From: Andrew Jarrette
Message: 41387
Date: 2005-10-13
1) The Sorbian languages have preserved initial w- in most positions.
Anyway, w- remains [w] in Lower Sorbian except when before o, u in native
words (where it changed into [h]).
-- Thank you for informing me. That is very interesting, Slavic languages that have preserved initial /w/. Pardon my ignorance, but in which countries are these languages spoken? Is it Poland or the Czech republic, as I suspect?
2) Standard Dutch (I mean the standard variant which is being described in
teach-yourself books etc.) changed the bilabial approximant /w/ (in anlaut)
into the labio-dental approximant, so the change is less than in most other
IE languages.
-- this is what Sanskrit is supposed to have had and what modern Hindi, Panjabi, Gujarati, etc. have (though with velar co-articulation), even though the many times I have heard the Indian labio-dental approximant, and I have listened carefully and intently with the intention of testing what I have read in books, I would still swear that they use two allophones, a rounded one before rounded vowels and perhaps back vowels, and a labiodental one before other vowels, which are indistinguishable from /w/ in the former case and /v/ in the latter case, to my ear at least.
And every time I have heard Dutch speakers, and again I listened carefully and intently and asked them repeat words so that I could hear them as clearly as possible, their "w" sounds exactly like an English "v", while their "v" sounds like the identical sound in some Dutch speakers, but like English "f" by many other Dutch speakers. But I have an English ear by birth so I will never know what Dutch speakers hear.
3) Spanish v- can be the bilabial stop [b] or the bilabial fricative
["beta"]; the latter pronunciation (which occurs after a final vowel of the
preceding word) is close to [w]. Of course we can discuss whether such a
pronunciation is taken directly from Latin [w] or it is secondary, from [b]
< [v] < [w] (the original [b] has changed in the same way). But the fact is
a fact... Spanish <v> can be very close to [w].
-- Yes, I have noticed this in Spanish speakers. Every time I hear them say the name "Eva" I think I am hearing "Aywa".
Andrew
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