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How is it possible that ɡ -> ɣ -> ɦ happened only in slavic languages but two times independently? Do slavic languages provide some special enviroment for this shift?

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You refer to Ukrainian and Czech?

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UNUS•ET•UNICUS

Yes. And also slovak, but it has the same origin of ɦ as czech.

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That sound change makes me think of Gheada. I have used g/ɣ → h in a project myself.

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Proto-Hyảlim | Bjarmish

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So there is a /ɦ/ without the retroflex sign... Does that mean that /ɧ/ in Gothenburg is actually [ɦ]? It doesn't sound retroflex at all over here, but it sure does further up north, in central Sweden.

EDIT:
Listened to /ɦ/ on Wikipedia. Most definitely not, then. Then /ɧ/ might not be the best sign, since it's not retroflex everywhere and you can't denote the non-retroflex one by /ɦ/...

EDIT 2:
Never mind. See below.

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‹› · Ḿḿ Ńń Ĺĺ Śś Źź Ąą Ǫǫ Ųų Æ̨æ̨ Ǽǽ Œ̨œ̨ Œ́œ́ Ɣɣ Y̋y̋ Įį Şş Z̧z̧ θ
Āā Ēē Īī Ōō Ūū ↗ Ṭṭ C̣c̣ Łł Ḍḍ Ṣṣ Ẓẓ Ṇṇ Ŋŋ e˞ o˞ ʷ ʲ ʰ ə

Where does it say it did that only in Slavic? I could bet that's happened somewhere else as well.

Still, you have a point; I've seen way too many cases of historical linguists claiming extremely similar sound changes in closely related languages to be just coincidental. Sure, coincidence is a possible explanation for... pretty much anything, really - but we also know that isogloss lines can be a pretty complicated bowl of spaghetti, and sound changes do cross dialect and even language boundaries. Furthermore, our knowledge of who spoke what and where and at which point in history is often sketchy at best, and there are probably all kinds of intermediate dialects and languages between various modern varieties that have simply gone extinct at some point in the past (but not without leaving some kind of influence on surviving varieties).

For example, in this case, the sound change could simply have spread from some varieties of East Slavic to some varieties of West Slavic (possibly via some intermediate variety which has since gone extinct) without having to actually occur twice separately. (Now, I'm not actually familiar enough with the history of Slavic to say if such a scenario would actually be plausible in this particular case; I'm just trying to illustrate the point here.)

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Not sure if you're trolling or not :\

/ɧ/ doesn't have a retroflex hook... and /ɦ/ is pharyngeal and has nothing to do with the former, which is a "co-articulated /x/ and /ʃ/" whose very existence is disputed.

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КЕРВЕНСКИЙ

Oh, fuck. The retroflex hook is the other way. Thank goodness. That clears it up.

Anyway, I've been researching my own /ɧ/ a little bit, feeling my tongue when pronouncing it and comparing it to similar sounds like /x/ and /ʃ/. The conclusion I have come to is that the tongue doesn't touch anything when producing it. The tip is "hovering" right above the bottom of the front of the lower jaw, and the back of the tongue is curled up a little towards the back of the mouth. Compare that to /x/, where the tip actually touches the bottom of the mouth and the tongue is even further back. I find no traces of /ʃ/ in the Gothenburg /ɧ/, but there does indeed seem to be something like it in the central Swedish version, where the tip of the tongue approaches not the bottom of the mouth, but the top of it (and even seems to be touching it).

They're rather different sounds indeed. If you think I'm trolling when I say that the central Swedish one sounds more retroflex than the Gothenburg one, then you just have some listening homework to do...

Here is a recording I made of my best imitation of a central Swedish /ɧ/, followed by the /ɧ/ we use around here in Gothenburg and finally a Norrland realisation as [ʂ].

The debate as to whether the sound exists or not is ridiculous (whether it's a coärticulated /x/ and /ʃ/ is not unplausible, though). Of course it does. Why else does almost no foreigner ever learn how to imitate it properly and why else do we natives hear something wrong even if the immigrant's accent is otherwise perfect? We, as natives, do hear the difference from other sounds such as /x/ and /ʃ/. Of course the sound exists. :S

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‹› · Ḿḿ Ńń Ĺĺ Śś Źź Ąą Ǫǫ Ųų Æ̨æ̨ Ǽǽ Œ̨œ̨ Œ́œ́ Ɣɣ Y̋y̋ Įį Şş Z̧z̧ θ
Āā Ēē Īī Ōō Ūū ↗ Ṭṭ C̣c̣ Łł Ḍḍ Ṣṣ Ẓẓ Ṇṇ Ŋŋ e˞ o˞ ʷ ʲ ʰ ə

What?

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Temporary brain cancer, was thinking of /ħ/, /ɦ/ is of course glottal.

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Skógvur: I don't recognize your first example, I'd say that your second one is pretty much the 'standard' one even in Central Sweden. In Skåne they use some variation of [ʍ].

My own experience is that the co-articulated stuff is pretty much an "upper-class" accent. Afaik no regiolect uses it, but rather variants of [ʃ x ʍ] etc.

Personally I don't think there is anything super unique to any of them, just a bunch of secondary articulations making the nuances hard to grasp by the non-native.

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КЕРВЕНСКИЙ

I thought it was originally /ɣ/, then became /g/ in some languages and /ɦ/ in others. It doesn't really seem like the most intuitive of sound changes -- I mean I can't imagine sound changes occurring in English that would leave us with "hoat", or "gouse" -- but /g/ seems to be a pretty unstable sound. And something somewhat similar is apparently happening in Spain.

What I want to know is when Russians decided to stop transliterating H as Г. I really enjoyed Gonolulu, Gitler, and Gerbert Goover.

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death to vowels
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/g/ is the sound everyone hates! Romance and Germanic softening of many sorts, for example. Icelandic has split it into a plethora of sounds; /k c ɣ j/ and even losing it entirely in places, but not a single instance of /g/ remains.

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‹› · Ḿḿ Ńń Ĺĺ Śś Źź Ąą Ǫǫ Ųų Æ̨æ̨ Ǽǽ Œ̨œ̨ Œ́œ́ Ɣɣ Y̋y̋ Įį Şş Z̧z̧ θ
Āā Ēē Īī Ōō Ūū ↗ Ṭṭ C̣c̣ Łł Ḍḍ Ṣṣ Ẓẓ Ṇṇ Ŋŋ e˞ o˞ ʷ ʲ ʰ ə

A shame; I like it, especially as a coda.

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I speak English and a touch of Gàidhlig.
I am creating a conworld, which I refer to as the Carrion Series, that will contain three languages, Iriex, Dvoen and Maxna.

I remembered I had another example. In baltic languages -[ʊ] is used as 1. person present verb postfix. In czech, in majority of verb -[ʊ] has the same function, however, those have not the same origin, because czech -[ʊ] is shifted old-west-slavic -[ɛ̃]

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doesn't this [ɛ̃] ultimately come from the back nasal vowel (yus)? The yus in 1pssg itself comes from -om, which ultimately comes from the PIE suffix -o, which serves the same purpose. I dont know about baltic, but it seems highly plausible that its -u comes from the very same PIE -o.

Wait. You have /ʊ/ over there? Like you would have [vɛdʊ], not [vɛdu], for "vedu"? That's really interesting. Either there are more vowel differences than I knew about between Czech dialects, or my accent is terrible and I really have to start listening more closely.

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death to vowels
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Very recently, seems to me. A funny thing: the name of the Mrs. Hudson character in Russian is Хадсон /'xatsən/, but the Hudson River is Гудзон /gud'zon/.

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UNUS•ET•UNICUS

How is that really interesting? The sounds are almost identical.

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‹› · Ḿḿ Ńń Ĺĺ Śś Źź Ąą Ǫǫ Ųų Æ̨æ̨ Ǽǽ Œ̨œ̨ Œ́œ́ Ɣɣ Y̋y̋ Įį Şş Z̧z̧ θ
Āā Ēē Īī Ōō Ūū ↗ Ṭṭ C̣c̣ Łł Ḍḍ Ṣṣ Ẓẓ Ṇṇ Ŋŋ e˞ o˞ ʷ ʲ ʰ ə

I don't understand the title of the thread.
"Recesive genes" in linguistics"
Are you wondering if the Slavonic languages have something special for that change to happen or are we just discussing /g/ in them?

I actually don't very care, how do I pronounce it (I'm even not sure, which alveolars in czech are laminal and which apical), I just read it on Wikipedia. Pronounce it however you want, most czech people will probably not note it.

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