It wasn't long ago that my girlfriend pointed out that I pronounce V and W in some English words incorrectly. After a feeble attempt at denial, I realised that indeed, its quite accurate. I tried to trace the root cause in Marathi (my mother tongue). Marathi has a single letter which denotes both W and V sounds depending on the context. Moreover, its fairly common, and quite acceptable, for people to use one sound instead of the other. Hindi, the national language, and Sanskrit, the language of ancient India and the origin of many Indian language, share the same (Devanagri) alphabet. So its hardly surprising. She even pointed out that most Indians (even those who use English everyday) are blissfully oblivious of this problem.
A few days ago, I noticed the same mistake in pronunciation in a SriLankan colleague at work. I don't know Sinhalese, but I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't distinguish between V and W either.
Luckily, its not hard to correct. All it takes is some conscious effort to touch the front teeth to the lower lip while saying V (like we do when saying F). Ws, on the other hand, call for the lips to form a circle (like the one while saying O).
I think I've fixed my problem. Of course, she disagrees.
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