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On Dec 6, 2006, at 10:53 AM, Carl Edlund Anderson wrote:
What was the likely original pronunciation of gu-, representing borrowedGermanic w-, in Romance and how did it develop? Was it originallysomething like /gw/, later developing to /g/, or was it simply /g/ fromthe beginning?
Originally it would have been /gw/, which might have been pronounced [Gw] depending on time and place. I'm not sure why it wasn't borrowed simply as /w/; perhaps because the Latin /w/ had already shifted in most cases to /v/, so there were no initial /w/s. As for why a velar stop rather than some other kind, it's probably because /w/ is labiovelar.