Why then are there so many v– and z- words in Dutch and German and nearly none in English? German is an easy case. In present day English, those voiced spirants can still be found in the place in which they stood a thousand years ago.

love and rise) were pronounced approximately as lu vu and ree zan. In Old English, the sounds v and z occurred only between vowels. Long ago, while answering someone’s question, I briefly touched on the nature of this phenomenon, but, since even I don’t remember the context, it will be safe to assume that no one else does. thigh) and their voiced counterparts ( v, z, and th, as in Engl. What is the reason for that? What has happened to the native stock? Before going on, a term has to be introduced. Very, vogue, virgin, voucher, vomit-wherever we look, the answer is always the same: from French (mainly), Latin, or Italian, as the case may be. This person will notice that in Dutch and German v- and z-words fill up dozens of columns, while in English, the virtues of zeal and the stripes of zebras notwithstanding, such columns are few.

But anyone who has the knack for reading dictionaries page after page (a rare knack, I must admit) will be surprised to learn that practically all English words beginning with the letters v and z are of foreign descent. It is common knowledge that an average page of an English dictionary contains at least twice as many borrowed as native words, even though come, go, see, sit, stand, do, make, man, woman, in, on, and other similar heavy duty words go back to Old English.

The Golden Cockerel by Elaine Pogany