Not quite, but quite close

Wilson Gray hwgray at GMAIL.COM
Thu Feb 9 14:42:00 UTC 2006


A black woman on this morning's Springer:

"We _[gwOin]_ through the same thing."

This woman also pronounced the second syllable of "confuse" as though
it was the second syllable of French "confuse." I.e. she pronounced
[yu] as front rounded [ü] or as German umlaut "ue." I've also heard
many, many, many instances of [Cyu] > [Cru], e.g. [k at nfyuz] >
[k at nfruz], in BE.

This is quite interesting, given Portuguese "frasco" vs. Italian
"fiasco." Although there's no reason to doubt that Late Latin (or
Proto-Romance, etc.) /ClV/ went directly to Portuguese [CrV], /ClV/ >
/CyV] > [CrV] is now seen as a possibility.

-Wilson Gray

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