At 7:34:58 on Wednesday, 2 March 2005, Piotr Gasiorowski
wrote:
> On 05-03-02 12:56, tgpedersen wrote:
>> Which means /v/ was French to the natives, but /w/ was
>> not necessarily native to the Normans.
> How come, if they'd brought it with themselves?
I believe that Torsten means that the Normans didn't
necessarily see /w/ as native to the Anglo-Saxons, since
the Normans also had it. In his shibboleth-happy view of
the world this presumably means that the natives would see
(initial) /v/ as a marker of Frenchness and /w/ as a marker
of non-Frenchness, while the Normans presumably wouldn't
care.
Brian