(ej10jlbs%SHELL.COM@CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU) >Date: Tue, 18 Oct 1994 13:26:54 -0500 >From: "John Berry,544-4293" > (2) Do you linguists out there know whether the tendency of Spanish, >Portuguese and French to add an initial e- (escuela, escola, e'cole) to Latin >words beginning in sc- is an inheritance from the Celtic languages >pre-existing in thos areas? Are there writings on this and other >inheritances from Celtic? I always thought that at least for Spanish it was due to influence from Arabic, which does much the same thing to avoid initial consonant clusters. That wouldn't explain French, though, which has no reason to be exposed to Arabic. And it's just a guess anyway. ~mark