LL-L "Phonology" 2006.01.11 (01) [E]

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A=Afrikaans Ap=Appalachian B=Brabantish D=Dutch E=English F=Frisian
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   L O W L A N D S - L * 11 January 2006 * Volume 01
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From: Paul Tatum <ptatum at blueyonder.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Phonology" 2006.01.09 (01) [E]

Hello all,

Ingmar wrote:

> A lot has been written lately by me and others about the pronunciation of
> Dutch v, f, w, z, g etc.
> What I'm curious about is the question why initial f, s, th in older West-
> Germanic became v, z, d (through dh) in Dutch, and if the same voicing
> mutation happened in Low Saxon, and in German too.

It certainly happened in the Middle English of the South-West in the
case of f/v and s/z (such as 'zoider' for 'cider'), and is one of the
characteristics of those dialects.

I did think that in English, the f/v distinction didn't have a high
functional load and there weren't many minimal pairs with initial /v/
versus /f/, but then I came up with plenty of examples: veil/fail,
vie/fie, van/fan, vole/foal, vein/vane/fain/fane /feign, volley/folly -
many more than I thought at first :-).

Also, the case of fox vs. vixen is probably relevant, though I don't
know the exact history of vixen (i-mutated derivative from fox: *fuXs-in-?).

  When I was being taught Welsh, my teacher was always correcting my
pronunciation of <f>, pronounced /v/. He thought that I was saying /f/,
whereas I _was_ trying to say /v/, my /v/ is obviously not strongly voiced.

Bye, Paul Tatum 

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