Vhat the Wuck?

There has always been this little phenomenon with a surprising number of Germans who speak English regarding the English letters "V" and "W" .

Other American friends who speak German and I have frequently noticed that Germans say "willage" instead of "village". Phonetic mix-ups are nothing remarkable in any language-to-language transfer. All languages are composed of a different collection of phonetic ingredients, and basically, some language always has some kind of sound that some other language doesn't have.

HOWEVER.

I find the above example completely bizarre, because the German language has these phonemes (sounds). The only difference is that their "V" is pronounced as a "fff", and their "W" is pronounced as our "V". (Prime example: Volkswagen is pronounced, "Folksvagen," to us.) Despite that, it shouldn't make a difference. The sounds have different labels, but they are still present in both languages. To this day, I still cannot figure out why Germans say "willage" instead of "village".

They have the phoneme. There is no reason to mix them up. They have the phoneme. And might I mention that there are few English-speaking Germans who have any major problems with the "w" in "where" and "when"?

I've asked and discussed this with German friends of mine personally. I've gotten anything from Germans who have no problem saying English words starting with "v", to those who can discern absolutely no difference when I enunciate both the correct and incorrect forms before them, to those who have said, "Well, I actually had a good American friend who helped teach me what exactly to do with your mouth, lips and tongue. So that's why I can do it. However, that's the only reason why I can pronounce it correctly now. As far as sound, I promise you, both still sound exactly the same to me."

Isn't this bizarre?!