Re: p <-> kw

Greetings,

On the subject of kw > p, I'm surprised no one mentioned Romanian, which
I thought was one of the most famous languages for that change,e.g. Lat.
"aqua" (water) > Rom. "apa", Lat. "nocte" (night, abl. case) > Rom.
"noapte", Lat. "octem" (eight) > Rom. "opt", etc. Romanian also has gw >
b, e.g. Lat. "lingua" (tongue, language) > Rom. "limba".

On the subject of p > kw, and going back to Celtic, it's will known that
the Goidelic languages have c (< kw) where Brythonic languages have p/b
(or vice versa, since it's believed Goidelic kept I-E kw where Brythonic
changed it to p/b). However, there are some early borrowings into Gaelic
where they changed an original p into c, for whatever reason. The first
example that comes to mind is the Gaelic name for Easter, Càisg, from
Latin pasqua (sp?). Another one is the Gaelic name for the Picts,
Cruithnich (sing. Cruithneach), which is believed to be the same as the
name Prydain/Britain/etc. I should perhaps mention that those examples
are Scottish Gaelic, which is the kind I speak. I'm not sure what the
Irish or Manx forms of those words are.

Thomas

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