“Anglicized” is probably not the best way to think about it. The Latin letter “v” was pronounced “w” through the classical period, but had shifted to β or v (fricative) by the third century, long before English existed. V was pronounced v (voiced labiodental fricative) for many centuries. And though we do tend to give the classical period a lot of prestige, it was just one phase for Latin.
Funny part is, the same shift happened in a lot of languages. I think some more obvious examples are modern German and Polish, where letter W corresponds to the V sound. Although I believe that the shift happened in German and then Polish borrowed the letter with the new pronunciation.
Thanks so much for pointing this out. As a native German speaker I still had no idea what’s going on until this comment made me question what a W sounds like in other languages. It’s literally a double-U in English, how come I never stumbled upon that.
How else would it be pronounced, how is the anglicised pronunciation?
(Serious question by a non native speaker)
“Anglicized” is probably not the best way to think about it. The Latin letter “v” was pronounced “w” through the classical period, but had shifted to β or v (fricative) by the third century, long before English existed. V was pronounced v (voiced labiodental fricative) for many centuries. And though we do tend to give the classical period a lot of prestige, it was just one phase for Latin.
Funny part is, the same shift happened in a lot of languages. I think some more obvious examples are modern German and Polish, where letter W corresponds to the V sound. Although I believe that the shift happened in German and then Polish borrowed the letter with the new pronunciation.
Thanks so much for pointing this out. As a native German speaker I still had no idea what’s going on until this comment made me question what a W sounds like in other languages. It’s literally a double-U in English, how come I never stumbled upon that.
in swedish i think we’ve just gone from “fv” to “v”, somehow
very common example since it’s in old surnames: hufvud > huvud
Veh-soo-vee-us.
With “v” sounding like it does in other English words like valve.
Walwe