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Hey Luke (: If vav appears in the beginning of the word it is always (almost) pronounced as "v".
For example the word ורד (vered - rose) or ורוד (varod - pink).
When it appears in the middle of the sentence, it is pronounced as "o" or "u", and if we want to pronounce the "v" sound, we simple double the letter vav.
For example: יוון (yavan = Greece) , while יון (yon = ion).
Happy learning! (:
The rule is known as בומ"פ and a vav makes an "u" sound before those letters.
Adding to what MattRosenb2 wrote, the vav (when used as 'and') is pronounced 'u' also before a syllable beginning with a 'schwa' sound (which is like a short é sound): ve + d(é)rakhim => ved(é)rakhim => ud(é)rakhim וְ + דְרכים => וְדְרכים => וּדְרכים
And as Heysoos1 mentions, this distinction is practically not present in nowadays colloquial Hebrew.
Somebody said somewhere that most speakers don't care anymore colloquially. Like saying "an'" instead of "and."
At the beginning of the word it could be either "v" or "u" but they both mean "and" so it doesn't really matter (unless you are speaking for religious purposes like from the torah, but you are expected to have looked at the text beforehand with the vowels.)
I always want to write "horses and dragons". ;D That's also a natural combination. LOL
Is this a hebrew expression, or just a sentence fragment? I'm going to start using this! lol
Firstly, this could be an answer to a question in conversation. Also, does it have to be a sentence? I don't think it matters that we get a few sentence fragments to learn at the beginning.
Are there any native speakers here? I'm using this website to improve my hebrew and i know that the ו in ודרכים means or. Since i'm not fluent i can't say forsure, so can anyone explain how the Ou sound isn't "or"? Since "and" is pronounced "Vee"
Actually, the ו in ודרכים does mean "and"; it's just pronounced as "oo" (or the French "ou") rather than the more common "ve". Other variants of the ו pronunciation are "vi" (as in וירושלים, "vi-(ye)-rushalayim" ["and Jerusalem"]; the (ye) is mute) and "va" (as in את ואני, "at va-ani" [you and I]). That being said, colloquial Hebrew generally sticks to "ve". BTW, או ("or") is pronounced as "oh" (that is, something similar to the actual English pronunciation of "or").
