this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2025
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Would most native speakers actually pronounce "rooves" differently from "roofs"? Is "grooves" already pronounced differently from a hypothetical "groofs"?
f is the voiceless labiodental fricative and v is the voiced labiodental fricative.
Basically for roofs your vocal cords don't vibrate on the final f sound. For rooves your vocal cords vibrate on the final v sound.
I know the difference between f and v, the question is whether it makes a difference in this specific case and if yes, whether most native English speakers actually know that. I'm not a native English speaker and words that end in -ooves aren't that common (when is the last time you said "grooves" or "hooves"?).
English is famously inconsistent about how written letters are pronounced, and there are a lot of accents.
Grooves and hooves are more common words than roofs.
I think I would notice if someone said groofs or hoofs (although that's also a word with a different meaning), but I'm really not sure I'd notice rooves vs roofs.