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Sorry for late response. I've been swamped in Real World stuff. Pedro Aguiar skrev: > 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 > Wan�bara/Guanabara, warana/guaran�). 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). In both late Latin and Portuguese the probable reason was that the intervocalic allophone of /gw/, namely [Gw] was the phoneetically closest thing to [w] found in the language. Cf. the dialectal pronunciation of Spanish where _agua_ is in fact ['awa]! It is not entirely clear where late Latin had acquired intervocalic /gw/, since in classical Latin /gw/ was found only in the combination /ngw/, but perhaps original intervocalic _qu_ had already gone through > gw > Gw > w in some areas/styles/contexts/words or -- most likely -- in fast speech. However it is significant that Gothic _wulfs_ simply became _ulfus_ in Latin (_Athaulfus_ < _A�awulfs_ etc.) > Notice difference with other native American languages > like Quechua, where transliteration into Castillian led to > /w/ written as "hu" (Tawantinsuyu/Tahuantinsuyu, > Tiwanaku/Tihuanaco). > There was some precedence in Spanish spelling, with words like _huevo_ which had acquired an _h_ to signal that the _u_ should be pronounced [w] and not [v] in medieval spelling/pronunciation. There were no parallel cases in Portuguese, which hadn't gone through the O > uo > ue sound change. -- /BP 8^) -- Benct Philip Jonsson mailto:melrochX@hidden.email (delete X!) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "If a language is a dialect with an army and a navy, of what language, pray, is Basque a dialect?" (R.A.B.)