Voiced labiodental fricative

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The voiced labiodental fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is v, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is v.

Although this is a familiar sound to most European listeners, it is cross-linguistically a fairly uncommon sound, being only a quarter as frequent as [w]. The presence of [v] and absence of [w], along with the presence of otherwise unknown front rounded vowels , is a very distinctive areal feature of European languages and those of adjacent areas of Siberia and Central Asia. Speakers of East Asian languages which lack this sound like Mandarin and Japanese tend to pronounce [v] as [b], thus failing to distinguish the English words "very" and "berry".

Features

Features of the voiced labiodental fricative:

• Its manner of articulation is fricative, which means it is produced by constricting air flow through a narrow channel at the place of articulation, causing turbulence.
• Its place of articulation is labiodental which means it is articulated with the lower lips and the upper teeth.
• Its phonation type is voiced, which means the vocal cords are vibrating during the articulation.
• It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth.
• It is a central consonant, which means it is produced by allowing the airstream to flow over the middle of the tongue, rather than the sides.
• The airstream mechanism is pulmonic egressive, which means it is articulated by pushing air out of the lungs and through the vocal tract, rather than from the glottis or the mouth.

Occurrence

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Abkhaz		европа	[evˈropʼa]	'Europe'	See Abkhaz phonology
Albanian		valixhe	[validʒɛ]	'case'
Arabic	Hassānīya	فيل	[viːl]	'elephant'	See Arabic phonology
Armenian		վեց	[vɛtsʰ]	'six'
Bai	Dali	?	[ŋv˩˧]	'fish'
Chechen		вашa/vaṣa	[vaʃa]	'brother'
Czech		voda	[voda]	'water'	See Czech phonology
Dutch		vreemd	[vremt]	'strange'	See Dutch phonology
English		valve	[væɫv]	'valve'	See English phonology
Faroese		røða	[ˈɹøːva]	'speech'
French		valve	[valv]	'valve'	See French phonology
Georgian		ვიწრო	[ˈvitsʼɾo]	'narrow'
German		Wächter	[ˈvɛçtɐ]	'guard'	See German phonology
Greek		βερνίκι	[ve̞r.ˈni.ci]	'varnish'	See Modern Greek phonology
Hungarian		veszély	[vɛseːj]	'danger'	See Hungarian phonology
Italian		avare		'miserly' (f.pl.)	See Italian phonology
Kabardian		зэвы	[zævɛ]	'narrow'
Ladino		mueve	[ˈmwɛvɛ]	'nine'
Norwegian		vann	[vɑn]	'water'	See Norwegian phonology
Polish		wór		'bag'	See Polish phonology
Portuguese		vinho	[ˈviɲu]	'wine'	See Portuguese phonology
Romanian		val	[val]	'wave'	See Romanian phonology
Russian		волосы	[ˈvoləsɨ]	'hair'	Contrasts with palatalized form. See Russian phonology
Swedish		vägg	[ˈvɛg]	'wall'	See Swedish phonology
Turkish		ev	[ev]	'house'	See Turkish phonology
Vietnamese		vê	[ve]	'to roll'	Variety: [je]. See Vietnamese phonology

See also

• List of phonetics topics

References

Bibliography

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Last updated on Monday February 25, 2008 at 19:51:38 PST (GMT -0800)
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