Re: /w/ vs /B/

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