Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

Re: A sound change question...

From:John Cowan <cowan@...>
Date:Thursday, August 7, 2003, 0:54
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. -- BALIN FUNDINUL UZBAD KHAZADDUMU jcowan@reutershealth.com BALIN SON OF FUNDIN LORD OF KHAZAD-DUM http://www.ccil.org/~cowan

Reply

Joe <joe@...>