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> If they'd pronounced it "Let's meet up in the fillage" that would make sense as they'd be using the German pronunciation of "v", but I couldn't wrap my head around "willage".

Depending on the word, in German a "v" is either pronounced like "f" or "w", e.g.

[der] Vogel -> "Fogel"

[die] Vase -> "Wase"

A rule of thumb that I heard is that if a German word is of French origin and starts with V, the V is pronounced like W, otherwise like F.



Surely Vase (German) should be spoken as "Vahse" (english phonetic), not with the W sound.

I guess you mean the German F and W! That way it's clear.


You are correct. In German, V is F and W is V. There is no W phoneme, except incidentally as in "mauer". I can't imagine a German saying "willage" except perhaps as a joke. In German "willage" would be spelled "uilage" and that would just be really uierd. (Source: I'm a native German speaker, though my family emigrated to the U.S. when I was five so I speak German like a five-year-old who hasn't had much opportunity to practice in a very long time.)




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