Re: VW (was: Digest 2 Apr)

Hi!

Raymond Brown <ray.brown@...> writes:
> >German professors here who were born in Germany can't say "village", they say
> >"willage" (English orthography), even though there is a [v] in their sound
> >system.
...
> >
>
> As I haven't met your German professors, you may well be right about their
> [v]; but that makes it odd that they say _village_ as "willage".  I would
> listen carefully to their /v/ to hear if it is really a [v].
...

No, I think it is clearly [w].

From what I can tell, it is right that Germans tend to only use the
same pronunciation for /v/ and /w/ in English.  Furthermore, I would
say that [w] is the usual pronunciation for both, so `willage'.  I
think the reason is that German only has one voiced labial
non-plosive: [v].  And since [w] and [v] are equally eazy to speak,
they do not distinguish them and instead over-generalise to the most
frequent one in English, to [w].  (This is different with [s] and [T],
because [T] needs practice, while [w] does not.)

This is quiet funny sometimes.  E.g. a friend of mine once practised
for an exam trying to get the correct pronunciation of the above.  He
tried `vine' and `wine'.  Interestingly, `wine' was easy, `vine' was
impossible.  More interestingly, `wine' in German is `Wein' and is
pronounced [vaIn].

So I think, usually, the pronunciation of /v/ and /w/ is switched to
[w] in English completely.

**Henrik