MWW 3: говь

Cyrillic	говь
Transcription	govi
IPA	[qœjw]?
Layman’s Pronunciation	GUHW
Translation	“desert”
In Genghis Khan’s time it was gobi.

In Mongolian, говь refers to a desert, such as the Gobi Desert. In fact, did you notice something? The English word Gobi itself comes from this word govi. It was borrowed from Mongolian, presumably long ago when /b/ was still [b] and before it became [w]. The vowel i, like most short vowels at the end of words, isn’t actually pronounced anymore. However, it remains in the spelling (spelled with the Cyrillic “soft sign”) because it caused changes in the preceding sounds. Here it fronted the vowel! It also causes consonants to be palatalized, but I can’t really tell if [w] is palatalized here. I recently had the pleasure of hearing some guy repeat говь over and over again, and it sounded like there was a palatal glide in front of the labiovelar glide.

Also: look out for additions and corrections to the previous Words of the Day.