From: Arnaud Fournet
Message: 61177
Date: 2008-11-01
----- Original Message -----
From: "Rick McCallister" <gabaroo6958@...>
> ==========
Spanish most definitely has /w/. Say that to a guatemalteco /watemalteko/ or
a nicaragüense /nikarawense/ and they'll make you do a guaguancó /wawankó/
till you guácala /wakala/ all over your wife's güipil /wipil/. Obviously you
have no vergüenza /berwenza/ if you think Spanish has no /w/.
As for Italian, if you were a real uomo /womo/, you'd retract that remark
and go pray for forgiveness in the duomo /dwomo/.
===========
I'm sorry for you, Rick
but when it comes to Italian, you're wrong.
uomo is /uomo/ and it starts with a vowel
as is proved by the fact you have _gli_ uomini with _gli_ as is expected
with all words starting with a vowel
and you can compare that with any word starting with a consonant that would
take _i_ in the plural.
So I won't retract that remark.
You're the one who is wrong from the start
and persists in confusing the sound [w] with the phoneme /w/.
uomo is /uomo/ and duomo is /duomo/. uo is a diphthong, not a sequence w +
o.
Anything I wrote about distribution oddities of the sound [w] in French also
applies to Italian.
I don't know much about Spanish,
but your examples suggest /g/ is dropped in the context g+u+vowel in some
Spanish dialects,
they say nothing about /w/ being a phoneme.
Arnaud