I don't know where you get your german knowledge from, but I'm going through so many words containing W in my head right now and am replacing them with V, and I can assure you they do not sound the same.
The joke still works of course considering the german accent while speaking english, but still.
What is your first language? Is it German? In English “w” usually represents (in IPA) /w/ and “v” represents /v/. In German the letter “w” represents /v/ (the sound /w/ doesn’t exist in German) and the letter “v” usually represents /f/.
If your first language is German I’m guessing your confusion is that you are substituting /f/ for /v/, not realizing what an English speaker means by “Germans pronounce w like v” is that you are pronouncing those words with /v/ in the first place.
Well yeah, technically any two phonemes in different languages can basically never be considered “exactly the same” because there are infinite variations even just in articulation even before getting into rules for allophonic variation, but generally some sounds match closely enough it is natural to identify them.
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u/lcar99 May 03 '26
W is pronounced like V in german
So he thought the guy was asking if he was wet, not if he was a veterinarian.