From: Rick McCallister
Message: 61180
Date: 2008-11-01
> From: Arnaud Fournet <fournet.arnaud@...>It obviously despite your confusion of arbitrary conventions with rules. By your logic, English /h/ would be a vowel because some speakers say "an history".
> Subject: Re: Re[4]: [tied] Re: [pieml] Labiovelars versus Palatals + Labiovelar Approximant
> To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
> Date: Saturday, November 1, 2008, 4:40 PM
> ----- 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