Re: English sounds `v' and `w'

On Thu, 23 Sep 2004 07:27:53 +0100, Ray Brown <ray.brown@...> wrote:

>Unlikely, methinks. It is, however, debatable whether the Classical Latin
>sound was a bilabial approximant [w] or a labio-dental approximant [v\].
I would go for the *labiovelar* approximate. I'm thinking this because both
PIE *w and *gw turned into Latin v.

I thought of instances were [w] changed to gu in Spanish and French, but
then I remembered that those were German-borrowed words (guerre from war,
guard from ward, etc.).

Ben