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Re: /w/ vs /B/

From:Roger Mills <rfmilly@...>
Date:Tuesday, June 5, 2007, 5:15
A little late but...

Henrik Theiling wrote:
> Roger Mills writes: > > And even still in novelists' dialect imitations (perhaps substandard?)-- > > hueso ['weso] 'bone' ~ güeso ['gweso], huevo 'egg' ~güevo. One even > > finds > > "güeno" for bueno. > > Aha! For Germanic loans, I knew this shift, but the native Romance > shifts are new to me. Fascinating. Especially how /o/ first breaks > into /we/ and then moves further to /gwe/. So /o/ > /gwe/ is > perfectly feasible. :-) (And so seems /bo/ > /gwe/.)
Not so sure I'd call it a "shift", as it seems restricted AFAICT to those three words; it's almost a writer's way of saying "this person is a peasant or low-class" or something. I don't recall ever seeing, for ex., güestro for vuestro. But it's true that the Spanish /w/ in the diphth. (in initial position at least) and in borrowed words has a strong velar component. Then there's the delicacy spelled "guacamole" pronounced [waka'mole], I'm not sure which one is correct/corrupted. There may be a relationship with aguacate 'avocado'. Ult. < Nahuatl or other Mexican language.

Replies

Barry Garcia <montrei13@...>
Benct Philip Jonsson <conlang@...>
Eric Christopherson <rakko@...>
Eric Christopherson <rakko@...>