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
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.
.
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! :lol:
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.
Hi Tom,
Practicing the following nonsensical sentence might help.
A word of warning – Avoid very wanton vergins waving velvet wind vanes vividly.
Say it out loud when you feel detached from the outside world.
Never in vain. 
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.
.
I suppose the phenomenon in question is called “hyper-awareness”. Once you come across a sound in a foreign language that you don’t find in your language, you want to avoid mistakes and you start misarticulating sounds that shouldn’t pose a problem to your inherent language abilities.
But sometimes native speakers have the same problem. Teach an English bus driver the correct pronunciation for the next stop that is not called “Othello 'otel”, and he’ll shout out “Hothello Hotel” henceforth.
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!!! :lol: But I am happy that now I know both of them!
Any ways, there’s a sense even in your nonsense sentence! :lol:
Have a nice day!
Gopal.
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.
Thank you all.
So how does it sound to native ears when people say “wolley-ball” and “willage”? wrong, odd, OK…?
Tom
It sounds wrong and odd, but not unusual. Occasionally the person will say a different word than he meant to.
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.
.
The funny thing is, though, that many of the people who make this mistake do have the V sound in their language and can pronounce it. This error is one of the greatest mysteries of ESL phonology.
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
I had to think of this thread when a student in my class of phd students referred to the last wizard of the American delegation. I asked him to elaborate on the subject, and he repeatedly referred to the nice and also at times entertaining “wizid”.
There were quite a few phonological problems of hyper-awareness and misconception involved. The initial w-sound as well as a misguided effort to avoid final obstruent devoicing on his side, and my mind that made me hear him trying to say the word “wizard” by over-stressing the schwa sound as in “wantid” :shock:
BTW, he was talking about a visit 
ahhhh
i was going to say… it sounded like “wizard” with a Northeastern USA accent.
When I was small, I used to watch the British sitcom “Mind your language”. If I get to watch it again nowadays I still won’t get bored. Mr. Brown is so gorgeous! I wish he was my English teacher.
Anyway, I noticed that one character in the sitcom named Anna, from German (I think), couldn’t differentiate the ‘V’ and the ‘W’ sound. Me and my sisters couldn’t understand why she couldn’t see the difference because it was very obvious to us. Then now I met many people, I also notice that most or some, Indonesians can’t pronounce ‘s’ sound without making the sound ‘sh’ and the 'z sound sounding like ‘j’.
Malaysians usually have problems making the ‘th’ sound. An American friend told me I tend to make the ‘t’ sound only at the beginning of the words (or was it at the end?).
And we also tend not to stretch our vowels. We feel funny if we do.
Indonesians don’t make “s” into “sh” and “z” into “j” everywhere. They can pronounce them correctly near back vowels (u, o, a), but before front vowels (i, e) they have trouble with them.
Okie dokie, Jamie.
Hi NinaZara,
As I said before that I was having the problem of making distinguished sounds when pronouncing words that have the “sh” and the “s” sounds as in “pronunciation”, “she”, and “shy”. If I said “shy”, it would sound “sigh”. But thank God! Now I can do well!
Well, just few days ago I started taking the “v” and “w” sounds and now I am feeling pretty much comfortable with them too. But I have to be conscious! The problem is with the initial “v” only, as in “victory”. Well, I am likely to pronounce it incorrectly if I don’t take care of the initial “v”.
Okay, now the third problem which I am to handle: “j” and “z”. I have not worked on them yet. But now I will take them. I was working on each of these sounds one by one. I am happy now.
I hope I will be able to pronounce them correctly soon.
Have a nice day!
Gopal.