Can indians pronounce v

All Rights Reserved. Do not reprint without permission. W — Enunciation Tips. B mouth positions. Some speakers of Bengali make this mistake in India. Because it appears that the mouth positions are the same, but they are actually different in one critical way — notice the v mouth position. The top teeth are touching the bottom lip. With b, there is no need to use your teeth. For V the lips will not touch or vibrate off each other as they do with B some Spanish speakers make this same mistake.

Note that V and F are pronounced with the same mouth position in English, the only difference is V is voiced with sound and F is voiceless air only. See videos below for tutorials. Image taken from slideshow on B vs. V tutorial here. Tags US English. Search Categories Uncategorized Related Posts. Perhaps no one actually talks like that any more, and perhaps they never did? I don't know why many Germans say "wictory" for "victory", for example.

The initial consonant in German "wasser" water is pronounced quite like the voiced [v] in English "victory", so it's certainly not the case that the phoneme is difficult for them to produce. The initial consonant in German "Vater" father is very close to the unvoiced first consonant in English "father".

One might expect to hear them say "Fictory" for "Victory", not "Wictory". My guess is that it's simply a confusion of which sounds go with which letters. Wow, such complicated answers. An Indian who speaks English professionally eg a newscaster speaking to an English audience, or an English teacher can practice to say the v sound, but I think it takes a lot of work, judging by how many of my friends from India still say v words with a w sound, including teachers and newscasters.

Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. Why do some people say "v" as "w"? Ask Question. Asked 7 years ago. Active 27 days ago. Viewed 26k times. Improve this question. I haven't noticed Germans or Indians pronouncing v as w , but I definitely have heard Russians do so.

I've also heard mainland Chinese pronounce z as g "Three, two, one, gero! DanBron As hard g , not j? It think some of your perceived pronunciations are actually different. The "f" in "fussbal" is most definitely not the same as the "v" in "verloren" and that again is different from the "w" in "wasser".

And the "w" in wasser comes quite close to the double-u sound. Use of the "u" in German to indicate a consonant seems rare, if it exists at all. All that said, I think a question about German pronunciation or Indian may be off-topic here. Show 4 more comments. This is the reason Americans hear a "v" sound when they are listening for a "w", and why many Hindi speakers struggle to hear a distinction, because their native language doesn't make one between these sounds.

For American English speakers, the "v" and "w" sounds are very distinct. The sound that Hindi speakers generally use isn't either of those, but a sound that is pronounced somewhere in between the two. Many times, if Hindi speakers say a word like "west", they pronounce it using a consonant that linguists describe as a voiced labiodental approximant. That means that this sound made by vibrating your vocal cords, touching your lips labio- to your top teeth -dental , and narrowing the back of your mouth as the air passes through to make the sound.

Additionally, when Hindi speakers say the word "vest", they usually pronounce it with the same sound. American English speakers would use two different sounds to pronounce these words. West and vest are known as minimal pairs because they are pronounced the same except for one sound, the first one.

When American English speakers pronounce "west", they use the voiced labio-velar approximant. That means that this sound is made be vibrating your vocal cords, rounding your lips and narrowing the back of your mouth as the air passes through to make the sound. This sound is similar to the sound Hindi speakers use, but not the same.