Pronounce English Accurately

Video Text

The most frontal of all the speech organs, and the easiest to see, are the lips, and the sound /w/ is made with the two lips very rounded, pouted right out - like this: /w/.

Because both the lips are used to make it, the /w/ sound is a 'bilabial' consonant, 'bi-' meaning 'two' and 'labial' meaning 'to do with the lips'.

That's its PLACE of articulation.

For /w/, the lips don't close the air passage completely - the air passage is somewhat restricted, but still open.

See the little rounded gap between my lips.

Sounds like this are called 'approximants' as the speech organs come close - they 'approximate' - to each other but do not make closure.

That's its MANNER of articulation.

While we are saying /w/, our vocal folds are vibrating: [wə - wə - wə - wə]. So it's voiced.

So /w/ is a voiced bilabial approximant.

This is a typical three-part phonetic classification of a consonant sound, describing its voicing, place of articulation and manner of articulation.

Do pay close attention both to what you see in the video and to my description.

When I say the sound is bilabial, I do mean it is bilabial! It is made with the two lips and does not involve the upper teeth at all!

It is an approximant, which means there is no contact between the lips - they are very close to each other, but not touching.

The 'archetypal spellings' of the /w/ sound are the letter 'w', as in 'wild' and the letters 'wh' as in 'what, 'where', 'why' and most other question words.

There is no difference in the pronunciation between 'w' and 'wh'; the letter 'h' does not alter the sound at all.

In 'who', the sound is of course not /w/ at all - it's /h/.

At the beginning of words, 'qu' is typically pronounced /kw/ as in 'quick', 'quiet' and 'quit'.

An exception is 'quay', which is pronounced exactly the same as 'key'.

In the middle of words 'qu' may be /kw/, as in 'banquet', but often it's not. It's often /k/ as in 'racquet' and 'Jacqueline'.

At the end of words it's always /k/ as in 'technique'.

Very occasionally in words of foreign origin, the /w/ sound is spelt 'ou', as in 'ouija board' - /ˈwiː.dʒə/.

The spelling 'ui' occurs once only, as far as I am aware, in 'Uighur' /ˈwiː.gə/.

Let's do some examples.

For the sounds which are made at the front of the mouth, like /w/, which one can see clearly in the video, I will split the screen in half and have the lower half zoomed in so you can see my lips more clearly.

When there's more than one word in a list it means that those words are homophones - words which are pronounced exactly alike.

Here are examples of words with /w/ in initial position.

'waste, waist' /weɪst/

'white, Wight' /waɪt/

'where, wear, Ware' /weə/

'wine, whine' /waɪn/

'will' /wɪl/

'wheel, weal, we'll' /wiːl/

'want' /wɒnt/

'woman' /ˈwʊm.ən/

The /wʊ/ combination in 'woman' is a difficult one for certain learners, especially Japanese speakers, because the /w/ sound and the following vowel sound, /ʊ/ are phonetically very similar.

The /w/ needs the lips to be tighter than for the /ʊ/ vowel. Then they relax into the vowel - /ˈwʊm.ən/.

I'll exaggerate the movement from /w/ to the following /ʊ/ vowel:

'woman' /ˈwʊm.ən/

'would, wood' /ˈwʊd/

'wool' /ˈwʊl/

'woof'

Even harder to distinguish and pronounce if you don't have the combination of sounds in your language is the glide from /w/ to /uː/ as in 'woo' /wuː/.

For this the lips are still tighter for the /w/ than for the /uː/ which follows, but the opening out into the vowel is much less noticeable.

/wu:/ is quite a rare combination - there's the word 'woo', and 'womb' /wuːm/, and 'too-wit too-woo' /tə.ˈwɪt tə.ˈwuː/, but that's only common if you're an owl.

There's also 'woozy' /ˈwuː.zi/, and 'whoosh' /wuːʃ/, and 'Wookey Hole', but the combination is uncommon and most words spelt 'woo' are /wʊ/ with short /ʊ/, like 'wood' /wʊd/.

Examples of /w/ in medial position are:

'awake' /ə.ˈweɪk/

'aware' /ə.ˈweə/

'beware' /bə.ˈweə/

'lower' /ˈləʊ.wə/

'shower' /ˈʃaʊ.wə/

'reward' /rɪˈ.wɔːd/

The /w/ sound cannot occur in final position; the letter 'w' can, but not the sound.

Let me emphasise: /w/ must NOT involve the upper teeth at all - like this [v] - that's the /v/ sound, and this is a very important distinction for clear pronunciation.

/w/ MUST be bilabial, have NO contact with the teeth, and should have NO fricative noise.

When we come to /v/ I'll contrast it with /w/.

This is a problem if your language does not have both /w/ and /v/ - German comes immediately to mind as it has no /w/ sound. Remember, every time it is spelt 'w' it must be a /w/. If it is spelt 'v' it must be /v/!

Hindi/Urdu has both sounds but they don't contrast with each other so Hindi/Urdu speakers are often heard saying /v/ for /w/, which can be very unclear in English.

At the end of each lesson I'll do some sentences I have made up with as many examples of the target sound in them as I can think of. You can use these for practice, but don't take them too seriously because we would never really have that many of the same sound all in one sentence!

The weary whale wished for warmer waters.

Why won't William just work the way we want?

The whereabouts of the wandering wallabies was a constant source of worry for the warden.

Whenever we were away from Wales the weeds in the woods grew wild.

/w/