Oh. . . ONE more vaguely interesting thing to write about before sleeping. . .

[xiphias]

This morning, as I was driving Lis to work, we were talking about the word "fish." I mentioned that I was surprised that there wasn't anything in English like "fisk" from the same root, except maybe a surname. (In Old English "sc" is pronounced as "sh" is in Modern English, so there are lots of words in English which came down as both "sh" and "sk" variations -- "shirt" and "skirt", "dish" and "disk", a "skipper" is one who runs a "ship", stuff like that. Since "fisc" is "fish" in OE, I was surprised that there isn't a "fisk" word of which I was aware).

Lis mentioned that, because of the f<-->p shift, "fisc" and "pisc" were the same word, which is neat. I don't know WHY f and p change into each other -- or b and v change into each other -- but they do. You can see it really obviously in Hebrew, but it's common among other Indo-European langages, too.

This evening, Lis looked up some of those words in the OED, and we found that "fiscal" comes from a word for a rush basket. I don't know that it has anything to do with fish.

Comments

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

dictionary.reference.com says [French, from Latin fisclis, from fiscus, money basket, treasury.]

Dunno.

[cheshyre]

Here's the OED:

[a. Fr. fisc, or independently ad. L. fiscus rush-basket, purse, treasury. The current spelling in Sc. Law is fisk, in other uses fisc.]

But how did rush-baskets become associated with purses and treasuries?

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

I believe "skipper" is from Dutch; a quick check at http://onelook.com shows one of the two dictionaries I looked at saying from Dutch and the other Dutch or Low German.

And "skirt" seems to be from Old Norse.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Well, Dutch, Norse, and so forth are all descendants, or close cognates of, Old English. Once you get far enough back historically, all those languages start to smoosh together -- Old English, Old Norse, Frisian, Dutch. . .

[kiya]

Most sound shifts are because the mouth positions for the letters in question are effectively the same; F and P differ only in the lips, same with B and V. (I believe B and P also shift into each other, though not as readily; the difference there is voiced vs. unvoiced.)

This is the short version of this comment. I'm quite certain that oneironaut will be along soon enough to provide the long version. ;)

[jehanna.livejournal.com]

It sure is common in Indo-European languages. See "P-Celtic" vs. "Q-Celtic" for yet another variant--it's the difference between the brythonic and goidelic languages in that family.

In Arabic

[shmuelisms.livejournal.com]

the 'P' and 'B' [and somewhat less so the 'V'] sounds are indistinguishable, to the extent that many funny mistakes occur (and boat-loads of jokes too). There is in East Jerusalem, a sign that reads Barking Lot. I'm not kidding.

In Hebrew the 'S' and 'Sh' are also much closer to each other, than is English.

[oneironaut.livejournal.com]

Yeah, yeah. ;)

Actually, that's basically it. There are some sounds that have a tendency to turn into each other (q.v. sk <-> sh), and those are generally sounds that are articulated in the same place. In the case of f and p, most of the action is happening in the lips. There is probably, in some cases, a consonant between these two that is pronounced with just the lips together and sounds pretty much like f. Phonological Terminology Grab-Bag Fun Time: f is a labiodental (articulated with the lips and teeth) fricative (the airflow is mostly restricted); p is a labial (articulated with the lips) stop (the airflow is halted). Both are unvoiced.

b and p turn into each other like billy-o, as do other voiced/unvoiced pairs (s <-> z, k <-> g, the really complicated t <-> d, etc), but in ways usually heavily influenced by the surrounding sounds, so you have to dig a little more than with sk <-> sh to see that it's systematic, as virtually all sound changes that catch on are.

[brooksmoses]

My grandfather's middle name was Fisk; my grandmother wanted it to be mine as well, but my parents disagreed.

[oneironaut.livejournal.com]

I have a character floating around somewhere named Fisk. She is Unflapped.

[undauntra.livejournal.com]

Lutefisk! Okay, so it's not exactly English.

[griffinick.livejournal.com]

I have memories of reading Beowulf in college and finding a lot of words with the "sc" combination being pronounced as "sh" (e.g. "scip" = "ship"). That "sk" is related/interchangeable as well doesn't surprise me one bit.

[zdenka]

About "fisc" and "pisc" -- Well, piscis is Latin for "fish".

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Yup -- that was Lis's point.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

In Welsh, these changes, which in other languages take centuries, happen every time you open your mouth. Any use of "the" changes the initial consonant of the next word, along predetermined patterns.

Growing up with this gives one an unfair advantage.