4 ms·
I always thought avocado was the Spanish word, and guaca along with guacamole (guaca + mole meaning sauce) was the indigenous word.
by gricardo99 8y ago
I always thought avocado was the Spanish word, and guaca along with guacamole (guaca + mole meaning sauce) was the indigenous word.
- schoen 8y agoSeems like a plausible guess, but Wikipedia says https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/guacamole#Spanish https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/guacamole#Spanish > From Classical Nahuatl āhuacamōlli, from āhuacatl (“avocado fruit”) + mōlli (“sauce, something ground”).
- mkempe 8y agoYou're right. Avocado -- mid 17th century: Spanish alteration (influenced by avocado ‘advocate’) of aguacate, from Nahuatl ahuacatl. Guacamole -- from an Aztec dialect via Nahuatl "āhuaca molli", which translates to "avocado sauce/concoction".
- schoen 8y ago> (influenced by avocado ‘advocate’) I think you mean "influenced by abogado ‘advocate’".
- jdmichal 8y agoWhich is pronounced with /β/, a sound closer to /v/ than /b/.
- schoen 8y agoI wonder what sound changes led from the Latin pronunciation [adwo] to Spanish [aβo]. (I'm sure this is well known, just not by me!)
- asveikau 8y agoThe dropping of /d/ is not surprising. This happens all over the place. Look at Latin "ad" becoming Spanish "a" for a simple example. (ad like the preposition built into this very word, ad + vocare) The classical /w/ from Latin obviously became /v/ in a lot of romance languages. /b/ and /v/ merging to create [β] I think was particular to Spain and pretty old. But I think I also read that in many places vulgar Latin /b/ had a [v] allophone, but still distinct from /w/ (orthographic v) which I guess evolved into /v/ outside Iberia with the old [v] sticking around as /b/. Here is one of the top google hits from an old saying about this: "beati hispani quibus vivere bibere est" --http://en.antiquitatem.com/felices-hispani-quibus-vivere-est-bibere http://en.antiquitatem.com/felices-hispani-quibus-vivere-est... -- this seems to put the b, v merger at the first century AD and have a lot of quotes about Iberians doing it it from the ~1500s, blaming it on Basques. By the way, in my amateur opinion the much more head-spinny Iberian sound change was the creation of modern /x/ in words like "Quijote" or "México". It would seem that the Spaniards conquered the new world with those things as [ʃ], transcribed a bunch of Mexican place names with that, then later changed the sound to [x], and brought the change back to the colonies. It is interesting to me that such a pronunciation change in relatively isolated populations can still be held on both sides of an ocean, and not have some other form just end up as one side's peculiar accent, as occurred with, say the evolution of the [θ] sound.
- mahesh_rm 8y agoIn Colombia avocado is called Aguacate / Ahuacate, which supports your hypothesis.
- timlod 8y agoAvocado is the English word. Aguacate is the Spanish word which was derived from the Nahuatl āhuacatl.
- Shorel 8y agoAbogado? No gracias.