Are There Pashto Dialects With a "V" Sound?

[maneatinglizard]

I've seen some people transliterate Pashto words with a 'v' instead of a 'w,' but I don't think I've heard any dialect where it's actually pronounced that way.

Anyone speak a dialect where there's a 'v' sound?

[Shamlawar Khurasani]

Its a Pakistani thing. Only Pashtuns educated in Pakistan speak like that.

[Traveller]

In Urdu, Farsi, and Turkish "w" is often transcribed as "v." Actually the letter "v" was originally pronounced like a "w" in Classical Latin. This is probably where using "v" to write w came from, people probably don't pronounce it like that.
As a side note, I actually used to pronounce "naway" as "navay" and lewanay as "levanay." I don't now whee I got it from as nobody in my family pronounce it like that but at the same time no one ever corrected me and I only figured out I was saying it wrong when I was much older.

[toughpashtun]

[MENTION=19846]Traveller[/MENTION] gave very useful examples of navay/naway and levanay/lewanay.
For these two words , I'd say that the northerners such as Peshawar valley , Swat,Dir , Bajaur tend to use 'w' whereas the people of the south (Kohat onwards) use 'v' . I may be wrong , please correct me if so.
I'm sure its the same for most other words as well.

Don't know how Afghans pronounce it.

[maneatinglizard]

In Urdu, Farsi, and Turkish "w" is often transcribed as "v." Actually the letter "v" was originally pronounced like a "w" in Classical Latin. This is probably where using "v" to write w came from, people probably don't pronounce it like that.
As a side note, I actually used to pronounce "naway" as "navay" and lewanay as "levanay." I don't now whee I got it from as nobody in my family pronounce it like that but at the same time no one ever corrected me and I only figured out I was saying it wrong when I was much older.

The theory is that the 'w' sound in Proto-Indo-European shifted to a 'v' in all the old Indo-Iranian languages, and Turkish probably picked up that tendency from Farsi. In Pashto the 'v' shifted back to a 'w,' so some words in Pashto actually sound closer to modern European IE language than its ancestors did to ancestral European languages (which should have been closer). For example, in Avestan marriage was something like "vadar" or "vadaya" while the Pashto "wada" sounds much closer to the English "wed."

[salman47]

Its a Pakistani thing. Only Pashtuns educated in Pakistan speak like that.

It can be an Arabic thing as well(most probably). For example, People who learn reading Arabic first tend to pronounce 'و' as 'w'.(most Pushtana receive Quran education from a Qari in their childhood)

P.S. I use 'V'. Have been using it since I was born. I realised it when my British-Arab friend corrected my English(that 'w' is 'w' not 'v') and Quran Recitation('و' is 'w' not 'v').
Also my Mother taught me Islamic education and how to read and understand Quran, not the masjid(the only thing the Qari/Mula know is how to beat a child).

[Shamlawar Khurasani]

It can be an Arabic thing as well(most probably). For example, People who learn reading Arabic first tend to pronounce 'و' as 'w'.(most Pushtana receive Quran education from a Qari in their childhood)

P.S. I use 'V'. Have been using it since I was born. I realised it when my British-Arab friend corrected my English(that 'w' is 'w' not 'v') and Quran Recitation('و' is 'w' not 'v').
Also my Mother taught me Islamic education and how to read and understand Quran, not the masjid(the only thing the Qari/Mula know is how to beat a child).

Were you beaten as a child? Did they hit you in the head? Or did somebody drop you when you were little?

[khushal]

Our elders can not say the "v" sound and replace it with the "w" sound and the "f" sound is replaced with the "p" sound.

[salman47]

Were you beaten as a child? Did they hit you in the head? Or did somebody drop you when you were little?

Why you so pissed?
I was only beaten by Qari for pronouncing wrongly.

[Shamlawar Khurasani]

Why you so pissed?
I was only beaten by Qari for pronouncing wrongly.

That's no excuse for being illogical.

[salman47]

That's no excuse for being illogical.

what illogical?

[Shamlawar Khurasani]

It can be an Arabic thing as well(most probably). For example, People who learn reading Arabic first tend to pronounce 'و' as 'w'.(most Pushtana receive Quran education from a Qari in their childhood)

P.S. I use 'V'. Have been using it since I was born. I realised it when my British-Arab friend corrected my English(that 'w' is 'w' not 'v') and Quran Recitation('و' is 'w' not 'v').
Also my Mother taught me Islamic education and how to read and understand Quran, not the masjid(the only thing the Qari/Mula know is how to beat a child).

There is no V in Arabic. Only desis and Turks pronounce w as V. If your qari was an idiot than that's his problem. Saying all qaris and Mullahs are bad because they only know how to beat a child is stupid.

Just because you had a bad experience it doesn't mean all are bad.

[Sarbani]

Nope, no Pashtun dialects pronounce the /v/. The letter <v> is used sometimes just cause Pashtuns want their writing to look more stylistic. They also sometimes use the <x> for the /z/ sound to make their writing look more stylistic.

[زده کوونکی]

Interesting thread.

While I agree that this phenomenon is mainly the result of people using the letter v in place of w in writing because in Pakistan most people cannot differentiate between the two and they occur as allophones in most languages of the region, I have observed that certain dialects of Pashto apparently do have this phoneme /v/ or rather /β/ - either as independent phonemes in some dialects (possibly Waziristan) – I don’t have any examples at the moment - or as allophones as below. I have a book of Colloquial Peshawari Pashto where in some instances “v” is used instead of “w” or even “b”.

See the following:

Meva (fruit) “da meve dukan” (fruit shop)
Navi (new) – “za rozana yaw so navi tiki zda kawam”
Sheve (verb: shwal)– “waada sheve ye?” (are you married? – to a woman)
Sev (apple) – never heard this one before but it is in the book
Tasvir (photograph)
Naave (bride)
Fevwari (February)