4 ms·

On another note - Indians often switch the w’s and v’s. I don’t know why. If you’re Indian - try pronouncing victory, whisky, and wonderful.

frantathefranta 15d ago
Czech is my mother tongue and I have regular issues with this too (have been mainly English speaking for the last 10 years). Czech does not have a /w/ sound and it confuses me the other way as well, like you said with "victory".
- pndy 14d ago
  My friend from Czechia struggled while pronouncing Polish words including /w/ sound represented by "ł" letter. What I find interesting is that /w/ sound > V západoslovanských jazycích navazuje na praslovanskou nonpalatální souhlásku [ɫ] which is still partially present in the eastern regions of Poland and is associated with sort of "sophisticated" pronunciation used by early 20th century actors - and thus it's also known as "performative ł" or "kresowe ł", or "dark l" in English. It is similar to Arabic "l" present in Allah word.
zarzavat 15d ago
Hindi uses the sound /ʋ/ which is a sound with elements of both v and w. This means that to many Indians, v and w are allophonic: they are heard as the same sound. An example of allophony in English is the aspirated /pʰ/ in pin and the unaspirated /p/ in spin, which to a speaker of Hindi and many other languages would be considered two distinct sounds.
left-struck 15d ago
I’ve always wondered what native English speakers get wrong in this way in various other languages. Anyone got any anecdotes?
- tndibona 15d ago
  I’m not American, but I after living here - I’ve noticed a few. They sometimes say “axe” for “ask”. They fail to enunciate “respiratory” fully - they say “res-pah-tory”. Also, they fail to pronounce the f in fifth - like they say fith. Certain words like “squirrel” tend to get squished into “skwol” while I’m used to pronouncing it in two syllables. I’m trying to think of similar examples. Edit : I now realise that all of the above are incorrect examples in the context of what is being discussed. Pardon me!
  - chuckadams 14d ago
    "Nuke-yoo-ler. It's pronounced nuke-yoo-ler." Jimmy Carter pronounced it "Nook-ler". And he used to serve on a nookler submarine.
    - tndibona 14d ago
      Hah! I grew up pronouncing it “nyu-clear”. Two syllables.
- crabbone 14d ago
  In many Slavic languages there's a concept of "soft" and "hard" consonants. In Russian and Ukrainian, for example, whether the consonant is of either kind is determined by either the vowel that follows it or a special other letter, or, in case of Ukrainian, an apostrophe. In Polish, there's a diacritic sign for the same purpose, which is for some reason reversed for L. Anyways. The example that is very tricky to get right for an English speaker in Russian is: * мат (carpet) * мать (mother) * мять (crumple) * мят (crumpled) All four words usually sound the same to an English speaker. It's usually easier to tell the first two from the last two.
- crabbone 14d ago
  Oh, and in Hebrew, while it's not acknowledged by the speakers themselves, there's also two different ways to pronounce "L" ("lamed"), while English speakers only utilize one of the two ways. So, they manage to say "lomed" (לומד, studies) more or less correctly, but "lo" (לא, no) sounds funny to a native speaker, because the "L" is supposed to be "soft".
crossroadsguy 15d ago
No, we have both those sounds and clear indication on where and how those sounds are made. In our case it's not really confusing. When someone learns English, like I did, there is no way to know what sound will occur where other than just sucking it up as "well, you will know it when you hear it and remember that or get used to speaking like that". "avtar" (w; we would have totally spelled it "Awatar" - I see you Cameron) and "vikas" (v; something our PM got us loads of) have two distinct व sounds and it is phonetic and we don't have to memorise it when we make these sounds. The problem is English keeps coming to us over the years while we take our sweet time in getting used to this pronunciation and spelling monstrosity. Another reason could be, not everyone went to schools where English with strict pronunciation was a focus or even a nudge. This was to your > I don’t know why And I don't know where you are from but if you are from the "English west", I am pretty sure you mispronounce "Gandhi" like "Gendi" or "Geyndii" and been doing it for decades without bothering to even learn it. "I don't know why" :)
- oharapj 15d ago
  I recognise the frustration in this comment and it’s not fair that Indians were singled out, especially because of how few English speakers speak native Indian dialects What’s interesting about the comment though is that to the native English speaking ear the ‘v’ in ‘Avatar’ is definitely not pronounced ‘w’. I would say this confusion points to a difference in how the sounds are differentiated in the native dialects. Similar (but to a lesser degree) to how a native English speaker would struggle to ‘hear’ sounds in a tonal language that they didn’t speak natively
- tndibona 14d ago
  I apologise, I didn’t mean to single us out. I’m a native Tamil speaking Indian raised in Chennai. I used to make the v w switch as a child and someone corrected me. Ever since then, I notice others making it and considered it peculiar and interesting. I never attributed it to distinct ‘va’ sounds in our local languages but just figured we learned English incorrectly.
  - crossroadsguy 14d ago

frantathefranta 15d ago

Czech is my mother tongue and I have regular issues with this too (have been mainly English speaking for the last 10 years). Czech does not have a /w/ sound and it confuses me the other way as well, like you said with "victory".

pndy 14d ago
My friend from Czechia struggled while pronouncing Polish words including /w/ sound represented by "ł" letter. What I find interesting is that /w/ sound > V západoslovanských jazycích navazuje na praslovanskou nonpalatální souhlásku [ɫ] which is still partially present in the eastern regions of Poland and is associated with sort of "sophisticated" pronunciation used by early 20th century actors - and thus it's also known as "performative ł" or "kresowe ł", or "dark l" in English. It is similar to Arabic "l" present in Allah word.

zarzavat 15d ago

Hindi uses the sound /ʋ/ which is a sound with elements of both v and w. This means that to many Indians, v and w are allophonic: they are heard as the same sound. An example of allophony in English is the aspirated /pʰ/ in pin and the unaspirated /p/ in spin, which to a speaker of Hindi and many other languages would be considered two distinct sounds.

left-struck 15d ago

I’ve always wondered what native English speakers get wrong in this way in various other languages. Anyone got any anecdotes?

tndibona 15d ago
I’m not American, but I after living here - I’ve noticed a few. They sometimes say “axe” for “ask”. They fail to enunciate “respiratory” fully - they say “res-pah-tory”. Also, they fail to pronounce the f in fifth - like they say fith. Certain words like “squirrel” tend to get squished into “skwol” while I’m used to pronouncing it in two syllables. I’m trying to think of similar examples. Edit : I now realise that all of the above are incorrect examples in the context of what is being discussed. Pardon me!
- chuckadams 14d ago
  "Nuke-yoo-ler. It's pronounced nuke-yoo-ler." Jimmy Carter pronounced it "Nook-ler". And he used to serve on a nookler submarine.
  - tndibona 14d ago
    Hah! I grew up pronouncing it “nyu-clear”. Two syllables.
crabbone 14d ago
In many Slavic languages there's a concept of "soft" and "hard" consonants. In Russian and Ukrainian, for example, whether the consonant is of either kind is determined by either the vowel that follows it or a special other letter, or, in case of Ukrainian, an apostrophe. In Polish, there's a diacritic sign for the same purpose, which is for some reason reversed for L. Anyways. The example that is very tricky to get right for an English speaker in Russian is: * мат (carpet) * мать (mother) * мять (crumple) * мят (crumpled) All four words usually sound the same to an English speaker. It's usually easier to tell the first two from the last two.
crabbone 14d ago
Oh, and in Hebrew, while it's not acknowledged by the speakers themselves, there's also two different ways to pronounce "L" ("lamed"), while English speakers only utilize one of the two ways. So, they manage to say "lomed" (לומד, studies) more or less correctly, but "lo" (לא, no) sounds funny to a native speaker, because the "L" is supposed to be "soft".

crossroadsguy 15d ago

No, we have both those sounds and clear indication on where and how those sounds are made. In our case it's not really confusing. When someone learns English, like I did, there is no way to know what sound will occur where other than just sucking it up as "well, you will know it when you hear it and remember that or get used to speaking like that". "avtar" (w; we would have totally spelled it "Awatar" - I see you Cameron) and "vikas" (v; something our PM got us loads of) have two distinct व sounds and it is phonetic and we don't have to memorise it when we make these sounds. The problem is English keeps coming to us over the years while we take our sweet time in getting used to this pronunciation and spelling monstrosity. Another reason could be, not everyone went to schools where English with strict pronunciation was a focus or even a nudge. This was to your > I don’t know why And I don't know where you are from but if you are from the "English west", I am pretty sure you mispronounce "Gandhi" like "Gendi" or "Geyndii" and been doing it for decades without bothering to even learn it. "I don't know why" :)

oharapj 15d ago
I recognise the frustration in this comment and it’s not fair that Indians were singled out, especially because of how few English speakers speak native Indian dialects What’s interesting about the comment though is that to the native English speaking ear the ‘v’ in ‘Avatar’ is definitely not pronounced ‘w’. I would say this confusion points to a difference in how the sounds are differentiated in the native dialects. Similar (but to a lesser degree) to how a native English speaker would struggle to ‘hear’ sounds in a tonal language that they didn’t speak natively
tndibona 14d ago
I apologise, I didn’t mean to single us out. I’m a native Tamil speaking Indian raised in Chennai. I used to make the v w switch as a child and someone corrected me. Ever since then, I notice others making it and considered it peculiar and interesting. I never attributed it to distinct ‘va’ sounds in our local languages but just figured we learned English incorrectly.
- crossroadsguy 14d ago