Marco Cimarosti wrote:

>Mark E. Shoulson wrote:
>
>
>>In Sanskrit, there's a letter for vocalic "r", so you can
>>tell when it's a vowel. And yet there are words like
>>"'satrva.h" where the r between the t and v is
>>specifically a consonant. I'm not quite sure how they do
>>that without it sounding like at least a very short syllable.
>>
>>
>
>AFAIK, <v> is just conventional transcription for [w], so that consonant
>cluster looks much less scary (at least to Italians, as we have the words
>such as <vuoto> ['vwOto] 'empty', <pruova> ['prwOva] 'proof', <truono>
>['trwOno] 'thunder', etc.).
>
>

True, the <v> is anywhere between <v> and <w>, depending on dialect and
whatever. Though that doesn't make the cluster look much less scary to
English-speakers, or at least to Americans (or at least to me).

The initial cluster "gwl-" is considered a consonant cluster in Welsh;
i.e. "gwlad"/"country" is one syllable. (This despite the fact that "w"
is usually a vowel in Welsh; it can be a semivowel like in English
too). Also a hard one for English-speakers to swallow. Though I think
I have it more or less...

~mark