What is the V sound in katakana?
The katakana syllable ヴィ (vi). Its equivalent in hiragana is ゔぃ (vi).
The katakana syllable ヴェ (ve). Its equivalent in hiragana is ゔぇ (ve).
Form B (v-)
The hiragana form with dakuten, ゔ, representing the sound "v", is rarely seen in older words, since the sound does not occur in native Japanese words.
tl;dr: It varies, but it is usually a weak "b". It varies from person to person, so some may pronounce it like the English "v", but others may use a strong "b" sound. Originally, Japanese had no ヴ character so they used variations of ビ (bi).
The /v/ sound is made with the same mouth positioning as the /f/ sound. The only difference is that the /f/sound is unvoiced and the /v/ sound is voiced. This means that as air moves through the mouth and the teeth for the /v/ sound, it is accompanied by vibrations from the vocal cords as well.
This is why Japanese has never had /wu/ or /yi/ sequences, even in Old Japanese. If you start with an う sound and end with an う sound, you just get /u/, not /wu/. Likewise for /i/, not /yi/. Japanese /w/ is not pronounced [v].
Japan. The V sign, primarily palm-outward, is very commonly made by Japanese people, especially younger people, when posing for informal photographs, and is known as pīsu sain (ピースサイン, peace sign), or more commonly simply pīsu (ピース, peace).
They do have a specific alphabet just for foreign words, called katakana but it still subscribes to these rules. Combine that with the fact that the Japanese language just doesn't have an L-sound (becomes an R) or a V-sound (becomes a B) and things get very difficult very quickly.
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 .
The alphabet letter v, by itself, makes 1 sound.
Why does V sound like f?
The vocal cords are not vibrated when the F sound is made. The V sound is very similar. In fact, it has the same placement as the F sound. The only difference is that the vocal cords are vibrated / the voice is turned on.
Language | Dialect(s) | Pronunciation (IPA) |
---|---|---|
German | Standard | /v/ |
Indonesian | /f/ | |
Italian | /v/ | |
Irish | /vʲ/ |

Consonants are either voiced (sonant) or voiceless (surd). Voiced consonants are pronounced with the same vocal murmur that is heard in vowels; voiceless consonants lack this murmur. The voiced consonants are b, d, g, l, r, m, n, z, consonantal i, and v.
The sound /v/ is a voiced, labiodental, fricative consonant. Press your upper teeth against your lower lip. Breathe out and let air escape past your teeth. Your vocal cords should vibrate.
The pronunciation of ⟨v⟩ is one of the few cases of ambiguity in German orthography. The German language normally uses ⟨f⟩ to indicate the sound /f/ (as used in the English word fight) and ⟨w⟩ to indicate the sound /v/ (as in victory).
So what is the difference? /b/ is a plosive sound – you block the air fully with both lips and then release it. /v/ is a fricative sound – you squeeze the air between the top teeth and lower lip. Both sounds are voiced.
ア a | エ e | |
---|---|---|
W | ワ wa | |
ン n | ||
G | ガ ga | ゲ ge |
Z | ザ za | ゼ ze |
The use of wwww to represent laughing comes from the Japanese wara (笑), “to laugh.” With the rise of text-messaging and the internet in the 1990s–2000s, Japanese users adapted the kanji 笑 to denote laughter, similar to LOL. People eventually found it easier, though, to use the letter w, from the romaji of 笑, wara.
The good news is that pronouncing Japanese words the right way isn't necessarily all that hard. In fact, once you get used to the basic sounds of the language, it's actually fairly easy to start reading and pronouncing Japanese words correctly.
V is very popular in Japan for many reasons, one being that he is very fluent in Japanese. when the group remakes a Japanese version of one of their songs, he and Jimin get a good part in them because of the fact that they are both fluent.
How do you write vo in katakana?
The katakana syllable ヴォ (vo). Its equivalent in hiragana is ゔぉ (vo).
Katakana chart
Katakana, as mentioned above, has 46 basic characters. Each one represents a sound or syllable used in the Japanese language. Like hiragana, katakana also uses transformations – called dakuten, handakuten, and combinations – that tweak those basic characters in order to cover a wider range of sounds.
Katakana is one of three characters used in the Japanese language. Katakana is a phonetic alphabet - each letter represents the sound of a syllable (like English ABC). Letter itself has no meaning. Katakana and Hiragana represent exactly the same set of sounds.
The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ʌ⟩, graphically a rotated lowercase "v" (called a turned V but created as a small-capital ⟨ᴀ⟩ without the crossbar), even though some vendors display it as a real turned v.
Some of the preschool V words for kids are Verify, Venom, Various, Viable, Vital, Visual, Viral, Vacant, Varied, Verb, Volleyball, Velvet, View, Vocational, Valentine, Volatile, Vibrate, etc.
Words in English do not end in the letter v. If you hear a /v/ sound at the end of a word in English, it will end in -ve. That final e is silent, so you will only hear and pronounce the /v/ sound.
The classical Latin alphabet, from which the modern European alphabets derived, did not have the "W" character. The "W" sounds were represented by the Latin letter "V" (at the time, not yet distinct from "U").
The v sound is made through the mouth and it is Voiced which means that you vibrate your vocal chords to make the sound. It is defined by position of your lips and teeth and it is a fricative, which is a sound that is produced by high pressure air flow between a narrow space in the mouth.
They do have a specific alphabet just for foreign words, called katakana but it still subscribes to these rules. Combine that with the fact that the Japanese language just doesn't have an L-sound (becomes an R) or a V-sound (becomes a B) and things get very difficult very quickly.
However, “v” sounds are rarely used due to the difficulty native Japanese speakers have in pronouncing them.
Does the v sound exist in Japanese?
The “v” sound is absent from the Japanese language: the closest it has is the “b” sound, which it uses to approximate the “b” sound in loanwords.
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 .
V sign pose, which we call it “Peace sign” in Japanese has 2 meanings: 1. It means the “VICTORY” and V sign came from the first letter of word VICTORY. 2. It also means as “WISHING FOR PEACE” and this is why we call it in Japanese peace sign.
Actually, there are no F or V sounds in Korean. In fact, there's no difference between P and F or B and V. Therefore, the P and F sounds are both pronounced as ㅍ[pieup] and B and V as ㅂ[bieup].
Language | Dialect(s) | Pronunciation (IPA) |
---|---|---|
German | Standard | /v/ |
Indonesian | /f/ | |
Italian | /v/ | |
Irish | /vʲ/ |
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