Re: The Combos [hj] [hw] and [gw] in Conlangs

En réponse à Padraic Brown <pbrown@...>:

>
> To my knowledge, French had (/have?) it, Spanish has it, Welsh and
> Cornish have it. Of course English has it.
>
French used to have it indeed (from Germanic loanwords like wardon -> gwardare),
but it lost it soon (sound change /gw/ -> /g/). Now it has it only in loanwords
(especially from Spanish, like Guadalquivir, pronounced /gwadalki'viR/ in
French) and, interestingly enough, in some learned words like "linguistique"
where two pronunciations (/lE~gwis'tik/ and /lE~gHis'tik/) are in competition. I
tend to use the first pronunciation, maybe due to an influence from Latin and/or
Spanish, but the "official" pronunciation is the second one. I've heard both
pronunciations from other people so it's not only my idiolect :) . And of course
there is the same competition between two pronunciations for the word
"linguiste" (/lE~'gwist/ or /lE~'gHist/) though in this case the second
pronunciation seems less used, even if it's still the official one.