A voiced labiodental fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. It is familiar to English-speakers as the "v" sound in "vase". The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is .
The sound is similar to voiced alveolar fricative in that it is familiar to most European speakers but is a fairly uncommon sound cross-linguistically, occurring in approximately 21.1% of languages. Moreover, most languages that have also have and similarly to , the overwhelming majority of languages with are languages of Europe, Africa, or Western Asia, although the similar labiodental approximant is also common in India. The presence of and absence of , is a very distinctive areal feature of European languages and those of adjacent areas of Siberia and Central Asia. Speakers of East Asian languages that lack this sound may pronounce it as (Korean and Japanese), or / (Cantonese and Mandarin), and thus be unable to distinguish between a number of English minimal pairs.
In certain languages, such as Danish, Faroese, Icelandic or Norwegian the voiced labiodental fricative is in a free variation with the labiodental approximant.
Features Features of a voiced labiodental fricative:
Occurrence Language Word IPA Meaning Notes Abkhaz 'Europe' See Abkhaz phonology Adyghe / 'oar' Afrikaans 'to be' See Afrikaans phonology Albanian 'case' Arabic Algerian 'ataxy' See Arabic phonology Hejazi 'virus' Only used in loanwords, transcribed and pronounced as by many speakers. Siirt 'gold' See Arabic phonology Armenian Eastern / 'six' Assyrian / 'book' Only in the Urmia dialects. is also predominantly used. Corresponds to in the other varieties. Bai Dali ? 'fish' Bulgarian / 'water' See Bulgarian phonology Catalan Algherese 'old' See Catalan phonology Balearic Southern Catalonia Valencian Chechen / 'brother' Chinese Wu / 'cooked rice' Sichuanese / 'five' Corresponds to in standard Mandarin. Czech 'water' See Czech phonology Chichewa Has both plain and labialized. Danish Standard 'know(s)' Most often an approximant . See Danish phonology Dutch All dialects 'revenge' Allophone of before . See Dutch phonology Most dialects 'strange' Often devoiced to by speakers from the Netherlands. See Dutch phonology Standard English All dialects valve 'valve' See English phonology African American breathe 'breathe' Does not occur word-initially. See th-fronting Cockney Esperanto 'wound' See Esperanto phonology Ewe 'he is evil' Faroese 'speech' Word-initial allophone of , in free variation with an approximant . See Faroese phonology French 'valve' See French phonology Georgian 'narrow' German 'guard' See Standard German phonology Greek / 'varnish' See Modern Greek phonology Hebrew 'back' See Modern Hebrew phonology Hindi 'fast' See Hindustani phonology Hmong / 'king', 'vang clan last name' Hungarian 'danger' See Hungarian phonology Irish 'home' See Irish phonology Italian 'miserly' (f. pl.) See Italian phonology Judaeo-Spanish 'nine' Kabardian / / 'star' Corresponds to in Adyghe Kashmiri 'exercise' See Kashmiri phonology Macedonian / 'water' See Macedonian phonology Malayalam വിയർപ്പ് / viyarpp` 'sweat' Usually pronounced as by most speakers. See Malayalam phonology Maltese 'yes' Norwegian Urban East 'friend' Allophone of before a pause and in emphatic speech. See Norwegian phonology Occitan Auvergnat 'flight' See Occitan phonology Limousin Provençal Persian Western varzeš 'sport' See Persian phonology Polish 'bag' See Polish phonology Portuguese 'town', 'village' See Portuguese phonology Romanian 'wave' See Romanian phonology Russian / 'hair' Contrasts with palatalized form. May be a lenited fricative or an approximant instead. See Russian phonology Scottish Gaelic 'over here' Loosely articulated, can resemble . See Scottish Gaelic phonology Serbo-Croatian 'water' See Serbo-Croatian phonology Slovak 'height' Appears only in syllable onset before voiced obstruents; the usual realization of is an approximant . See Slovak phonology Slovene Standard 'philosopher goes' Allophone of before voiced consonants. See Slovene phonology Some dialects 'water' Instead of . See Slovene phonology Spanish All dialects 'Afghan' Allophone of before voiced consonants. See Spanish phonologyChilean nuevo [] 'new' Allophone of ; pronounced as in other dialects. Swedish 'wall' See Swedish phonology Turkish 'due date' The main allophone of ; realized as bilabial in certain contexts. See Turkish phonology Tamil 'word' See Tamil phonology Tyap 'road' Umbundu Has both plain and nasalized. Urdu 'exercise' See Hindustani phonology Vietnamese 'and' In southern dialects, is in free variation with . See Vietnamese phonology West Frisian 'to weave' Never occurs in word-initial positions. See West Frisian phonology Welsh 'I' See Welsh phonology Yi / 'intestines'
See also Index of phonetics articles
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