r and z keep swapping?
On the Relationship Between R, Z and S Across Languages While listening to discussions of historical linguistics, I was struck by a recurring pattern involving the sounds R, Z and S across several unrelated languages. At first glance these may appear to be distinct consonants, but historical evidence suggests that transitions between them are neither unusual nor isolated. One example comes from the Germanic languages. In Gothic, an East Germanic language preserved in fourth-century texts, forms often end in -s , such as Tīwaz (the god Týr). In Old Norse and Icelandic, the corresponding form became Týr . This reflects a well-known sound change whereby an earlier z ultimately developed into r in North Germanic. Linguists refer to such processes as rhotacism . A comparable pattern is found in Latin. Many masculine nouns end in -us , such as dominus or Julius . Elsewhere in Indo-European languages, similar grammatical endings appear with s , z or r depending on the language and...