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Interestingly, the same happened when Portuguese missionaries created the Lingua Franca in 16th-18th century Brazil. They found the /w/ semivowel in native Tupi language, but since it does not exist in Portuguese, the sound was written (and then pronounced) as /gw/ (like Wanãbara/Guanabara, warana/guaraná). Lately, ethnologues and linguists have tried to restore original pronunciation of Tupi with a more accurate writing standard, even suggesting new alphabets (though there's no universally accepted system yet). Notice difference with other native American languages like Quechua, where transliteration into Castillian led to /w/ written as "hu" (Tawantinsuyu/Tahuantinsuyu, Tiwanaku/Tihuanaco). 2007/1/3, Eric Christopherson <rakko@hidden.email>: > > 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>. > > > > To unsubscribe, send an email to: > romconlang-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com > > > Yahoo! Groups Links > > > > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]