Calling All Linguists

[Rival]

Hi!

When I was a child, and sometimes even now, I could not 'hear' the letter B; I always heard V. So, I would say, for instance, disturving, rugvy, kerv (for kerb), emvarrassed, etc.

As I became older I noticed this seems to be something of a linguistic phenomenon:

In Greek, a beta was pronounced like a B, now it is like a V (babarian is now varvare).
In Hebrew, Yakov, Avraham, Ovadia etc. for what we translate as Jacob, Abraham and Obadia etc.
In Spanish, also, the b and v have mixed.
In English we have changed what German has as a B to a V, as in gib (give), liebe (love), haben (have), silber (silver) etc.

Any explanations for why this occurs? Is there a name for it?

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

I will ask my grand son.. he has a first class honours degree in linguistics a masters in English.
It is the sort of obscure thing he relishes.

 

[allfoak]

I do believe this has a lot to do with how language has evolved.
I studied it a bit in my youth.
People that do not pronounce words correctly do not usually spell them correctly either.
It is very easy to see how this could carry over from language to language.

 

[Spiderman]

yeah when I was a youngster I thought vanilla was pronounced banilla and I thought female genitalia was pronounced bagina

 

[Neo Deist]

Hi!

When I was a child, and sometimes even now, I could not 'hear' the letter B; I always heard V. So, I would say, for instance, disturving, rugvy, kerv (for kerb), emvarrassed, etc.

As I became older I noticed this seems to be something of a linguistic phenomenon:

In Greek, a beta was pronounced like a B, now it is like a V (babarian is now varvare).
In Hebrew, Yakov, Avraham, Ovadia, for what we translate as Jacob, Abraham and Obadia.
In Spanish, also, the b and v have mixed.
In English we have changed what German has as a B to a V, as in gib (give), liebe (love), haben (have), silber (silver) etc.

Any explanations for why this occurs? Is there a name for it?

A few things come up off the top of my head. The first is that it could have been a case of speech articulation when you were a toddler, and the sounds never developed properly. The second would be conductive hearing loss, in which you can't distinguish certain sounds, such as 'b' which is classified as a soft sound, with the 'v' being a hard sound. The third would be a sensorineural issue, which is where the sound gets disrupted along the neural pathway.

 

[meghanwaterlillies]

[QUOTE lfoak, post: 5052698, member: 55069"]I do believe this has a lot to do with how language has evolved.
I studied it a bit in my youth.
People that do not pronounce words correctly do not usually spell them correctly either.
It is very easy to see how this could carry over from language to language.[/QUOTE]
People do it whether they want to or not. I know of people who speak just fine and spell come as cum which is pointless but I can tell you who they are where they are from and even laugh when they do it. I didn't give them any identity problems.

 

[Vinayaka]

Hi!

When I was a child, and sometimes even now, I could not 'hear' the letter B; I always heard V. So, I would say, for instance, disturving, rugvy, kerv (for kerb), emvarrassed, etc.

As I became older I noticed this seems to be something of a linguistic phenomenon:

In Greek, a beta was pronounced like a B, now it is like a V (babarian is now varvare).
In Hebrew, Yakov, Avraham, Ovadia, for what we translate as Jacob, Abraham and Obadia.
In Spanish, also, the b and v have mixed.
In English we have changed what German has as a B to a V, as in gib (give), liebe (love), haben (have), silber (silver) etc.

Any explanations for why this occurs? Is there a name for it?

As a former educator, there were occasions when I had to call in a speech therapist for help. One of the surprising things to me in learning about variations in how children develop, both in ability to hear, and then in ability to replicate particular sounds they hear (assuming they hear them) was the wide variety in terms of age of development, and in final (adult) outcomes. Mixing b and v because of the inability to distinguish between the two is just one of several pairs of consonant sounds where people have difficulty, or the actual inability to distinguish. Physically, it can be within the ear, or within the mouth to form certain musculature patterns. For example, certain people simply cannot curl the tongue. One way to explain it is with an analogy to color blindness. At first color blindness was thought of as stubbornness, or lack of training.

So word development, or spelling, I suppose, has gone through linguists who interpret it from what they heard, but they themselves had inabilities.

In my faith Hinduism, there is an ongoing debate about s (super) and sh (sugar), when tranliterated from Sanskrit. A speech linguist expert will tell you that neither is correct.

 

[Neo Deist]

On the subject of language and writing, I have long stated that the internet and jargon has "dumbed down" people and they don't know how to spell, or which word is proper to use in a sentence. I can't even being to count the number of times someone has used your when they should have used you're.

 

[Rival]

Mixing b and v because of the inability to distinguish between the two is just one of several pairs of consonant sounds where people have difficulty, or the actual inability to distinguish.

What are the others?

 

[Jainarayan]

What are the others?

P and f. Tagalog (Filipino) does not have an f sound. The name Frank comes out as Prank. But it's not limited to Tagalog. It's partly due to a person's biomechanics of speech. It becomes part of a language because people tend to speak like others around them.

 

[Vinayaka]

What are the others?

It's been awhile, so don't quote me, but d and TH for sure, s and th, l and r, even b and p. The speech therapists I worked with would only try their corrective strategies for awhile, and then gave up, realising it was going to be impossible given the conditions. There is also a genetic or several genetic disorders that affect speech. I had one in my family with 2 siblings, Father, a niece, being affected. They had difficulty in pronunciation into adulthood and those who are still living still do.

 

[Vinayaka]

P and f. Tagalog (Filipino) does not have an f sound. The name Frank comes out as Prank. But it's not limited to Tagalog. It's partly due to a person's biomechanics of speech. It becomes part of a language because people tend to speak like others around them.

So if you play a joke on your Filipino co-worker, its a prank prank?

 

[Jainarayan]

l and r

That one gives native Japanese speakers trouble speaking English. Japanese has no l, so it comes out as r. Gimli son of Gloin, Gimri son of Groin; "the law is clear", de raw is crear. That was a line spoken in the movie 47 Ronin by a Japanese actor.

 

[Jainarayan]

So if you play a joke on your Filipino co-worker, its a prank prank?

And I'm sure my Pilipino coworker would not pind it punny.

 

[Jainarayan]

s and th

If you listen carefully to Sir Ian McKellan you will hear him say forse for forth and ross for wroth.

 

[Augustus]

What are the others?

v and w, p and f, j and y, etc.

Any explanations for why this occurs?

It can relate to an auditory processing disorder (sort of like dyslexic hearing), although this would have additional symptoms like frequently not remembering what people said to you, feeling drained when speaking to people, an inability to follow spoken multi-step instruction, etc.

 

[Rival]

Guys, I mean why does this happen within languages. Not why did it happen to me. Lol.

 

[meghanwaterlillies]

Many children say eminem o p. DA NA NA NA NA NA. When they say the alphabet. Really if you listen closely they do. They do it all the time MNOP they are like eminem o p .

 

[Kirran]

Guys, I mean why does this happen within languages. Not why did it happen to me. Lol.

Are you basically asking, why do some languages have consonant shifts where there's a change from using one consonant phoneme to another?

 

[Rival]

Are you basically asking, why do some languages have consonant shifts where there's a change from using one consonant phoneme to another?

Specifically this one, B and V. I don't know a language (save maybe Spanish) where it has ever been the other way around either and V has become B. I am fully aware of consonant shifts.