V or W? How to stop mixing up "vest" and "west"
One sound uses your teeth, the other uses only your lips. A simple mirror test fixes "wery vell" in a week.
HolosAccent·
·2 min read
·Updated 23 Oct 2026
“I live in a wery nice willage.” Many learners — especially speakers of German, Russian, Hindi, Arabic and several Asian languages — mix up V and W, because their language has only one sound in that area of the mouth.
The fix is mechanical, and you can check it in a mirror.
Two different places in the mouth
| Sound | Examples | What touches |
|---|---|---|
/v/ |
vest, very, love, village | top teeth on the bottom lip |
/w/ |
west, well, wine, away | lips only — rounded, no teeth at all |
For /v/
Lightly rest your top teeth on your bottom lip and push voice through. It should buzz and tickle. If you cannot see your teeth in the mirror, it is not a /v/.
For /w/
Round your lips into a small circle, as if you were going to say “oo”, then open them quickly into the next vowel. Your teeth never touch anything.
Mirror test: for /v/ you see teeth. For /w/ you see a small round mouth and no teeth.
Minimal pairs to drill
- vest — west
- vine — wine
- veil — whale
- vet — wet
- verse — worse
Say each pair five times, watching the mirror.
Put it in a sentence
We visited a very wet village with wonderful views.
Go slowly first. Teeth for every V, round lips for every W. Then speed up until it feels normal.
HolosAccent catches a V that came out as a W on the exact sound, so you know which word to repeat instead of re-reading the whole sentence.
