[w] for [v] in the speech of Russians speaking English

[ja tu]

Hi Brian,
The reason is very simple to me. Russians, such as I am, do not care much about their pronunciation. We can pronounce one and the same word slightly differently and that is not an obstacle for understanding the speaker. Sometimes we fail or forget to adjust our lips to say [v] or [w] as clearly as needed in English. There is no clear [w] or [v] in Russian. It is somewhere in the middle, and the lips do not have to move at all sometimes.
I hope it helps.
Sincerely,
Ivan.  


________________________________
From: Brian Hayden <bkhayden1990 at GMAIL.COM>
To: SEELANGS at LISTSERV.UA.EDU 
Sent: Tuesday, September 17, 2013 10:27 AM
Subject: [SEELANGS] [w] for [v] in the speech of Russians speaking English

Dear SEELANGers, 
The pronunciation of one Russian in this broadcast ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aH41sond7HA ) has me a little puzzled. Around 3:14 she pronounces (as far as I can tell) the first consonant of "very" more or less like an English speaker would, but then around 3:42 she says something that might be either "very" or "wery", and then a few seconds later she says "very" again, but definitely replaces the [v] sound with a [w] sound. 
This strikes me as strange for several reasons: 
1) she doesn't replace [v] with [w] everywhere -- she didn't when she was speaking more quickly around 3:14
2) standard Russian doesn't even have a [w] phoneme
3) this doesn't seem to be an especially common mispronunciation among Russians. Having done quite a bit of English tutoring with Russians, there are a few places where almost everyone I tutored had some issues -- pronouncing the first vowel and r of "Thursday" or "her" like «ёр» ("I will tell хёр") comes to mind. That makes sense to me; Russian doesn't have a sound exactly like the "ur" in "Thursday", so Russian-speakers substitute it with the closest thing they have. But here Russians have the same [v] sound as English-speakers do, but nevertheless it seems that a Russian-speaker is replacing it with a sound that is foreign to standard Russian.
Can someone explain to me what's really happening here?
Sincerely,
Brian Hayden------------------------------------------------------------------------- Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription options, and more. Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at: http://seelangs.home.comcast.net/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------

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