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I 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

• konschubert 3y ago
  To German ears, the difference between v and w is really difficult to hear. I speak from experience…
  • doctor_eval 3y ago
    My wife is in charge of the wacuum cleaning. Edit to add: she’s German, we laugh about it.
    • TeMPOraL 3y ago
      Surely you meant your vive?
    • yellowapple 3y ago
      How often does your wacuum need cleaned?
  • englishrookie 3y ago
    What 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 ago
      Yes, 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.
      • giantrobot 3y ago
        Ah, yes. IPA. Now it's super obvious how it sounds.
        • vidarh 3y ago
          I find IPA terribly confusing myself, but I think the starting sounds give a decent indication to people how the starting sound of Volk differs more from that of Wolke than that of "valley" from "wool", and it's that latter distinction that is hard for those of us used to languages where that distinction is near non-existent or one of the sounds is rare/not in use. For an English speaker, to put it differently, while the words as a whole are not pronounced exactly the same, the starting sound of German "Volk" is the same as for English "folk", while the starting sound of "Wolke" is the same as for "valley".
• aleph_minus_one 3y ago
  > 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". Depending on the word, in German a "v" is either pronounced like "f" or "w", e.g. [der] Vogel -> "Fogel" [die] Vase -> "Wase" A rule of thumb that I heard is that if a German word is of French origin and starts with V, the V is pronounced like W, otherwise like F.
  • kzrdude 3y ago
    Surely Vase (German) should be spoken as "Vahse" (english phonetic), not with the W sound. I guess you mean the German F and W! That way it's clear.
    • lisper 3y ago
      You are correct. In German, V is F and W is V. There is no W phoneme, except incidentally as in "mauer". I can't imagine a German saying "willage" except perhaps as a joke. In German "willage" would be spelled "uilage" and that would just be really uierd. (Source: I'm a native German speaker, though my family emigrated to the U.S. when I was five so I speak German like a five-year-old who hasn't had much opportunity to practice in a very long time.)
      • deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
• Sharlin 3y ago
  Can also be a case of hypercorrection.