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On Dec 12, 2006, at 6:17 AM, Carl Edlund Anderson wrote:
On 08/12/2006 03:13, Eric Christopherson wrote:On Dec 6, 2006, at 10:53 AM, Carl Edlund Anderson wrote:What was the likely original pronunciation of gu-, representing borrowed Germanic w-, in Romance and how did it develop? Was it originally something like /gw/, later developing to /g/, or was it simply /g/ from the 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.Thanks :) Is there any sense on the dates (different in different places?) for shifts from /gw/ or /Gw/ to plain /g/?
I don't know about the dates, but I just read something I didn't know (in John McWhorter's _The Power of Babel_): that Norman French had / w/ where Parisian French had /gw/ -- which is why we have doublets such as <guarantee> and <warranty>.