1414: V and W in Foreign Proper Nouns Oct 25, 2018

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There are lots of Indonesian words with the letter V, but many of these are foreign loan words. Those that aren't, like the place-names 'Java' or 'Sri Vijaya' are natively pronounced with the V as the sound [w]. The name Java especially however gets mispronounced by English speakers due to the spelling, but the opposite is also true of words from, for instance, Polish and German wherein English speakers often pronounce W as a [v] even in proper nouns, like Warsaw, which is natively pronounced [varʂava].

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