# French and English g's --\> w's (garantie --\> warranty, gauffre -- waffle)

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-and-english-gs-ws-garantie-warranty-gauffre-waffle/397789>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [March 28, 2007, 3:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-and-english-gs-ws-garantie-warranty-gauffre-waffle/397789 "2007-03-28T03:46:15Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![gitfiddle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/898d66/32.png) [@gitfiddle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gitfiddle)\
**Post date:** [March 28, 2007, 3:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-and-english-gs-ws-garantie-warranty-gauffre-waffle/397789/1 "2007-03-28T03:46:15Z")

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I was recently talking to a french friend of mine, and somehow we got on the subject of how a lot of words that start with a _g_ in French start with a _w_ in English (though the \*g \*word usually exists as well, like guarantee).

garde - warden (guard)  
garantie - warranty (guarantee)  
gaufre - waffle  
guerre - war

Can anyone offer any insight on how the g’s and w’s got switched.

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**Author:** ![Giles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/giles/32/60_2.png) [@Giles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giles)\
**Post date:** [March 28, 2007, 5:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-and-english-gs-ws-garantie-warranty-gauffre-waffle/397789/2 "2007-03-28T05:19:47Z")

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At least 3 of those have Germanic origins (garde - warden, gaufre - waffle, guerre - war), and the Germanic originals had “w”, so it changed into “g” in French and other Romance languages. Similarly, the name Guillaume = William is cognate with German Wilhelm. Perhaps, while Norman French had the /w/ sound, other French dialects and other Romance languages did not, and had to change.

(And the Romance languages borrowed the Germanic “war” and its cognates,. even though Latin had a word for war, because Latin “bellum” (war) became the same as Latin “bellus” (beautiful) in the descendants of Latin – one of the pair had to go).