Sunday Times 2
Minding our Vs and Ws
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Sri Lankan-born Canadian writer Michael Ondaatje spent two years working on his spoken Vs and Ws
Within days of arriving in the US, 45 years ago, we realised we were getting something wrong – speech-wise. Americans were watching our lips, or rather lip movements, as we spoke. What we said seemed less interesting to them than how we said it. Their facial expressions suggested curiosity and mild amusement. It was not the flat Asian accent that intrigued them. We soon caught on. We, like the Germans, but for different linguistic reasons, were sounding our Ws like Vs and Vs like Ws.
Vee ver getting it (w)rong vith ewery V and W vee uttered.
We were among thousands of exchange students from around the world who had arrived in the US to spend a year among Americans, and the Americans were looking at us very closely. It was a busy year, and fixing our Vs and Ws was far from our minds during those tumultuous 12 months, although every now and then we would be made aware of our odd way with V and W.
In a History of Western Art class, we each had to make a short presentation. Ours was on the goddess Venus, as depicted in Art and Sculpture. We went from the Venus of Willendorf and the Venus de Milo to Botticelli’s ‘Birth of Venus’ and Titian’s ‘Venus With A Mirror.’
The class was amused and we were flustered. They were not smiling at our academic performance, however. At one point, our good friend Daniel Mayer, sitting in the front row, scribbled in his exercise book and held it up for us to read: “It’s V-enus, not We-nus, and it’s W-illendorf, not Villendorf.’ He demonstrated how the V of Venus should be pronounced, upper front teeth pressing on lower lip to produce a V-sounding V.
Danny Mayer then rounded his lips to produce a wholesome W sound for Willendorf. The class was all chuckles — good-natured, well-meaning, in the spirit of Let’s-teach-our-visitor-something-useful-to-take-home. The V-W Factor followed us around all year, and there were times we consciously worked on our Vs and Ws.
When we got back to Sri Lanka, where no one minds their Vs and Ws, still less their Ps and Qs, we soon forgot the verbal worry.
Very soon vee ver back to our local vays of speech – indifferent to the individuality of the 22nd and 23rd letters of the alphabet. Vee treated both like Vs.
The Sinhala alphabet does not distinguish between V and W. The letter “vayanna” is essentially V in character. Sinhala names and places are transcribed variously in English with Vs and Ws, as in Wijeratne and Jayawardene, Wellawatte and Weligama, but the sound is basically a V, although the Sinhala V veers occasionally towards a W, as in words like “wawula” (bat) and “walauwe” (ancestral home).
It wasn’t till 16 years later, when we were once again out of the country, living in a Far Eastern city teeming with Westerners, that we were reminded of our V-W vexations. Vee ver mildly vurried. ”You Sri Lankans and Indians don’t seem to be able to tell the difference between a clear V and a clear W,” declared newspaper colleague Tess Lyons, a good-looking blonde with a sharp, very V-shaped tongue.
“Does it matter?” vee answered defensively. ‘”You know vot vee mean.”
“Well, we are talking about two entirely different letters in the alphabet, two very different sounds,” Ms. Lyons shot back. “What’s the big deal about getting it right?”
Right.
If vee resolved to get it right, and succeeded, our verbal victory vood be a big deal. And so vee started votching our lips and appropriately shaping them, venever vee remembered, that is. It vosn’t easy, but vith a little effort, vee ver getting there.
In 2002, my good friend Rizan Mohamed-Marikar presented us with The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film, a book by Sri Lanka-born Canadian writer Michael Ondaatje. Rizan plays serious bridge and one of his regular bridge partners is the writer’s Colombo-based sister, Gillian Ondaatje-Corea. Gillian told Rizan that her brother’s book had just come out, and Rizan ordered it from Amazon.com, and after reading it passed it on to us.
American film editor Walter Murch worked on the award-winning film of Ondaatje’s Booker Prize-winning novel, The English Patient, which won nine Oscars. During his dialogues with Murch, Ondaatje mentions his two-year struggle to sort out his Vs and Ws.
Michael Ondaatje was 12 years old when he left Ceylon, and he took with him a set Ceylonese way of speaking that would persist into his professional life as a writer and a popular guest at world literary events, including readings. He took his Southeast-Asian V-W speech quirk seriously enough to treat it as a problem and do something about it.
Finally back in Sri Lanka after two decades in Hong Kong, we started to count the number of times we would get it right with a V and a W. Vee vood mostly get it (w)rong.
But vee in Sri Lanka are not alone vith this problem.
When the big banks of the US and the UK started outsourcing customer enquiries to call centres in India, native Indian staff were given a thorough training in telephone etiquette and how to talk to Brit and North American clients. Getting their Vs and Ws right is a part of the training. A TV programme on outsourcing to Asian countries zeroed in on the V-W glitch that afflicts Indians too.
We are writing this article in a Colombo internet café. A smartly dressed young woman at the next computer is having a Skype conversation. She is talking about calling in on off-days. She speaks with a strong ‘accent’ and could be a graduate of an international school. The ‘accent’ does not, however, cover her indifferent Vs and Ws.
“Vell, vee von’t be verking on the 14th and 15th, as vee vill be getting holidays. Vee vill chat longer next veek, ok? But vill you be free? No? Oh. Venever, then.”
Vith that, the young lady rings off, signs off and, vith a smile and a vave, goes her smart vay.
It would be useful to create a couple of V-W packed sentences to exercise the V-W lip movements:
- “WaVe to VIPs, eVen if VIPs Won’t WaVe to you.”
- ”Very Well, haVe it your Way, Variety Will Win any day.”
As a gloomy teen, we memorised a Shakespeare sonnet that tolled on about death. One day, during a walk in Hong Kong’s Victoria Park, the words came back to us. As we voiced the opening lines of Sonnet 71, we thought the third and fourth lines a good exercise for lips that want to get it right:
“No longer mourn for me when I am dead
Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell
GiVe Warning to the World that I am fled
From this Vile World With Vilest Worms to dWell. . .”
We feel vile when we don’t get it right. We really do.