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German W and V | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| LebensForm Senior Member Austria Joined 5054 days ago 212 posts - 264 votes  Studies: German | Message 1 of 8 02 July 2011 at 4:48am | IP Logged | |||||
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I was told by my dad that he knew this lady a long time ago, I'm talking like late 70's early 80's, and she was from Germany, but she would pronounce her Ws like Vs, which I already knew is correct, but she would also speak her Vs like Ws, therefore she just flip flopped the letters, so to speak. I always thought Vs were said like soft Fs or whatnot, but nor a actual W... like words such as vier (4) verstehen (understand) viel (much) etc... but the example my dad told me was she would say Vodka like Wodka... hmm, now I am confused, I thought I knew what I was talking about... apparently not. Is there an actual W sound in the German language?
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| Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5324 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 2 of 8 02 July 2011 at 5:58am | IP Logged | |||||
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It's a well-known fact that many Germans have a problem with the correct pronunciation of English words with a W and usually pronounce it like an English V, because this sound doesn't exist in Standard German. And you probably have heard countless German movie villains say something like "Vee heff vays of maykink you tok."
The German V is pronounced like an F in most words, except for some loan words and proper names. E.g. the V in Vase and Vera is pronounced like in English. (German W is always pronounced like the English V.) Another thing that you probably have already noticed is that b, d, g in final position are usually pronounced as p, t, and k in German. E.g. the German word Hand sounds pretty much like the English word hunt. This phenomenon is called Auslautverhärtung in German. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tbone Diglot Groupie United States Joined 4995 days ago 92 posts - 132 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Russian | Message 3 of 8 02 July 2011 at 5:59am | IP Logged | |||||
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"Death Walley" is the one that cracks me up. I get that one a lot.
No, you're right. A German 'w' is like our 'v', and a German 'v' is like our 'f'. They don't really have a 'w' sound unless you play with vowels. There's some sort of 'over-translation' that goes on and they often think "uh-oh, here comes a 'v' sound (English 'v', but they're thinking German 'w'), got to change it to a (English) 'w' sound" (sorry, don't know all the IPA stuff). Edited by tbone on 02 July 2011 at 6:03am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5324 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 4 of 8 02 July 2011 at 6:19am | IP Logged | |||||
Many, many years ago I used to occasionally do this. For example, I'd pronounce the V in university like an English W. Linguists call this phenomenon hypercorrection.
Actually, in this case the IPA notation is really easy because it corresponds to the English pronunciation. For example: English: valley [vali] wand [wɒnd] or [wɑ:nd] German: Wand [vant], Vogel [ˈfo:gl̩] 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| ScottScheule Diglot Senior Member United States scheule.blogspot.com Joined 5232 days ago 645 posts - 1176 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Latin, Hungarian, Biblical Hebrew, Old English, Russian, Swedish, German, Italian, French | Message 5 of 8 06 July 2011 at 9:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Related is the portrayal of Chekov on Star Trek, who presumably is of Russian stock, and pronounces v's as [w]. "Nuclear [w]essels" is the famous example. Why should he do that? Russian has no [w] (although you can fake it by throwing its version of U before a vowel), and it has a very common [v] sound.
The only explanation I've found is that it's a bit of hypercorrection: the Russian speaker has so much trouble with making [w]s that he throws them in even where they don't belong, like Bostonians do with [r]s. Edited by ScottScheule on 06 July 2011 at 9:51pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6913 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 6 of 8 06 July 2011 at 11:44pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Far too many Swedes (and probably other Scandinavians) say [w]ery, [w]egetarian and so on. Imagine ordering a [wedgie] burger...
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| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5457 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 7 of 8 07 July 2011 at 12:58am | IP Logged | |||||
Yup, far too many Norwegians too. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Jinx Triglot Senior Member Germany reverbnation.co Joined 5697 days ago 1085 posts - 1879 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Catalan, Dutch, Esperanto, Croatian, Serbian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish, Yiddish | Message 8 of 8 11 July 2011 at 10:46pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Actually, to me the German pronunciation of "w" usually sounds somewhere inbetween an English "w" and "v", if anything a little closer to "w" than "v". My theory is that it only sounds like a "v" to our English-speaking ears (at first) because it's not AS extreme as an English "w". If you pronounced all German "w"s as strong English "v"s, you'd sound slightly "off", in my opinion.
This may also vary between accents. The closest I ever heard to an English "w" coming from the mouth of a German was spoken (sung actually) by a guy from Dresden. I've heard other accents doing it too, though. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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