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In Swedish, the v and the w only became distinct pretty recently. There are still people alive today who don't know which to pick if they don't already know how
by checkyoursudo 3y ago
In Swedish, the v and the w only became distinct pretty recently. There are still people alive today who don't know which to pick if they don't already know how a v-sounding word is spelled. Also, the same person might say "Vilma" one day and "Wilma" the next, just as an example of the confusion (and Wilma is their own daughter...) Also, also, I have had older Swedes be completely unable to hear a difference between v and (English-pronounced) w.
>.<
- acadapter 3y agoV and W were considered two graphic variants of the same letter until about two decades ago. The W sound was lost centuries ago but reintroduced with English words.
- pavlov 3y agoYes. In Finnish and Swedish, the letters V and W traditionally collated together. In other words, this is a correctly alphabetically ordered list: Wasa Virtanen Wiva Viwe The rule was apparently changed in 2006 in Sweden though (with Finland presumably tagging along). There’s probably still plenty of SQL installations around using the old collation rules because tables were created before the 2006 change reached database software.
- doikor 3y agoIt kinda depends. In a list of names, dictionaries, etc V and W would be separately. This is to make finding the word you are looking for easier. Also in Finnish ÅÄÖ are the end of alphabet. Also Ü and Ű would should be grouped with Y. Õ and Ő with Ö.
- pavlov 3y ago> “In a list of names, dictionaries, etc V and W would be separately. This is to make finding the word you are looking for easier.” If you look at older phone books and dictionaries until the 1990s at least, you’ll find that V and W are combined. There are common surnames in Finland that retain the V/W spelling equivalence, like Virtanen and Wirtanen. When they are grouped together (as they traditionally were), it’s easier to find a person by name because you don’t need to know which way it’s spelled.
- marginalia_nu 3y agoIt's also noteworthy that in Swedish, w is a double-v not a double-u.
- Mistletoe 3y agoJust realized how weird it is we call it double-u when it is a double-v. Language is weird.
- marginalia_nu 3y agoThe history of u, v, double-u and double-v is really convoluted. They're the same letter but also not quite. There are historical reasons that make sense as to why this is.
- dadadad100 3y agoIn French also [1] [1] https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/French/Alphabet https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/French/Alphabet
- smcl 3y agoI also encountered this with German folk speaking English and pronouncing "v" as "w" - "Let's meet up in the willage" If they'd pronounced it "Let's meet up in the fillage" that would make sense as they'd be using the German pronunciation of "v", but I couldn't wrap my head around "willage".
- konschubert 3y agoTo German ears, the difference between v and w is really difficult to hear. I speak from experience…
- doctor_eval 3y agoMy wife is in charge of the wacuum cleaning. Edit to add: she’s German, we laugh about it.
- TeMPOraL 3y agoSurely you meant your vive?
- yellowapple 3y agoHow often does your wacuum need cleaned?
- englishrookie 3y agoWhat part of Germany are you from? Isn't there a clear distinction between Wolke (cloud) and Volk (people). I ask this as Dutch speaker (so, speaker of 'West Germanic') where there is a very clear distinction between volk and wolk (which presumably have the exact same meaning and origin as their German counterparts). Anecdotally, I once spoke with Russian students (this was long ago) who insisted that there was a Russian 'v/w' sound in the word Berenburg (the name of a distilled spirit). I couldn't hear it...
- vidarh 3y agoYes, but "volk" is IPA /fɔlk/ while Wolke is /ˈvɔlkə/. That's a major difference. But in this context, the "v" we're talking about is the English IPA /'v/ (e.g. valley /ˈvæli/) vs. IPA /w/ (e.g. wool, IPA /wʊl/) and that difference is far less noticeable.
- joisig 3y agoSimilar in Icelandic. Most Icelanders when speaking English will use the Icelandic "v" sound for both v and w, it is somewhere in between.
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y agoIn Japan, "L" and "R" are often interchangeable. Their pronunciation is somewhere between. That's a cool story.
- jimmySixDOF 3y agoIn Arabic the hard "P" is often swapped with "B" and it's also the case that real pronunciation is somewhere between.
- dehrmann 3y agoI think P and B are closer phonetically than L and R, though.
- jazzyjackson 3y agosee also Peking/Beijing, Mumbai/Bombay
- goodcanadian 3y agoJapanese actually uses a different phoneme that is sort of halfway between an "r" and an "l" sound. Apparently, depending on where you are in the country, it may sound closer to one or the other. I learned to say it by consciously paying attention to the position of my tongue in my mouth and literally putting my tongue halfway in between the "r" and "l" positions. I actually learned to make the sound before I learned to hear it (which I can now, but I couldn't when I first learned of it). Source: married to a person who can speak Japanese.
- vidarh 3y agoSimilar in Norway. One of the most common pronunciation mistakes Norwegian makes when speaking English is failing to get the v/w distinction right. "Wally" instead of "valley" etc.. I've lived in London 23 years and spoken English for 38, and I still often need to consciously pay attention to that.
- dehrmann 3y agoI used to work for a Swedish company with a system named "foo-ws," as in Foo Web Service. It's pronounced "foo vee ess." Because Swedish. IIRC, www is vee vee vee.
- DavidVoid 3y ago> Because Swedish. IIRC, www is vee vee vee. I can confirm. I mean, the "proper" pronunciation is dubbel-vee-dubbel-vee-dubbel-vee, but we can't be bothered to say all that so we just say vee-vee-vee. I also think "double-v" is a better name for the letter w than "double-u" is.
- checkyoursudo 3y agoLong time ago in the US, I heard someone say on a radio show (maybe an advert), "dub-u dot [example] dot com," like the 3 W's were just too much. I think I have also heard dub-dub-dub dot etc.
- DavidVoid 3y agoDifferentiating between English J and Y is also difficult for Swedes (at least for me), because in Swedish, a J at the start of a word is typically pronounced with a Y-sound. I have to make a conscious effort to make sure I don't get the words jet and yet mixed up when I say them.
- blur13 3y agoThis is so true. I made this mistake until a friend named Justin pointed out that his name was pronounced Justin and not Yustin... I found that to be bit embarrassing so that made the pronunciation rule stick.