From: Andrew Jarrette
Message: 41269
Date: 2005-10-11
> But all other Indo-European languages changed the
> sound /w/ in initial position.
That's a bold absolute, dontchathink? Beware of
absolute statements off the cuff.
Okay, I'm learning how to write in this group. I realize now that just about everything I think and submit to this group is an erroneous statement with overgeneralization, even though I'm not aware of it when I am writing it. I realize that I must couch everything I say with qualifications and restrictions and particularities (as though I should know all possible knowledge about all languages - no offense intended). Well, my only apology is that I am not as experienced nor as knowledgeable as most of the regular members who write frequently on this site - yet as you can see I still have opinions, inaccurately informed as they might be. At least by your corrections you fellows are educating me.
But I really can't think of a standard language in the Indo-European family other than English that preserves /w/ unchanged in initial position (excluding mutated /gw/>/w/ in Welsh), that's why I made that bold emotional statement.
To add to the ante, I am certain that my grandmother
pronounced "w-" as /w/ when she spoke Swedish, not
/v/. I don't know whether this is because that was
the thing to do if you were a Minnesota Swede or
whether she picked up this habit from her own parents
who migrated to the US from Stockholm around 1900.
Interesting. But I suspect that as education and standardization continues to increase worldwide, such significant divergences from the standard pronunciation are probably decreasing over time.
Andrew
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