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

[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.