re: food vocabulary rhetorical question (but real answers are fine)
@MindmeshLink @packbat in several Romance languages gn is actually a common way to write /ɲ/, which is kind of like a palatalized /n/ that naturally causes a sort of /j/ as you leave it
it's particularly common in French (mignon, champignon, the name Agnès) and Italian (gnocchi, the Italian form of the same name, Agnese)
-F