etc. i know the historical reasons why those words are pronounced the way they are (it’s largely because of influence of early French on early English), but so where did the other sequences of consonant+y.... go? other languages can do that, and you get words like Spanish fiesta (which we borrowed as fee-esta by the way, not fyesta, because of this phenomenon), Korean hyeong, Japanese Kyōto, Old Norse Mjǫllnir, etc etc etc, you get the idea. we can have other vowels after y-sounds in words like “yes”, “yikes”, “yonder”, and “yam”, but English does not seem to allow other consonants to be placed at the beginning of those words. “myes”, “byikes”, “pyonder”, and “kyam” are not allowed. 

now, those y-sounds in the those words in those other languages derive from different sources, and actually all of those words can be traced back etymologically to not having a y-sound in those spots. fiesta arises from Latin festa via Spanish’s breaking of stressed e and o into ie and ue respectively. hyeong and kyōto are Korean and Japanese borrowings of words from Middle Chinese, in this case MC hˠwiæŋ and kˠiæŋ(tuo) respectively, both of which have an i-sound sort of as a lead-in to the nucleus vowel, but aren’t strictly speaking reconstructed as having been y-sounds. and besides, reconstructions of Old Chinese apparently say that those two words originally had r-sounds in those places, and changes to consonant clusters and the vowel are what produced the y-like sounds which were in the words at the times they were borrowed into Korean and Japanese. Old Norse Mjǫllnir is apparently from Proto-Germanic meldunaz, so this is another instance of an e breaking into a y+vowel combination. the English words pure, cure, cube, etc get their y-sounds from early English speakers rendering the French u-sound into English, so the French u (which is pronounced like saying “eeeee” but with your lips rounded) was borrowed as “yu”, which is a close enough approximation. 

so, i wonder why this is. y is a semivowel, a sound that is somewhere between consonant and vowel, and so is w. but, w actually does appear in a lot of root words in English, and didnt arise from changes to a vowel or consonant... it has always been in those positions for as far back in time as linguists can reconstruct. words like “two” (which isnt pronounced with a w now, but it used to be pronounced with a w and then a long o-sound, and the w still surfaces in related words like “twice” and “twenty”), “dwell”, “swing”, etc still have a consonant-w-vowel sequence that is thought to have been there in Proto-Indo-European too. 

i imagine it’s because y-sounds are extremely prone to affecting sounds around them, so when they arise in a language, they may not last very long, though you’ll see traces of their presence afterwards. whether it involves palatalizing the preceding consonant, fronting the following vowel, or anything like that, they change the sounds around them and then just sometimes.... vanish. sometimes they change the sounds around them so much that including a y-sound there is sort of unnecessary afterwords, like if the sequence “kyeh” would have the k change to a ch-sound in front of the y and the short e (like in “beg”) change to a short i (like in “big”) because of the y right before it, the resulting word “chyih”... doesnt need the y-sound, right? isn’t that kind of hard to say? chyih? it would probably come out as “chih” much more naturally. alternatively, the reason w-sounds stick around longer (though they also often change and alter the sounds around them, and often disappear too, but seemingly a bit less commonly) might just be because rounding your lips is much more distinctive, and since it doesnt involve your tongue much at all, it’s less likely to completely alter the way a word is said the same way that y-sounds do. w’s are like instagram filters you can slap onto a word to color it sometimes lol. 

ga is pretty much always /ga/, and gi is pretty uniformly /dʒi/ or /ʒi/, which sound like the english j and the french j respectively . in spanish it got devoiced to /ʃ/ at some point, sounding like the sh in “she”. also, after vowels in spanish, /g/, /b/, and /d/ weaken to fricatives (or if youre more pedantic, approximanty-fricativey-things), so ba sounds like /ba/, but aba sounds like /aβa/, which is like doing a /v/ sound but with just your lips, no bottom teeth. g between vowels also did this, becoming /ɣ/, so aga would be /aɣa/, which is a hard sound to describe but it’s just like a g that you dont linger on, you just glide over it, kinda just briefly hinting at it haha. you can hear it if you listen to spanish words that have a g between vowels. 

so, spanish ga became /ɣa/ if there was a vowel before it, and spanish gi became /ʃi/, like “she”. but then for some reason spanish /ʃ/ shifted to /x/, which is the sound of ch in german, and the familiar spanish j sound. thats why mexico is pronounced mehiko or mekhiko or however you wanna see it, when the aztecs pronounced it meshiko.

so here’s what i’m trying to point out:

through roundabout ways and odd paths, ga and gi are /ɣa/ and /xi/. and obviously, gi and gui would be /xi/ and /ɣi/.

x and ɣ are both velar fricatives. x is the voiceless velar fricative, ɣ is the voiced velar fricative. so depending on what vowel it’s before, a g in spanish can be voiced or voiceless, but otherwise the same. your mouth is in the same shape, you just either use your vocal cords or you dont. ga and gi originally were the same sound, both just being a plain /g/, and then went in wildly different directions for a while, before ending up back at the same sound, with the only difference being voice. that’s kinda wild lol. 

hello anon!!! 👋 i'm actually also curious about this~ 🤔 also you asked so nicely i just had to answer as soon as i could! 💕 so i tried to do some research on this and i found that it's pretty common to have sound changes in the japanese language! i found a Reddit comment that i think sums up the changes pretty well...basically: 

so yes, anon, there is a logical explanation to ふん and ぷん and びゃくand ひゃく. as for the difference between when to use よ and よん, なな and しち,くand きゅう, i'm sure there's a logical explanation but it's better to use memorize these. you would use きゅう for the number nine but if you wanted to give time you would use く. sometimes you can use なな and then for July you would use しち. i'm sure there are rules for よ and よん as well. 

In one language, following a development similar to Hebrew, intervocalic singleton stops can lenite to their equivilant voiceless fricative, and geminates shorten:

*apa *appa > *afa *appa > /afa/ /apa/

In another, following a development similar to a fee New Caledonian langauges, geminates become aspirated, and then become voiceless fricatives, while simple stops don't change:

*apa *appa > *apa *apʰa > /apa/ /afa/