Raise your wessel!

Written by eklastic

Even Germans who speak English vell, often get the w sound wrong and pronounce it like a “v”. Especially after drinking some vine. Ve just accept it just as ve tolerate English speakers struggling with “ö” and “ü”. However, the really funny thing is that many Germans who manage the “w” quite well, will overcompensate and call a tankard or glass or stein a “wessel”. Particularly, after drinking some wampire or wanilla cocktails.

FOWC with Fandango: Vessel

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13 thoughts on “Raise your wessel!”

  3. This particular blindspot in German spekers of excellent English has always puzzled me. When Daughter Number Two started her life in Barcelona, she lived for a while with a Spanish/German family where the German husband spoke faultless English. Except for one thing. He would speak of the ‘telewision’. My husband is still in touch with friends from his days as an English teacher in Germany. Same problem. Wery odd.

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      2. I trieda dict.leo.org discussion on it and gave up. I use this site often, not so much as a dictionary but for the discussions. They can be very insightful but often the “experts” (occasionally, I’m one of them) go off on tangents and insist on ridiculous explanations, based more on sentiments than on knowledge. I usually give up half-way through a lenghty thread. Wikipedia quotes the w for v pronunciation as an example for hypercorrection.

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      3. I’ve just had a little trawl through the internet and ‘hypercorrection’ is as good as it gets. I still find it strange when talented and experienced liguists consistently get this wrong. I’m sure you don’t!

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    2. Ahh… the rabbit holes and hypercorrection. I heard an African man talking today in a podcast, I think he came from a mainly French speaking country. He must have been aware of his problem with the letter “h”. Because although he said ‘ouse an ‘ave he also talked of h-hour (meaning the time period) and curiously enough haccurate and hagree.

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      2. That was one single individual (funny to listen to, though). What is so puzzling about the v/w phenomenon is that it is not uncommon about English speakers of German origin but the norm rather than the exception.

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