I haven't found anything that would cause the Spanish to use "j" for the sound that was used before. This leads me to assume that it was originally a "hard g", until the entire sound moved forward, probably due to palatalisation. It would then be written with the "j", which, as in other Romance languages, would be articulated somewhere around the palate (like our y) or the alveolar ridge (like our j).
Oldrac the Chitinous wrote:Wait, so "Orange" was a word for the fruit before it was a word for the color? You are blowing my mind here.
So what did they call orange things before the fruit got introduced to English-speaking climes?
There you go!Wiki wrote:Before the English-speaking world was exposed to the fruit, the colour was referred to as geoluhread in Old English, which translates roughly into Modern English as yellow-red.
EDIT: In retrospect, that was all very unnecessary... But the more you know!