sandiegojones said:
Excuse me your highness! I thought that my German heritage gave me some insight, but I guess my grandparents
German accent is all wrong.
There are worse things to accuse a German of than mispronouncing a W!
Why so formal? Did I sound offended in any way? Don't think so...
Anyway, confusing Ws and Vs isn't part of "the" German accent, it' just part of not being able to speak english properly (no offense). As there's no equivalent to the English W in the German language, "we" (as in "the Germans that know the words but not the pronounciation") would always use the V-sound (for Vs and Ws), since that's the only sound we have (German Vs are pronounced either like Ws or Fs, depending on the word). The same goes for a TH for example... we don't have such a sound, so it gets replaced with an S. Other examples a Rs and Ls, which sound different in German.
But there's Germans (like your grandparents) who know the words, and know the sounds, but don't know when to use which ("vile" / "while", "van" / "when", or whatever), at least not "on the fly" during speaking. This "group" probably covers most Germans, since they had English in school to learn the words, but don't get to use it that often to get the pronounciation right.
And now I'm interested to know, what else you could accuse "a German" of...