"gook" (rhymes with "book")

[Douglas G. Wilson]

>Hmmmmm. Not sure.  All we have, I think, is "googoo / gugu" > "goog" > "gook."

Maybe. Is "goog" attested?

>"In my experience, / guk / is by far the most freq. pronun. (Am sure I
>heard / gUk / only once or twice, / guk / a hundred times. And I don't
>believe i"ve ever heard  / gUk /  on TV or in movies.  If / gUk / was ever
>prevalent, surely there would be more and better evidence of it ?

Here is some suggestive negative evidence. Words spelled "-ook" are usually
pronounced with /U/. In fact we know that "gook" /gUk/ existed way back. If
one desired to represent /guk/, never having seen it in print, would he
write "gook"? Maybe. But somebody else would write "guke", probably, or at
least [e.g., in "American Speech"] append a pronunciation note like <<gook
[rhymes with "spook"]>>. Where is "guke"? Where is the early pronunciation
note?

There may also have been free alternation [is that the right term?] like
with "hoof" (/huf/ or /hUf/).

-- Doug Wilson