Voiced labiodental fricative

IPA – number	129
IPA – text	v
IPA – image
Entity	v
X-SAMPA	v
Kirshenbaum	v
Sound sample (help·info)

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 [y, ø, œ], 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

References

Bibliography

• Shosted, Ryan K. & Chikovani Vakhtang (2006), "Standard Georgian", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 36 (2): 255-264

See also

• List of phonetics topics