The voiced labiodental approximant is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. It is something between an English /w/ and /v/, pronounced with the teeth and lips held in the position used to articulate the letter V. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ʋ⟩, a Ʋ|letter v with a leftward hook protruding from the upper right of the letter, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is or. With an advanced diacritic, ⟨ʋ̟⟩, this letter also indicates a bilabial approximant, though the diacritic is frequently omitted because no contrast is likely. The labiodental approximant is the typical realization of in the Indian South African variety of English. As the voiceless is also realized as an approximant, it is also an example of a language contrasting voiceless and voiced labiodental approximants.

Features

Features of the voiced labiodental approximant:

Occurrence