[tʃ]→[s]Certainty: 4/5Commonality: 4/5
Voiceless postalveolar affricate to Voiceless alveolar fricative
The transformation from 'ch' to 's' is a common simplification where a complex affricate softens into a simple hissing sound.
Phonetic Effects
Deaffrication, Fronting, Depalatalization
Language Examples
cent [ts]→cent [s]— Old French dental affricate [ts] simplified to [s] in Middle French. Note: this example shows [ts]→[s], not [tʃ]→[s]; the palatoalveolar path to [s] is less directly attested.
ç [ts]→s [s]— Seseo: the dental affricate [ts] merged with [s] in Latin American and Andalusian dialects. Again [ts]→[s], not [tʃ]→[s] directly.
Thai /tʃ/→Lao /s/— Lao lacks the postalveolar affricate /tʃ/ present in Thai; it is merged with or replaced by /s/. E.g., Thai 'chai' [tʃaj] (correct) → Lao 'sai' [saj]. This represents historical deaffrication of the palatal affricate to a simple alveolar fricative.
Proto-Mongolic *c [tʃ] (voiceless palatal affricate)→Buryat /s/— The most important diachronic feature of the Buryat consonant system is the spirantization of *c→s (voiceless) and *j→z (voiced). E.g., Proto-Mongolic *cinar 'quality' → Buryat sanar; *cag 'time' → Buryat sag. This removed the original palatal affricates entirely, though secondary dental affricates /ts dz/ re-emerged in loanwords.
Related Transformations
More Romance Shifts
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