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It, like many New World loans into Spanish got caught by the same Romance rule that transformed William into Guillermo. Initial or intervocalic w-sounds get hardened to gw. /awakatl/ > /agwakate/. It happened to Germanic loans, it happened to Arabic loans, it hapened to Amerind loans and its still active today. It wasn't hard to hear Hispanics in the Dallas area, many of whom are L2 speakers of English, convert the W at the beginning of English words and names to Gw.
Adam
From: "Barry Garcia" <barry_garcia@hidden.email> Reply-To: romanceconlang@yahoogroups.com To: romanceconlang@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [romanceconlang] some food terms Date: Mon, 03 Jun 2002 21:22:32 -0700 Eric Christopherson writes: ><aguacate> IS the Spanish word. I'm not sure where we got <avocado> from. >(It certainly sounds Spanish... maybe it's an older form that was >supplanted?) Apparently it *is* derived from aguacate. Aguacate itself is derived from the Nahuatl "Ahuacatl". I think I may change the Montreiano form to "auacate" since the Nahuatl form suggests the gu is really /w/ instead of /g/ (we dont often discuss avocados in my Spanish classes, so i've not had a chance to hear it pronounced :)). __________________________ Communication is not just words, communication is...architecture because of course it is quite obvious that the house that would be built without that desire, that desire to communicate, would not look as your house does today.
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