Christophe Grandsire wrote:
> >Why did my Dutch teacherS always use [w] for <w>?
>
> Probably because they are Flemish?
I think they were Walloon. Only my German teacher was Flemish.
> As I said, it's the normal pronunciation
> there :)) .
I see.
> > IIRC this pronunciation is
> >confirmed by the dictionary Robert & Van Dale.
>
> That I find hard to believe, unless they are talking purely phonemically.
> Phonetically, /w/ takes on many values depending on the region, and in ABN
> [w] is certainly not the main one.
I'm not sure. I'll have to check it next Wednesday.
> >BTW there's something similar in French. In standard French <w> is
> >pronounced [w] in some words (week-end, watt, willien, western...) and
[v]
> >in others (wagon, weber, wisigoth, wagnérisme...).
>
> Basically, since "w" exists only in borrowings, it is pronounced as it was
> in the original language. So borrowings from English have the [w]
> pronunciation, while borrowings from German have the [v] pronunciation. Of
> course, some people mix them :)) .
"Wagon" is a borrowing from English but in France it's pronounced [vago~].
Why? Because it's used in French for long enough (since the 19th century)?
Because the English pronunciation has changed?
>
> >In Belgian French [w] is used everywhere.
>
> Is it because Germanophones are closer there, so that you want to separate
> strongly from them? :)))
It isn't. It's simply because, as anyone else, I learned to speak by
repeating what I heard. Ce n'est qu'un belgicisme parmi d'autres.
Jean-François Colson
jfcolson (a) belgacom.net