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 sound is similar to voiced alveolar fricative /z/ in that it is familiar to most European speakers[citation needed] but is a fairly uncommon sound cross-linguistically, occurring in approximately 21.1% of languages.

The presence of [v] and absence of [w], is a very distinctive areal feature of European languages and those of adjacent areas of Siberia and Central Asia.

[citation needed] Speakers of East Asian languages that lack this sound may pronounce it as [b] (Korean and Japanese), or [f]/[w] (Cantonese and Mandarin), and thus be unable to distinguish between a number of English minimal pairs.

Shaded areas denote articulations judged impossible.