Return of the minimal pairs (when is a morpheme not a morpheme?)

[Eduard Selleslagh]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Robert Whiting" <whiting at cc.helsinki.fi>
Sent: Wednesday, June 06, 2001 8:24 PM

[snip]

>> [Ed]
>> For your information: in Dutch, w is called 'we', pr. like Eng. 'way' (some
>> Dutchmen will say 'vay').

> As usual, Dutch is stuck in the middle between German and English.  German
> has no [w] sound so they use the <w> graph for [v] (since they use the <v>
> graph for [f]).  To them the name of the <w> graph is 'vay' (just like
> the name of the Hebrew letter waw is vav in German).

[Ed]
Modern Israelis say 'vav' too.

I think your statement about Germans pronouncing w as v and v as f goes a bit
too far. These are relatively modern pronunciations (which tend to propagate to
Holland), with lots of exceptions, almost exclusively for w. In certain
contexts (like C+w), as Pat mentioned, and in a lot of regional speech, w is
pronounced w. Similar things can be said about e.g. r (more, or less,
velarized).

It seems to me that German pronunciation is still evolving in a perceptible
(and uneven) way. And so is the the pronunciation of Dutch in the Netherlands,
but emphatically not in Flanders, Belgium, which is phonetically and lexically
more conservative, even though it's the original homeland of Dutch as we know
it (but since the (religious-political) secession in the 16-17. c. and the
ensuing mass emigration to Holland, it has become more peripheral).

> Dutch has a [w] sound and uses the <w> graph for it, but has adapted the name
> from German ('vay' > 'way').

>> And Double-U (pr. Dub'ya) is still another thing, nothing to do with its
>> shape either :-)

[Ed]
I meant George W.