Re: A sound change question...

From: "Steg Belsky" <draqonfayir@...>
> On Wed, 6 Aug 2003 20:55:01 -0400 John Cowan <cowan@...>
> writes:
> > Steg Belsky scripsit:
> > > /w/ to /gw/ (some spanish dialects, Germanic borrowings into
> > > Romance)
>
> > I don't think this is so much a sound change as a rule for
> > borrowing. Spanish didn't have initial /w/, so it used /gw/ to
> > represent foreign [w].  Similarly, when English borrows a word with
> > [x], it represents the [x] with /k/, but that does not mean there
> > is or was a sound change from /x/ to /k/ (more like /f/, zero, or
> > zero with compensatory lengthening.
> -
>
> Well, when it comes to finding it in Spanish dialects, i was thinking of
> the pronunciation of "huevo" as "güevo".
And vice versa.  Voiced consonants tend to act weird before [w] in the Spanish I
grew up with, so [awela] "grandmother" = <abuela>, [wele] "hurts/smells" =
<duele/huele>.

    *Muke!
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