The 'V' and 'W' of non-native speakers.

[Tom]

Hi

I would like to ask the native speakers of English if they have ever noticed the 'V' and 'W' of non-native speakers. If yes, how did you find the difference?

A few days ago, I happened to talk to a native speaker from the USA, and she told me that my 'V' was more like my 'W'--and that my 'Volleyball' was 'Wolleyball'. To be honest, it's very puzzling for me. Many times, I tried to say 'village' but she said it still sounded like 'willage'.

Tom

[Yankee]

Hi Tom

Yes, I have had students who mixed up the sounds of V and W in exactly the same way you are describing.

The pronunciation of the letter V should be much closer to an F than to a W.
In fact, the F in the word of should sound exactly the same as the V in have and above.

Do you have any trouble with V other than at the beginning of a word?

One very big difference in the pronunciation of V and W is that your front teeth should touch (press down on) your bottom lip to pronounce V. This does not happen when you pronounce a W. When you pronounce a W, your lips will also be more rounded than when you pronounce a V.
.

[Indiansoil]

Hi Tom,

Yankee has perfectly explained you how to make a clear difference in the sounds of the letters "v" and "w" when you pronounce words that contain those letters.

However, I was also having this problem but I learnt how to pronounce the "v" sound correctly. Yes, you are to bite your lower lip when you pronounce it.

Example: Victory -> First, press your lower lip with your upper teft teeth or bite it!

Now, say "V" and immediately complete pronouncing the word.

I hope I am doing that well now. You just need to do some practice.

Talk to you later on!

Regards,

Gopal.

[Ralf]

[Yankee]

Oddly enough, it was German students that I heard pronouncing "village" as "willage" and "volleyball" as "walleyball", etc. The German W is pronounced like an English V (e.g. the W in "Wasser" sounds like an English V), so the problem was not that the sound doesn't exist in German. In addition, the problem seemed to be mainly with initial V sounds.

I'm sure there must be some kind of linguistic research on this. Maybe Jamie knows more.
.

[Ralf]

[Indiansoil]

Hi Ralf,

Good morning! I have just observed that I am not finding any difficulty in pronouncing the "v" letter when it comes in between a word. But I am being conscious when a word begins with the letter "v".

I don't think that we in the Hindi language have these two variations, i.e. "v" and "w". And again I am not sure which one is found and which one is not found in Hindi. Haha!!! But I am happy that now I know both of them!

Any ways, there's a sense even in your nonsense sentence!

Have a nice day!

Gopal.

[Jamie (K)]

Germans and Hindi/Urdu speakers frequently replace W with V, and they can sometimes come out with the wrong word because of it.

Once they learn to pronounce W, people from many countries have the problem of hyper-correcting themselves and pronouncing all their word-initial V's as W's, even if they really should be V. It's much like when people in the US learn to pronounce a correct English /r/ and then replace everything that sounds like their old /r/ with an American /r/, whether Americans say it that way or not. They wind up saying "everybory", "a lor o' people", etc.

So I doubt that you have trouble pronouncing V. You probably have corrected the replacement of W with V, and then gone too far.

[Tom]

Thank you all.

So how does it sound to native ears when people say "wolley-ball" and "willage"? wrong, odd, OK..?

Tom

[Jamie (K)]

[Yankee]

A native speaker of American English would likely understand "willage" and "walleyball", and probably just write off such pronunciations as a non-native speaker's difficulty in pronouncing certain sounds.
.

[Jamie (K)]

[Prezbucky]

let's think of situations in which misprouncing either letter might cause genuine confusion:

vittles/wittles

veil/wail

vent/went

violin/why, oh lynn

hehe
_________________
Billie Jean is not my lover. Hee.

[Ralf]

[Ralf]

BTW, he was talking about a visit
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