From: Eric Christopherson (rakko@charter.net)
Date: Wed Jun 05 2002 - 02:31:37 EST
On Tue, Jun 04, 2002 at 09:42:45AM +0000, Adam Walker wrote:
>
> 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.
Yeah. It's pretty common in some dialects to substitute /gw/ for /w/ in
words such as <huevo>, <huérfano>, etc.; so it's not at all confined to
loans from outside Spanish.
>
> Adam
>
> >From: "Barry Garcia" <barry_garcia@csumb.edu>
> >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?)
I'm aware that our English word comes from the same source, but I just
wonder how it got its distinct shape in English.
> >
> >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 :)).
That is correct. Nahuatl had/has no voiced plosives (that I'm aware of at
least, though dialects may differ); in earlier transcription of the
language, <gu> and <hu> were used interchangeably for /w/ before a vowel.
<uh> actually stands for /w/ before a consonant, such as in the name
<Cuauhtémoc> /kwaw"temok/.
-- Eric Christopherson, a.k.a. Contrarian Conlanger Rakko ^_^
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