Learn to Pronounce the V Sound /v/ - American English Ultimate Pronunciation Challenge Master Class

Hey everybody, Jennifer from Toro Speech. Welcome to another week of the Ultimate Pronunciation Challenge Masterclass. Today we are talking about the V sounds. If you were here last week, we worked on the F sounds. These sounds are almost exactly the same. The only difference here is voicing, and that means that your voice box will be on and vibrating and moving for the sound. This sound is a challenging one for many of my students. I hear a lot of mistakes with this sound. I hear some of my students saying the instead of the. So instead of saying the word very or vote, that person may say very or vote. So very is the sound that we are going for here, the V sound. Another mistake that I hear is a W sound, a wuh, wuh, wuh. And that is really confusing for so many of my students. I have a very easy way to help you fix this mistake. And so we are going to be again working on that V sound. Okay. So let's jump right in and talk about the V sound. All right. So for those of you who want to know, this is how we spell it with the phonetic alphabet. It's a small V. And for spelling, most of the time, almost all of the time, we spell this sound with a V as in vote or two Vs as in savvy. We do have one very common exception, and that is the F. And that is in the word of, of, of. So yes, we do say that with a voiced sound at the end. So we don't say off. That would be O-F-F. We say of, which is with the V sound. And we have that voicing. All right. So let's talk about what our mouth is doing. And then I will show you a close up of my mouth. If you were listening to this on a podcast, pop on over to my YouTube channel and you can see me close up with the video. All right. Our lips are pulled back. They are open and our teeth are touching the lip. This is super important. Think about smiling for this sound. Think that this is your favorite sound and pull those lips back. This helps so many of my students who say a W sound instead of the V sound. The tongue is neutral. It is not touching anything. The air is continuing out of the mouth. If you put your hand in front of your mouth, you should feel a continuous stream of air hitting your hand. It is not buffing. If you say a B sound by mistake, the air is going to pop out and only hit your hand briefly. We want that air to hit your hand continuously. And your voice box is on and moving for this sound. Okay. This looks like this. You can see my lips are pulled back. If my lips are forward, it sounds like a W. We do not want to buffer. We want to pull those lips back for the V. You can see my lips are slightly open. I am creating friction with my teeth on the inside of my lip. Some people bite the outside of their lip and do V. I tend to keep my teeth inside of the lip and I create the friction there. If you put your lips together, it sounds like a B sound. So again, lips are open, lips are pulled back, air continuously moves out of the mouth. Your voice box is on. It is moving. It is vibrating. Okay. You have it. Let's move on to some practice. So I am going to say these sounds. I want you to listen. And then we will do a repeat after me. If you are new here, for the rest of this week, I will post daily practice that you can do as many times as you want. And it is me saying the word two times, and then you take your turn and say the word. You can also see me saying the word as well. Today, we are just going to listen and then repeat and do a little practice. Okay. Just go ahead and listen. View, vanish, vapor, vent, vanilla, gravy, over, level, develop, everyone, of, glove, brave, love, stove. Okay. Now repeat after me. View, vanish, vapor, And now let's do three at a time. View, gravy, of, vanish, over, love, vapor, level, brave, vent, develop, love, vanilla, everyone, stove. Okay, everybody. I hope you did well. Again, just those reminders. Make sure your lips stay open. Make sure the air moves out continuously and make sure the lips are pulled back more and a smile so that you are not puckering. Okay. Now on to some sentences. Vans vacations in Vienna and vivacious valve vacuumed Okay. Repeat after me. Vans vacations in Vienna. Vans vacations in Vienna. Vans vacations in Vienna. Vans vacations in Vienna. And sentence number two. Vivacious Val Vacuumed Violet Very dirty Vehicle. Vivacious Val Vacuumed Violet Very dirty Vehicle. Vavicious Val Vacuumed Violet Very dirty Vehicle. The vivacious valve vacuumed Violet's very dirty vehicle. Okay, I hope you did well. I'm sure that you did. If you have any questions, you can of course leave those in the comment section below. This week, please come back to practice with me Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. We have practice at the beginning, middle, end of words, and in sentences. Thank you all for being here. Please come back tomorrow. If by chance you want all of these practice videos in one handy dandy package, I have these available on the iTunes store. Links are in the description below. I also have repeat after me audio files in ebook, and those are available on Google Play. They're also available on iTunes and at Teachers Pay Teachers, and I also have a link in the description below. And if this sound is really challenging for you, I also have made a playlist for each sound. I have that linked in the video here, and also I have it in the comment section below. Thank you so much, everyone, and have an amazing week ahead.