Subj : To learn English read something interesting ;-)
To   : Gleb Hlebov
From : Ardith Hinton
Date : Thu Nov 27 2025 23:12:21

Hi, Gleb!  Recently you wrote in a message to Ardith Hinton:

AH>  I've had a few similar experiences myself.  When a teacher
AH>  from the Netherlands pronounced the v in "Volkswagen" as
AH>  an f I thought to myself "Oh .. the people's car".


           Excuse me... but in linguistics it's important to use slash lines to indicate the pronunciation.  That's what I was trying to do here.  As usual, we borrowed the word from another language & pronounced it a bit differently.  :-)



GH>  Which particular type have you imagined: passenger railroad
GH>  car, station wagon, hippie van, horse-drawn cart? :-)


           Good question.  In those days the Volkswagen was a passenger car made in Germany & designed to be reasonably affordable to people on a limited budget. Later on I saw a whole streetful of them parked in UBC's University Village, but unfortunately we didn't have cell phones with cameras back then.

           For those of us whose everyday language came from northern European & Scandinavian sources it's not difficult to put "folks" & "wagon" together.  When I was a kid linguistics was not included in the school curriculum, however.  :-Q




--- timEd/386 1.10.y2k+
 * Origin: Wits' End, Vancouver CANADA (1:153/716)

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