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abridge (v.) [...] from Old French abregier "abridge, diminish, shorten,"
from Late Latin abbreviare "make short" (see abbreviate).
The sound development from Latin -vi- to French -dg- is paralleled in assuage (from assuavidare) and deluge (from diluvium). [...]
1. Please see the title of this post.
2. This phonological change (is this the right term) did not affect Latin to Spanish, because déluge = diluvio (nm) and the cognate for the English 'assuage' is aliviar. Does anyone know why not?
Abbreviare to abréger is a very regular sound change, it went something along these lines.
[a.bbre.vi.a:.re] > [a.bre.vja.re] > [a.brɛ.vɟær] > [a.brɛ.vɟʒier] > [a.bre.dʒier] > [a.bre.dʒie] > [a.bre.ʒe]
Basically the key is desyllabification of [i] to [j] and then its fortition and assibilation to [dʒ]. The [v] preceding a consonant is lost regularly. In the Middle Ages the change was in its middle (abrégier with <g> being pronounced [dʒ] as in Italian and contemporary Spanish). Around this time, the word penetrated to English, which did not have the distinction between closed and open [e]/[ɛ] and chose to interpret the former as a short [i]. The [dʒ] sound was then represented by <dg>, this might have been later and under the influence of the similar word bridge.
