And, more spectaculary imo: laarzen /la:rzə/ “boots” vs. kaarsen /ka:rsə/ “candles”. The only word with /z/ after a short vowel that I can think of is mazzel “luck”. It may happen in sandhi, though: <is er iemand> [ızərimɑnt] “anybody there?” (But basically only with “is” and “was”, I think)

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I think this is the story NB the fricatives used to be in complementary distribution (voiceless in geminates and word-final position, voiced otherwise, but through loans and stuff there is now a phonemic opposition: rezen /re:zə/ “(they) rose” vs. racen /re:sə/ “to race”; vee “cattle”, fee “fairy”.

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So, it becomes common to understand the meaning 'cow' out of gāvī and similar [phonetical variants]. This all can occur because gāvī etc. are similar to gauḥ and modelled after it. #Mīmāṃsā #SanskritLinguistics 3/

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The person listening to them could nonetheless understand because they inferred that what was meant to be pronounced was gauḥ. Later on, other people, having heard the first one and learnt from them, use gāvī to mean the cow. 2/

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Śabara's short account of language (phonetic) change in his commentary on PMS 1.3.28: A first person wanted to say gauḥ to mean a cow, but failed to, due to their inability (the word gauḥ is hard to pronounce!), and said, instead gāvī. 1/

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