Dutch 'v'

[jonniez]

Hallo

Comments

[chrys20]

The 'v' is pronounced somewhere between a /v/ and an /f/, more like /f/.

[madbandril]

How can it be between /f/ and /v/? it's either voiced or not right? Do you mean that it's voiced only halfway thru the articulation?

[chrys20]

Eh, I'm not a linguist. But that's just the way I pronounce it. It also depends on the word, you know. Sometimes the 'v' is voiced and sometimes not.

[mirmarmelade]

Actually, voicing is not an either/or thing, that's only what we make of it when we perceive speech. Sounds are voiced or voiceless based on their Voice Onset Timing (VOT), the difference between the release of the sound and the onset of the vibration in the vocal folds. At some boundary VOT, sounds on the one side are considered 'voiced' and sound on the other side are considered 'voiceless'. These boundaries are not the same in all languages; Dutch voicing and English voicing are quite different, to the point that prototypical English [b] sounds like protypical Dutch [p].

Fricative voicing in Dutch is hardly present anymore, especially in the western (Randstad) varieties. As a native speaker of Randstad Dutch, I think chrys20's description is spot on.

[madbandril]

I know all about voice onset time, but I still don't understand exactly what it means to say a sound is between /v/ and /f/. If the VOT of Dutch /v/ is different than English /v/, how exactly is it different? And is it perceived as voiced or voiceless?

[madbandril]

Alright, so if fricative voicing in Dutch is hardly present anymore, then the Dutch fricative in question presumably sounds like English /f/. It doesn't sound like something between /f/ and /v/ - at least to an English speaker.

But you're saying that as a native Dutch speaker, Dutch "v" sounds like something between English /f/ and /v/. So you're saying that as a Dutch speaker you don't make voicing distinctions between fricatives at all, so you don't have that perceptual boundary?