Omniscience [was Re: German <w> (was:Dubya and before that, minimal pairs)]

[Robert Whiting]

On Tue, 26 Jun 2001, Leo A. Connolly wrote:

> Robert Whiting wrote:

>> ... I had a German-speaking
>> colleage who pronounced English <v> as [w] (as in "willage").  When I
>> pointed out to her that she could easily pronounce the [v] sound in
>> <village> she said, "Oh, no, German doesn't have that sound -- we use
>> <v> for [f] like in <Vater>.  Well, what can you say?  Now if 'village'
>> were written *<willage>, she would have had no trouble pronouncing it.

> Sure she would have.  The fact is, some Germans pronounce <w> as
> labiodental [v], while others use a bilabial fricative.  When speaking
> English, the latter use the bilabial fricative in lieu of the English
> bilabial glide /w/ and the labiodental fricative /v/.  Since this is
> obviously wrong in each instance, but English has no bilabial fricative,
> English speakers usually believe these Germans have said [v] instead of
> /w/ and [w] instead of /v/, when in fact they said neither.  Spelling
> had nothing to do with her pronunciation problems.

My only problem with this scenario is how do it know?  How does this
highly intelligent sound know that when it appears in English <will>
it has to sound like [v] but when it appears in English <village> it
has to sound like [w]?  And if this sound is that smart, won't it
eventually take over the world?  It has already made my Austrian
colleague into a German.  But it is good to know that it is possible
to pronounce so apodictically about the speech habits of someone that
one has never met or conversed with.

Bob Whiting
whiting at cc.helsinki.fi