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What causes the trouble with American W? | ||
Tags: Pronunciation | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| IronFist Senior Member United States Joined 6438 days ago 663 posts - 941 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 1 of 18 27 July 2013 at 8:47am | IP Logged | ||
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When Europeans say "V" instead of "W", is that just a habit carried over from their native language (since, for example, German "W" is pronounced as an American "V")? Or is it that they actually cannot hear it or say it?
But isn't an American W sound just a diphthong anyway? It's like "oo" (as in "too") + "uh" (as in "duh"). Take the English word "what." If you slow it down it's just "oo" + "uht." In fact, if you listen to an American English speaker saying it slowly and with emphasis, they might actually even put an "oo" at the beginning of it (and an aspirated "T" at the end) (imagine someone saying "What. Are. You. Doing."). Just something I thought of the other day. Sometimes I imagine how I would teach non-native English speakers to say that sounds they have trouble with. I came to the conclusion that W is just a diphthong. Am I wrong? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Emily96 Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4429 days ago 270 posts - 342 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Finnish, Latin | Message 2 of 18 27 July 2013 at 9:47am | IP Logged | ||
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Interesting. I'd always just assumed it was a habit from their native language, but maybe they can't actually say it.
And if that's the case, i think your method would work very well! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| vonPeterhof Tetraglot Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4773 days ago 715 posts - 1527 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish | Message 3 of 18 27 July 2013 at 10:38am | IP Logged | ||
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Technically it's not a diphthong, but a semivowel - a sound realized in pretty much the same way as a corresponding vowel ([ u ] in the case of [w]), except shorter and serving as a syllable boundary rather than a nucleus. Although there are many cases where it's hard to make a clear distinction between a diphthong and a syllable containing a true vowel in conjunction with a semivowel, I'm pretty sure the syllables that start with a [w] followed by a vowel are not counted as syllables with diphthongs. But yeah, even as an elementary school student who didn't know any of those phonological terms yet, I never understood why my fellow Russian speakers have so much trouble with that sound - the sound [ u ] exists in Russian, so why not just use a shorter version of that? Even if you fail at shortening it and end up adding an extra syllable to the word, it will still sound less jarring than [v] (well, to me anyway). Edited by vonPeterhof on 27 July 2013 at 10:43am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| anime Triglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6361 days ago 161 posts - 207 votes Speaks: Spanish, Swedish*, English Studies: German, Portuguese, French, Russian | Message 5 of 18 27 July 2013 at 4:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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With Swedish people it's actually a matter of pronouncing W instead of V. They often end up pronouncing all
English V's as W's, so wery for very, wast instead of vast etc. In Swedish there's only the V, so they might lazily presume there's only W in English. It really annoys me when people do it Edited by anime on 27 July 2013 at 4:27pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5131 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 6 of 18 27 July 2013 at 4:59pm | IP Logged | ||
I notice this also with native Turkish speakers speaking English, particularly women. It's not at all consistent, though. In Turkish's case, I think it may stem from the fact that the "V" sound falls somewhere between a labial "V" and a "U", depending on accent and/or dialect, and if the word is a loanword or not (example: tuvalet vs. ve/veya, etc.) R. == Edited by hrhenry on 27 July 2013 at 5:04pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| IronFist Senior Member United States Joined 6438 days ago 663 posts - 941 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 7 of 18 27 July 2013 at 5:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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So a Swedish V is pronounced like an American W?
What about in Hindi? I sometimes hear Indian speakers use them interchangeably, for example, I've heard "Divali" pronounced as "Diwali" as well as "Divali," and also with sort of a combination between the two, like a "V" where your upper teeth don't quite touch your bottom lip. But that's a Hindi word so it might not be a good example. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| anime Triglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6361 days ago 161 posts - 207 votes Speaks: Spanish, Swedish*, English Studies: German, Portuguese, French, Russian | Message 8 of 18 27 July 2013 at 7:20pm | IP Logged | ||
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No, a Swedish V is pronounced like English V. The English W doesn't exist except in recent loanwords from
English. In some of these loanwords the pronunciation is sometimes changed from W to V, like webben (the web) could be pronounced webben or vebben, while loanwords starting with wa- normally retain their pronunciation, like wannabe, walkie-talkie, wakeboard, walkover. Pronouncing these words with V would sound pretty dumb Edited by anime on 27 July 2013 at 7:34pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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