Spanish has /w/ --spelled <guV>, <huV> as in Guatemala
/watemala/, huipil /wipil/, Nicaragua /nikarawa/
It also appears in words inherited from Latin such as
atestiguar /atestiwar/
Occasionally you hear a hypercorrect /gw-/ or /Gw-/
but this comes across a bit odd in most places
In colloquial Spanish <buV-> is often pronounced /w/
e.g. "buenos días" as /wenos Días/ or more often just
"buenos" as /wenos/. This is pretty universal --like
gonna for going in English, people will even deny they
do it but you hear it all over
Sometimes intervocalic /B/ <b, v> become /w/ as in
"los cubanos" > /lo kuwano/, especially before a
stressed vowel, but this is regional
--- Richard Wordingham <
richard@...>
wrote:
. . .
>
> Torsten is proposing that living Late Latin had both
> /w/ and /v/ (or
> /B/), and notes a very similar system has reappeared
> in Spanish. Now
> in Spanish, initial /w/ may be realised as [gw].
> The same may also
> have been true of Late Latin - what we do see
> clearly is regional
> variation between /w/ and /gw/.
>
> Now, there are some differences between the Spanish
> and Late Latin
> situations. For example, Spanish has /w/ in native
> words such as
> _huevo_ 'egg'.
>
> Richard.
>
>
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