Skip to main content

This is a form of a phenomenon called hypercorrection.

The problem is that the sound [w] does not exist in German and indeed there are many German speaking people who are unable or unaware to pronounce this sound and use [v] instead. This is what makes the traditional German accent. (Mainly spoken by people who learned English rather late or only know some phrases.)
Now, if at some point English speaking Germans learn how to pronounce the [w] sound, they will have a tendency to overgeneralise this as they try to hide their original accent. (This happens sub-consciously and is not only a phenomenon seen by English speaking foreigners).


Warmest regards,
PBC- Department of Scientific English Language
- Chief Executive Officer
Pedro Benny C.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

How to use "talk to" and "talk with"?

Many English learners and students of mine, especially in Maputo province where I currently live, confuse talk to for talk with (which is mostly because of the inability to distinguish the differences between the two. Given that this is commonly mistaken by some English-as-a-Second-language speakers, it does not generally mean that it must be related to  hypercorrection  linguistics. This kind of slight unconscious mistake is just a simple grammar lesson that, by far, seems unimportant, but requires our concentration and should also be hammer homed. The differences between the two phrasal verbs are slightly lilliputians, therefore the mistake remains sub-concious. Here is what I think about them: TO TALK TO  To talk to can mean one-sided conversation, i.e, it means that the conversation is likely going to be held mostly by one part/side of the conversationalists during a certain reprimand. I would like to talk to the last student about something I have n...

Latin shorthands: cf., vs., etc.

Hey there English learners! Today, we're going to understand  some Latin shorthanded  r o ots that prevail in English writing catgory. Thus, its field of study is stenography:  the art or process of writing in shorthand.  Here we go!   1. E.g.   The abbreviation “ e.g. " comes from the Latin phrase “ exempli gratia ", which translates literally as " f or example ," and it is used in English with that meaning to introduce one or more examples that illustrate something previously stated in order to make it more clear or understandable.   Here is an example:   1.1.  There are many communist countries in the world,  e.g. , China, Vietnam, North Korea and Cuba.   2. Etc.   The Latin phrase  et cetera  has been used in English since the early Middle Ages and translates as "and others of the same kind" or "and so forth." (Et  means "and";  cētera  means "the other, other...

What are transitive verbs?

To firstly understand what transitive verbs are, we have to understand what a DIRECT OBJECT is, because throughout the explanation process, we shall include direct objects as a way of breaking down ( clearing up ) the understanding of transitive verbs. So, what is a direct object in grammar? Direct Object or simply “ D.O ” is either a noun ( Jeff, Rosanna, Carlos, bag, squirrel… ), pronoun ( me, her, him... ) or a  noun phrase ( the cars, the yellow mango, that umbrella my grandfather purchased in December... ) that identifies what or who receives an action of a transitive verb. Now that we all already understand what an O.D is, it’s time to go back to the definition of what a transitive verb might be. Transitive verbs are verbs; of course; that accept direct objects. It’s quite easy to identify a transitive verb in English as it might be easier in other languages. Furthermore, if you want to find out whether a verb is transitive or not, you can start off by using t...