Voiced labiodental fricative

Template:Short description Template:Refimprove Template:Infobox IPA/core1 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 Template:Angbr IPA, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is v.

The sound is similar to voiced alveolar fricative /z/ 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 /z/ also have /v/ and similarly to /z/, the overwhelming majority of languages with [v] are languages of Europe, Africa, or Western Asia, although the similar labiodental approximant /ʋ/ 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 the voiced labiodental fricative:

Occurrence

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Abkhaz				'Europe'	See Abkhaz phonology
Afrikaans				'to be'	See Afrikaans phonology
Albanian				'case'
Arabic	Algerian	Template:Script/Arabic		'ataxy'	See Arabic phonology
	Hejazi			'virus'	Only used in loanwords, transcribed and pronounced as by many speakers.
	Siirt			'gold'	See Arabic phonology
Armenian	Eastern		{{errorTemplate:Main other|Audio file "vɛtsʰ.ogg" not found}}Template:Category handlerTemplate:Category handler	'six'
Assyrian		ܟܬܒ̣ܐ	]	'book'	Only in the Urmia dialects. Template:IPAblink is also predominantly used. Corresponds to Template:IPAblink in the other varieties.
Bai	Dali	?		'fish'
Bulgarian				'water'	See Bulgarian phonology
Catalan	Alguerese			'old'	See Catalan phonology
	Balearic
	Southern Catalonia
	Valencian
Chechen		/		'brother'
Chinese	Wu	饭		'cooked rice'
	Sichuanese	五		'five'	Corresponds to in standard Mandarin.
Czech				'water'	See Czech phonology
Danish	Standard			'know(s)'	Most often an approximant Template:IPAblink. See Danish phonology
Dutch	All dialects			'revenge'	Allophone of before . See Dutch phonology
	Most dialects			'strange'	Often devoiced to Template:IPAblink by speakers from the Netherlands. See Dutch phonology
	Standard
English	All dialects	valve	{{errorTemplate:Main other|Audio file "valve-pronunciation-audio.ogg" not found}}Template:Category handlerTemplate:Category handler	'valve'	See English phonology
	African AmericanTemplate:Sfnp	breathe		'breathe'	Does not occur word-initially. See th-fronting
	CockneyTemplate:Sfnp
Esperanto				'wound'	See Esperanto phonology
Ewe				'he is evil'
Faroese				'speech'	Word-initial allophone of , in free variation with an approximant Template:IPAblink. 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		Template:Script /		'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		/ /	{{errorTemplate:Main other|Audio file "Vaːʁʷa.ogg" not found}}Template:Category handlerTemplate:Category handler	'star'	Corresponds to in Adyghe
Macedonian				'water'	See Macedonian 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			'sport'	See Persian phonology
Polish			{{errorTemplate:Main other|Audio file "Pl-wór.ogg" not found}}Template:Category handlerTemplate:Category handler	'bag'	See Polish phonology
Portuguese				'town'	See Portuguese phonology
Romanian				'wave'	See Romanian phonology
Russian				'hair'	Contrasts with palatalized form; may be an approximant Template:IPAblink instead. See Russian phonology
Scottish Gaelic				'over here'	Loosely articulated, can resemble Template:IPAblink. 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 Template:IPAblink. See Slovak phonology
Slovene	Standard			'philosopher goes'	Allophone of before voiced consonants. See Slovene phonology
	Some dialects			'water'	Instead of . See Slovene phonology
Spanish				'Afghan'	Allophone of before voiced consonants. See Spanish phonology
Swedish				'wall'	See Swedish phonology
Turkish				'due date'	The main allophone of ; realized as bilabial in certain contexts. See Turkish phonology
Tyap				'road'
Urdu		ورزش	[vəɾzɪʃ]	‘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

External links

• Template:Phoible