Can you think of any words in which 'ph' is pronounced 'v'?

[RacingSnake]

Just sitting here with DH watching Kingdom (obviously not enough work to do) when he asked why 'ph' is pronounced 'v' in 'Stephen'. I couldn't think of any other examples, nor explain why this one is so. Any ideas?

[pablo2607]

This comment was meant for you, TULIPS IN THE RAIN however this site is new to me and than with my 67 years I get very lost in the maze of new tech. I am hung up on this dilemma of the ph with the pronunciation of Stephen. It drives me nuts.

pablo2607 Wed 15-Jul-15 22:44:50
Why than do we pronounce Stephanie (Stefanie) as against Stephen(Steven and not Stefen, which I think the latter is the more correct). I found your discussion very interesting and so far you've come the closest by a long shot to giving a reasonable, lets say, opinion on the matter without really getting to the crux of the matter. Can you dig a little deeper using Stephanie and Stephen as examples.

[PageNotFound404]

The thread was from 2010.

[pablo2607]

Why than do we pronounce Stephanie (Stefanie) as against Stephen(Steven and not Stefen, which I think the latter is the more correct). I found your discussion very interesting and so far you've come the closest by a long shot to giving a reasonable, lets say, opinion on the matter without really getting to the crux of the matter. Can you dig a little deeper using Stephanie and Stephen as examples.

[MaryBS]

Could be regional I guess. Its a slightly softer v, but not quite a ph.

[Milliways]

Some people pronounce Nephew as Nevew!

[PrincessFiorimonde]

Agree on the continuous past, bruceb.

But, Mary, not sure about pronouncing 'phial' with initial 'v' sound? Is this a regional thing, perhaps?

Otherwise we still have only 'Stephen' and his occasional 'nephew'.

(Can see that this is going to distract me almost as much as the 'what's the word for breakfast things?' thread - wasted ages on that one, and still no resolution!)

[onebatmother]

bloody hell bruceb, of course!
I must have been drunk

[bruceb]

Not sure how authoritative this page is, but as it supports my position, I will claim it as an authority .

[bruceb]

At the risk of being pedantic....I'm not sure the phrase "I was sitting" IS the past participle.

'Gone' is the past participle in the phrase "I have gone"...?

"I was sitting" is the continuous past or something....

If only I'd listened more carefully in English.

[onebatmother]

bad lenin

[TulipsInTheRain]

isn't google fabulous?

"The original name was Greek "Stephanos", borrowed into other European languages as "Stephan" or "Stephen"

"ph" was an ancient Greek way of indicating the "f" sound

(The Greeks came up with this method of combining two letters to indicate one sound [called a "digraph"] for situations where the Phoenecian alphabet they had borrowed their letters from didn't have a letter to suit their needs. This is the source of a whole group of these ch, sh, th, ph. The Greeks LATER invented separate letters instead chi (looks like X), theta and phi. But the LATIN alphabet was based on an OLD Greek alphabet, and they ended up continuing the digraph practice. In the case of the f-sound, they actually had their own letter (and ours) F, but whenever they borrowed a word from Greek they would use "ph" to indicate the sound. English continued this practice; many Romance languages simply shifted to "f" -- hence English "telephone" [from Greek roots] is "telefon" in Spanish.)

Now in English, over time, the NAME "Stephen" changed pronunciation a bit so that the "ph" sound was "voiced" (I think because of the the change in the VOWEL sounds to two long e sounds)-- changing from /f/ to /v/. But it is common with NAMES to retain traditional spellings even when pronunciation changes. Thus "Stephen" continued to be the normal spelling, and many still use it today.

Alongside this though (as with many other names) OTHER folks decided to change the spelling to better reflect the pronunciation. Thus the more 'modern' spelling "Steven"

Note that there are LOTS of reasons for 'new' spellings of names. Some are just to be different. But in THIS case there was a very logical reason for it in the way we actually pronounce the letters."

[onebatmother]

so

we have neview (reg.)
and phial (mebbe)

any more for any more?

[TulipsInTheRain]

facinating how we use the sounds without paying the blidest bit of notice to how we make them isn't it?

i had the same realisation this week at the SALT with ds2 when she was tellinmg me to focus on visual sounds and she actually had to demonstrate a few for me to realise which ones she meant

[shonaspurtle]

p and b, t and d, s and z, k and g are the same.

Ah memories of making a complete tit of myself in the library as I tried to do my phonetics coursework

[ShrinkingViolet]

I say fial not vial for phial - is that wrong then? Or is it just English (mutters about the weird pronunciations down here and extra Rs in words and stuff, not proper like what it is back home blah blah blah )

[Mistymoo]

Should that be vonics?

[RacingSnake]

That's true. You teach that in phonics.

[TulipsInTheRain]

shona... dp now thinks i've completely lost it as i sat here making fff and vvvv sounds at the pc screen

(and you're dead right too... they are the same. you learn something new everyday )

[shonaspurtle]

The f sound and the v sound are actually very close.

Your mouth is basically making the same shape (labial dental fricative I think) but v is "voiced" ie your vocal chords vibrate.

That was a shite explanation, but I suspect it was just a gradual or local difference in pronunciation that stuck for some reason in English speaking regions.

[RacingSnake]

Cyb, because they are WRONG!!!!

Hadn't thought of phial.

[MaryBS]

phial pronounced vile?

[onebatmother]

lots of regional accents pron. 'nephew' as 'neview'..

[Cyb]

why does EVERYONE say 'sat' then?

I started to doubt myself