A semi-vowel? What? That’s right; “W” is a lot more complex than most people realize.
One of the biggest problems that ESL learners have with /w/ is the habit of pronouncing it like a /v/ instead. In English, these are two very different sounds, so be careful!
/w/ is made by pushing the lips out and rounding them and then relaxing and dropping the tongue and lower lip. /w/ is voiced. /w/is what we call a semi-vowel, so it’s a bit strange in a couple of ways. We all know what the vowels are right? A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes Y. Well, really, we should also say and sometimes W. I’m not going to talk about it more than that because this is not a linguistics course; this is an ESL video but just understand that /w/ can be a little bit strange. When W is followed by an H some speakers aspirate the H: wheel, wheel. Aspirating the H is much less common than not aspirating it. So, in other words, most English speakers do not say the, the H sound in words that start with WH, so most people would say where; some people say where. Let’s take a look at some examples: would, west, one, why, wagon. Some examples in word-medial position: away, dimwit, always, assuage, unwind. And in word-final position: allow, blue, new, glow, flow. Some example sentences: Warren is always worrying about his wife. Walters wife’s watch was wet. Wendy wept and wailed as she waited for a week. That’s not a very happy sentence, is it? If you’d like some more practice, look below.