Vwikings.

From: markodegard@...
Message: 8812
Date: 2001-08-29

I watched a TV program about Vikings. They had soundbyte of an
Greenlandic Inuit historian (with the last name Olsen). He pronounced
it 'Vwikings'.

I'm not making fun of his accent. It's just that I find the
word-intial Vw combination very easy; fw is just as easy. But no
English word I know of has them.

The point of this post is that there are lots of clear, distinct
sounds a native-speaker of English can easily produce, but there are
few or no words using these sounds. Bw/pw is another example.

With small children, L and R often comes out as W (with wots of wip
wounding). I wonder if this has acted as a contraint on such sounds
arising.