"van" and "von", how to pronounce it?

[Echetlaeus]

To my understanding is like the Greek letter "φ". Is that right?

 

[bicicleur 2]

v like in victory
what follows depends if you're Dutch or American
von is for Germans

 

[MOESAN]

'von' (german): /fon/ like in 'phone'
'van' (dutch): /van/ like in 'victory' or the modern Beta in greek? (in dutch, labio-dental, for greek I don't know if it is 'labio-dental' or 'bi-labial'...)

 

[Segia2]

Like "f" in both cases.

 

[MOESAN]

Like "f" in both cases.

'van' too according to you??? or are you speaking of another thing?
in dutch, for I know, V- is pronounced /v/ when at the absolute beginning of a sentance -
but even standard dutch contrary to standard german, makes a kind of phonetic 'accordings' between final and initial consonnants in words; as a rule, the explosive initial consonnant has the strong side upon the implosive final one of the preceding word, concerning voicing ("soft") or unvoicing ("hard") nature of consonnant: ONE exception:
V- and Z-, even explosive at beginning of words, can be modified into /f/ and /s/ in some contexts: do notice that firstable these consonnants were F- and S- in the language history -
'verkopen' >> /vërkôôpë/ <> "Ik verkoop brood" >> /ik fërkôôb-brôôt/ - 'zand' /zânt/ <> 'wat zand' /vat sânt/

 

[Segia2]

I've been searching around and I've found this:

http://www.dutchgrammar.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=1355

In traditional language would sound like /w/ (english or french v), but there is a strong tendency to pronounce it like /f/. To my ears, it sounded always as an F

 

[FrankN]

My Flemish cousins pronounce the "van" in their last name like an "f" - the "father" sound. But Dutch / Flemish pronunciation may of course show regional variation.

 

[MOESAN]

I've been searching around and I've found this:

http://www.dutchgrammar.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=1355

In traditional language would sound like /w/ (english or french v), but there is a strong tendency to pronounce it like /f/. To my ears, it sounded always as an F

thanks for this link ( not a scholar work but a fluent speaking man's advice (I think)
so the F pronounciation is new enough and depends on levels or language or regional habits?

concerning 'w' I learned and heard (long ago) the dutch 'w' rather was a kind of open biliabial /V/ close enough to a palatized ("u-biased" like french 'u' in 'nuit') /W/, AND NOT the today common labio-DENTAL /V/ (as in modern french, german and the majority of other modern european languages) - so at first, dutch 'W' was different from german 'W' -
it is possible that the evolution leads to common labio-dental 'V' today...

 

[bicicleur 2]

My Flemish cousins pronounce the "van" in their last name like an "f" - the "father" sound. But Dutch / Flemish pronunciation may of course show regional variation.

i'm Flemish
v like in victory

 

[Sennevini]

Depends; in my Dutch variant, the /v/ sounds more like [f], but in Brabant, and the south in general, /v/ is more like French or English [v].

 

[Sennevini]

The /w/ in Dutch is by the way labio-velar (in Northern Dutch and in the Randstad, not in Brabant, Limburg and Belgium), but it is distinct from the /v/, which is more common to the German /w/.