Episode 10: f & v
Apr 05, 2010•1 hr 14 min
Episode description
This is our "Fava" episode: great with a nice Chianti (you can leave the liver out, Dr. Lecter...) Hosts Phil Thompson and Eric Armstrong talk their way through the sounds /f/ and /v/ in this episode. As it is our first episode dealing with fricative sounds, we spend quite a while talking through their nature.
Show Notes
[Don't have any time to go through the show this week and edit the show notes. These are the things Phil and I collected before we began recording; it's a bit messy, but may be helpful when listening along.—Eric]
Fricatives: A sound being made by air being pushed through a narrow constriction in the vocal tract, making a turbulent airstream.
e.g. f θ ʃ s
Most common consonant manner in the world's languages : Fricatives
FORMATION: voiced/unvoiced labiodental fricatives
SPELLING:
/f/
pretty darned simple, f
calf calves, calved
loaf loaves
half halves, halved
knife knives ( but knifed)
wife wives
"ff" off, offal
"gh" cough, draught, enough, laugh, laughter, rough, tough, trough, whooping cough
"ph" alphabet, amphibious, apostrophe, diphthong, nephew, philosophy, phlegm, phonetic,
photo, photograph, pteriodophyte, sphere, sphinx, telephone
"v" Chekov, Krushchev, Nabokov, Godunov, Romanov, Molotiv, Rimsky-Korsakov,
Ustinov,
/v/
"f" of
"ph" Stephen
"v" Vacate, vaccine, vacuum, vain, vale, valentine, Valkyrie, value, Vancouver, vane,
variation, varsity, vein, vengeance, have, hive, live, love, mauve, driving, living, Steven,
stevedore.
"vv" savvy
HISTORY:
of the letters:
FROM WIKIPEDIA:
F The Phoenician form of the letter was adopted into Greek as a vowel, upsilon (which resembled its descendant, ‹Y›, but was also ancestor to Roman letters ‹U›, ‹V›, and ‹W›); and with another form, as a consonant, digamma, which resembled ‹F›, but indicated the pronunciation /w/, as in Phoenician. (Later on, /w/ disappeared from Greek, resulting in digamma being used as a numeral only.)
In Etruscan, ‹F› also represented /w/; however, they formed the digraph ‹FH› to represent /f/; when the Romans picked up, the letter, they had already borrowed ‹U› from Greek upsilon to stand for /w/. At the this time, the Greek letter phi ‹Φ› represented an aspirated voiceless bilabial plosive, /pʰ/ though it has now come to approximate the sound of /f/ in Modern Greek.
The lower case ‹f› is not related to the visually similar long s, ‹ſ›. The use of the long s largely died out by the beginning of the 19th century, mostly to prevent confusion with ‹f›.
FROM WIKIPEDIA:
The letter V ultimately comes from the Semitic letter Waw, as do the modern letters F, U, W, and Y. See F for details.
In Greek, the letter upsilon ‹Υ› was adapted from waw to represent, at first, the vowel /u/ as in "moon". This was later fronted to /y/, the vowel spelled ‹ü› in German.
In Latin, a stemless variant shape of the upsilon was borrowed in early times as V—either directly from the Western Greek alphabet or from the Etruscan alphabet as a middle man—to represent the same /u/ sound, as well as the consonantal /w/. Thus, num — originally spelled ‹NVM› — was pronounced /nuːm/ and via was pronounced /wiːa/. From the first century A.D. on, depending on Vulgar Latin dialect, consonantal /w/ developed into /β/, then later to /v/.
In Roman numerals, the letter V is used to represent the number 5. It was used because it resembled the convention of counting by notches carved in wood, with every fifth notch double-cut to form a "V".
During the late Middle Ages, two forms of ‹v› developed, which were both used for modern ‹u› and ‹v›. The pointed form ‹v› was written at the beginning of a word, while a rounded form ‹u› was used in the middle or end, regardless of sound. So whereas valor and excuse appeared as in modern printing, have and upon were printed ‹haue› and ‹vpon›. The first distinction between the letters ‹u› and ‹v› is recorded in a Gothic alphabet from 1386, where ‹v› preceded ‹u›. By the mid-1500s, the ‹v› form was used to represent the consonant and ‹u› the vowel sound, giving us the modern letter ‹u›. Capital ‹U› was not accepted as a distinct letter until many years later.[2]
PHONETIC NOTATION: represented by lower case f and v
Similar sounds in IPA:
labiodental approximant ʋ
labiodental nasal ɱ
bilabial fricatives ɸ β
using f or v in place of th sounds "th fronting" in Southern England working class accents, like Cockney
using labiodental place on preceding nasals, e.g. invest, infer, emphasis, emphysema, lymph with ɱ
VARIATIONS
use of bilabial fricative in its place ʋ
Challenge for Dutch/German article: Voiced labiodental fricatives or glides - all the same to Germans? by Silke Hamann* & Anke Sennema‡
List of languages that have f and ʋ
Language f v ʋ ɸ β
Danish f Ø ʋ Ø Ø three-way distinction
Dutch fits oːvən ʋɑŋ Ø in some Belgian dialects the /ʋ/ phoneme is realized as [β] three-way distinction
English f v 'red' Ø Ø two-way distinction –
( Wikipedia entry claims labialized /r/)
Finnish f Ø ʋ Ø Ø two-way distinction
German f
“fau”
v
“we”
Ø Ø Ø two-way distinction –
approximant allophone of /v/ in Southern varieties
Hawaiian Ø Ø ʋ Ø Ø May also be realized as [w] or [v].
Hindi f Ø ʋ Ø Ø two-way distinction –
Serbo-Croatian f Ø ʋ Ø Ø May also be realized as [v], depending on the speaker's dialect.
Norwegian f Ø ʋ Ø Ø
Japanese Ø Ø Ø ɸ β these are considered weak forms of /p/ and /b/
Ewe f͈ v͈ Ø ɸ β Ewe is one of the few languages known to contrast [f] vs. [ɸ] and [v] vs. [β]. The f and v are stronger than in most languages, [f͈] and [v͈], and thus more distinctive from the rather weak [ɸ] and [β].
Japanese: e.g. Mt. Fuji is said with ɸɯdʑi or "furigana" sounds more like "hurigana" to most English speakers, almost ʍ
Hindi-English: very well with ʋ
devoicing of final voiced labiodental fricative /v/ becomes /f/
Old fashioned Cockney "a wery fine vife". Is it labiodental approximant ʋ?
Shaw: thought it was fictional until he heard someone actually said it
The Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language
Traditional West Country /v/ for /f/ in Lear "varmer" for "farmer" and "volk" for "folk"
Use of /b/ in place of /v/ in Spanish: On the Labiodental Pronunciation of Spanish /b/ among Teachers of Spanish as a Second
Language Author(s): John J. Stevens
Source: Hispania, Vol. 83, No. 1 (Mar., 2000), pp. 139-149
"phonic variants to the Modern Spanish voiced bilabialphoneme /b/, orthographically b or v: a voiced bilabial stop [b], which
is said to occur after a pause or a nasal; and a voiced bilabial fricative which occurs [β], elsewhere (Alarcos 1994; D'Introno, Del
Teso, and Weston 1995; Real Academia Españiola 1992). The voiced labiodental [v], if mentioned at all, is not generally considered to form part of the Spanish allophonic inventory (Barrutia and Schwegler 1994).
Pedantic /v/, hypercorrect, used to demonstrate orthographic differences, which has been part of Spanish teaching until mid-20th century when it was abandoned by the Real Academia Españiola
- "So, you teach 'boice'?" story
Our email: [email protected]
Show Notes
[Don't have any time to go through the show this week and edit the show notes. These are the things Phil and I collected before we began recording; it's a bit messy, but may be helpful when listening along.—Eric]
Fricatives: A sound being made by air being pushed through a narrow constriction in the vocal tract, making a turbulent airstream.
e.g. f θ ʃ s
Most common consonant manner in the world's languages : Fricatives
FORMATION: voiced/unvoiced labiodental fricatives
SPELLING:
/f/
pretty darned simple, f
calf calves, calved
loaf loaves
half halves, halved
knife knives ( but knifed)
wife wives
"ff" off, offal
"gh" cough, draught, enough, laugh, laughter, rough, tough, trough, whooping cough
"ph" alphabet, amphibious, apostrophe, diphthong, nephew, philosophy, phlegm, phonetic,
photo, photograph, pteriodophyte, sphere, sphinx, telephone
"v" Chekov, Krushchev, Nabokov, Godunov, Romanov, Molotiv, Rimsky-Korsakov,
Ustinov,
/v/
"f" of
"ph" Stephen
"v" Vacate, vaccine, vacuum, vain, vale, valentine, Valkyrie, value, Vancouver, vane,
variation, varsity, vein, vengeance, have, hive, live, love, mauve, driving, living, Steven,
stevedore.
"vv" savvy
HISTORY:
of the letters:
FROM WIKIPEDIA:
F The Phoenician form of the letter was adopted into Greek as a vowel, upsilon (which resembled its descendant, ‹Y›, but was also ancestor to Roman letters ‹U›, ‹V›, and ‹W›); and with another form, as a consonant, digamma, which resembled ‹F›, but indicated the pronunciation /w/, as in Phoenician. (Later on, /w/ disappeared from Greek, resulting in digamma being used as a numeral only.)
In Etruscan, ‹F› also represented /w/; however, they formed the digraph ‹FH› to represent /f/; when the Romans picked up, the letter, they had already borrowed ‹U› from Greek upsilon to stand for /w/. At the this time, the Greek letter phi ‹Φ› represented an aspirated voiceless bilabial plosive, /pʰ/ though it has now come to approximate the sound of /f/ in Modern Greek.
The lower case ‹f› is not related to the visually similar long s, ‹ſ›. The use of the long s largely died out by the beginning of the 19th century, mostly to prevent confusion with ‹f›.
FROM WIKIPEDIA:
The letter V ultimately comes from the Semitic letter Waw, as do the modern letters F, U, W, and Y. See F for details.
In Greek, the letter upsilon ‹Υ› was adapted from waw to represent, at first, the vowel /u/ as in "moon". This was later fronted to /y/, the vowel spelled ‹ü› in German.
In Latin, a stemless variant shape of the upsilon was borrowed in early times as V—either directly from the Western Greek alphabet or from the Etruscan alphabet as a middle man—to represent the same /u/ sound, as well as the consonantal /w/. Thus, num — originally spelled ‹NVM› — was pronounced /nuːm/ and via was pronounced /wiːa/. From the first century A.D. on, depending on Vulgar Latin dialect, consonantal /w/ developed into /β/, then later to /v/.
In Roman numerals, the letter V is used to represent the number 5. It was used because it resembled the convention of counting by notches carved in wood, with every fifth notch double-cut to form a "V".
During the late Middle Ages, two forms of ‹v› developed, which were both used for modern ‹u› and ‹v›. The pointed form ‹v› was written at the beginning of a word, while a rounded form ‹u› was used in the middle or end, regardless of sound. So whereas valor and excuse appeared as in modern printing, have and upon were printed ‹haue› and ‹vpon›. The first distinction between the letters ‹u› and ‹v› is recorded in a Gothic alphabet from 1386, where ‹v› preceded ‹u›. By the mid-1500s, the ‹v› form was used to represent the consonant and ‹u› the vowel sound, giving us the modern letter ‹u›. Capital ‹U› was not accepted as a distinct letter until many years later.[2]
PHONETIC NOTATION: represented by lower case f and v
Similar sounds in IPA:
labiodental approximant ʋ
labiodental nasal ɱ
bilabial fricatives ɸ β
using f or v in place of th sounds "th fronting" in Southern England working class accents, like Cockney
using labiodental place on preceding nasals, e.g. invest, infer, emphasis, emphysema, lymph with ɱ
VARIATIONS
use of bilabial fricative in its place ʋ
Challenge for Dutch/German article: Voiced labiodental fricatives or glides - all the same to Germans? by Silke Hamann* & Anke Sennema‡
List of languages that have f and ʋ
Language f v ʋ ɸ β
Danish f Ø ʋ Ø Ø three-way distinction
Dutch fits oːvən ʋɑŋ Ø in some Belgian dialects the /ʋ/ phoneme is realized as [β] three-way distinction
English f v 'red' Ø Ø two-way distinction –
( Wikipedia entry claims labialized /r/)
Finnish f Ø ʋ Ø Ø two-way distinction
German f
“fau”
v
“we”
Ø Ø Ø two-way distinction –
approximant allophone of /v/ in Southern varieties
Hawaiian Ø Ø ʋ Ø Ø May also be realized as [w] or [v].
Hindi f Ø ʋ Ø Ø two-way distinction –
Serbo-Croatian f Ø ʋ Ø Ø May also be realized as [v], depending on the speaker's dialect.
Norwegian f Ø ʋ Ø Ø
Japanese Ø Ø Ø ɸ β these are considered weak forms of /p/ and /b/
Ewe f͈ v͈ Ø ɸ β Ewe is one of the few languages known to contrast [f] vs. [ɸ] and [v] vs. [β]. The f and v are stronger than in most languages, [f͈] and [v͈], and thus more distinctive from the rather weak [ɸ] and [β].
Japanese: e.g. Mt. Fuji is said with ɸɯdʑi or "furigana" sounds more like "hurigana" to most English speakers, almost ʍ
Hindi-English: very well with ʋ
devoicing of final voiced labiodental fricative /v/ becomes /f/
Old fashioned Cockney "a wery fine vife". Is it labiodental approximant ʋ?
Shaw: thought it was fictional until he heard someone actually said it
The Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language
Traditional West Country /v/ for /f/ in Lear "varmer" for "farmer" and "volk" for "folk"
Use of /b/ in place of /v/ in Spanish: On the Labiodental Pronunciation of Spanish /b/ among Teachers of Spanish as a Second
Language Author(s): John J. Stevens
Source: Hispania, Vol. 83, No. 1 (Mar., 2000), pp. 139-149
"phonic variants to the Modern Spanish voiced bilabialphoneme /b/, orthographically b or v: a voiced bilabial stop [b], which
is said to occur after a pause or a nasal; and a voiced bilabial fricative which occurs [β], elsewhere (Alarcos 1994; D'Introno, Del
Teso, and Weston 1995; Real Academia Españiola 1992). The voiced labiodental [v], if mentioned at all, is not generally considered to form part of the Spanish allophonic inventory (Barrutia and Schwegler 1994).
Pedantic /v/, hypercorrect, used to demonstrate orthographic differences, which has been part of Spanish teaching until mid-20th century when it was abandoned by the Real Academia Españiola
- "So, you teach 'boice'?" story
Our email: [email protected]
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