The first two episodes this year are all about the /w/ and /v/ sounds. This week, we’re going to look at them at the beginning of words, and next week we’ll look at them in the middle or at the ends of words.
/w/ and /v/ are both voiced sounds (we’ll look at the voiced/ voiceless /v/ and /f/ pair another time), and while I find that most of my students *can* make these sounds, they’re often tricky in certain positions or combinations, depending on how they’re used in your first language. So, as usual, it’s really important to pay attention to where *you* find them easier or more difficult to make.
/w/ is described as an approximant, which means that you make a narrow space for air to pass through. That’s done by rounding (but not completely closing) the lips, and your tongue does some work too: it (especially the back of it) needs to be quite high in the mouth. Try to make the sound with your tongue low down in your mouth – it’s almost impossible for me! Strictly speaking your lips don’t move when making /w/, but because there’s almost always movement from the sounds before or after, I find that it can help to think of /w/ as a sound involving the brief movement of the lips into that rounded position.
Let’s try some common words beginning /w/. Listen, and repeat.
1. one
2. wait
3. walk
4. want
5. warm
6. wash
7. watch
8. water
9. we
10. weather
11. website
12. what
13. when
14. where
15. which
16. why
17. wife
18. will
19. winter
20. with
21. woman
22. wonderful
23. work
24. world
And three sentences with some of those words.
I want one wash with warm water!His wife is a wonderful woman.Where will we work all winter?As always, see if you can make more!
You’ll have noticed that, in terms of spelling, almost all of those words began with the letter ‘w’, with just one exception, the letter ‘o’ in ‘one’. Don’t forget, though, that the letter ‘w’ can be silent at the beginning of a word, for example in ‘wrong’. We’ll talk more about spelling patterns in other positions in the word next week.
/v/ is a fricative sound, which means that it’s a sound where air both passes through but where there is also some friction-creating obstacle in the way: in this case, your upper teeth against your lower lip. Your lips, tongue and indeed the rest of your mouth should be relaxed. If you want, have a play with tensing or moving the other parts of your mouth, and you’ll see that it gets harder (though not impossible) to make a /v/ sound.
And now a few common words beginning /v/.
1. valley
2. valuable
3. van
4. various
5. vast
6. vehicle
7. vegetable
8. venue
9. version
10. via
11. victory
12. video
13. view
14. village
15. violent
16. virtual
17. virus
18. vision
19. visit
20. vital
21. vitamin
22. volume
23. volunteer
24. vote
And again, a few sentences with some of those words.
Various vital vitaminsHe drove his valuable van via the vast valley.The village volunteers viewed various vegetables.And just to point out those spelling patterns again, the good news here is that every one of those words starts with the letter ‘v’.
Ok, let’s challenge ourselves a bit more by looking at some minimal pairs. There aren’t a lot of these with /w/ and /v/, and as you’ll see we do get more into some higher-level vocabulary here – go check out the script and get your dictionaries out if you need to!
For the first group, listen to and repeat both words.
we ‘v’ we
went vent
wary vary
why vie
wet vet
For the next group of 4, listen to the /w/ word, and try to give the /v/ word
wow vow
wally
wane
wine
And again, listen to and repeat both forms.
wow vow
wally volley
wane vein
wine vine
And for the next group of 4, listen to the /v/ words, and try to give the /w/ words. We’ll do the first together as an example.
vest west
veil
verse
vile
Now listen to and repeat both forms:
vest west
veil whale
verse worse
vile while
Ok, the last thing we’ll do is to practise some sentences mixing both sounds. This is where you’ll really notice how easily you can switch between the two!
We virtually voted on the worst warm vest.The village which we visited was violent.Wonderful volunteers work with our video website.