(images source video, 7:32-7:36)

This Goron in Gerudo Town is having trouble pronouncing "sav'otta", Gerudo for "good morning", going as far to state an inability to tell the difference between V and B sounds. Several other non-natives talk about the various Vs in multiple Gerudo words ("sav'aaq", "sav'saaba", "voe", etc.) being tricky at best.

But in the same utterance, there's clearly no trouble with "have" or "V sound". And the letter V isn't exactly rare in English.

What's the inconsistency here about?

3

3 Answers

This is likely a carry-over reference from the original Japanese script. Natural Japanese doesn't have a 'v' sound. They use the 'b' series of katakana to represent it. As a result, many Japanese people have a hard time saying the 'v' sound and default to the 'b' (i.e. television in Japanese is 'terebi').

Read more in this Q & A:

The Gerudo pronunciation in this case might be similar to traditional Spanish, where the letter 'v' is pronounced more like a soft 'b'. It's not that he can't pronounce the 'v' sounds you're imagining, he can't pronounce the sound that the Gerudo/Spanish make instead. To get an idea of what the Goron means, try saying 'b'-words without letting your lips firmly touch and "explode" out, like they normally would when pronouncing a 'b'. This can be difficult for a lot of native English speakers, as it's not really a sound that we normally make.

2

While this is definitely a problem with exposure (those who were raised to pronounce these words can do so better than those who haven't), it is entirely possible this is a physiological issue due to biology.

While everyone is capable, keep in mind that the Gerudo are completely different races from Hylians, Gorons, Rito and Zora; from body shape to facial features: key biological differences. Gerudo are not just used to forming their own words, but may actually be capable of better pronunciation accuracy for their words than the other races. Rito have beaks, so forming words that aren't easy without lips can be tough (though, given that some real-world birds are excellent mimics, perhaps not). Gorons in particular, have extremely wide faces and mouths, so it might be tougher for them to create an appropriate 'v' sound over the other three non-Gerudo races.

2