Ghat can you tell me about consonant shifts?
Piqued by 
wosny's post about the origins of loup-garou in French, I'm curious as to what anyone can tell me about the shift from 'w' in Germanic languages to 'g' in Romance languages and vice-versa. When I was first taking French I noticed that Wilhelm turned into Guillaume, that wicket (or vicquet) turned into guichet, that 'guerre' was 'war' in English, etc. this seems to apply to other Romance languages as well; Guillermo, Guglielmo, etc...
I was always under the impression that the Latin 'v' was a pronounced like a 'w' and that, generally, the arrival of the Germanic tribes among the Latin speaking peoples softened rather than hardened their vowels, but this doesn't seem to follow that trend.
wosny's post about the origins of loup-garou in French, I'm curious as to what anyone can tell me about the shift from 'w' in Germanic languages to 'g' in Romance languages and vice-versa. When I was first taking French I noticed that Wilhelm turned into Guillaume, that wicket (or vicquet) turned into guichet, that 'guerre' was 'war' in English, etc. this seems to apply to other Romance languages as well; Guillermo, Guglielmo, etc...I was always under the impression that the Latin 'v' was a pronounced like a 'w' and that, generally, the arrival of the Germanic tribes among the Latin speaking peoples softened rather than hardened their vowels, but this doesn't seem to follow that trend.