Re: Vwikings.

--- In cybalist@..., markodegard@... wrote:

> By borrowing, we have bw/pw words: e.g., bwana, Puerto Rico.
>
> French has voila. I would not be suprised if they have fw too.
>
> As for the trw combo in trois, my hair stands on end. It's a

different

> R, I think.
>
> Since we're doing a bit of French, there's that town across the St.
> Larry from Montreal: Longueuil (where the Expo was, if I remember
> correctly). This is an *impossible* run of vowels for English, or

at

> least, us Etats-Uniques. I had a wonderful phone conversation

making a

> hotel reservation for the Holiday Inn that was on St. Hubert/St.
> Catherine East in Montreal. The clerk went thru the Holiday Inns in
> metro Montreal and made a great pause when he came to Longueuil.
> "Lon~Gwee" is as close as I can get. Four con-effing-secutive

vowels!

> You effin wanna effin coin the effin word didiphthong.
>
> My other bad is Anilouh and ennui: apparent homophones (Did I spell
> the playwright's name right?).
>

Hi! I've just joined cybalist but have been following the postings
for about a week and am up to about number 1600. I've been informed,
educated, amused and often puzzled but what an awesome site! In any
event I have a comment and a question.

The comment is that in French where the ending sound of one word is
appended to the beginning of the following word if that word begins
with a vowel (called "liaison" if I remember correctly from grade-
school French classes), it is possible to combine [w] with just about
any consonant.
Take the word oiseau "bird", pronounced [wazo] (the w sound is
treated as a vowel). The following examples yields various consonant-
w combinations:
- [lw], l'oiseau, "the bird"
- [zw], les oiseaux, "the birds"
- [tw], cet oiseau, "this bird"
- [nw], mon oiseau, "my bird"
- [kw], cinq oiseau, "five birds"

Now for my question:
--- In cybalist@..., "Glen Gordon" <glengordon01@...> wrote or was
he replying to:

> >With small children, L and R often comes out as W (with wots of wip
> > wounding). I wonder if this has acted as a contraint on such

sounds

> >arising.

In High School one of my classmates always pronounced his R's as W's,
Elmer Fudd-like. At the time I wondered why but forgot about it
until this posting tweaked my memory. His mother tongue (and his
parents') was English so it was not caused by his learning a new
language imperfectly. My question is what would cause his inability
to form the r sound. By the way, his first name was Lawrence so he
always introduced himself as Lawwy.

Regards. Phil