The ヴ combination is fairly recent and as such, many older loanwords are written with the バ line instead. A lot of older people also cannot pronounce ヴ as it is not a standard Japanese sound, so they would say the equivalent from the バ line anyway.
A typical Japanese will pronounce both the same. Even as a long time learner, the second one confused me more than the first. You get used to “katakana-izing” everything in Japanese. No real sense in adding “v” sounds as they aren’t pronounced anyway. The ヴ can be used to help disambiguate things sometimes I guess. Or for more modern brands and technical complex loan words to be more fancy. But usually it’s obvious from context what the loan word might be.
2 comments
The ヴ combination is fairly recent and as such, many older loanwords are written with the バ line instead. A lot of older people also cannot pronounce ヴ as it is not a standard Japanese sound, so they would say the equivalent from the バ line anyway.
A typical Japanese will pronounce both the same. Even as a long time learner, the second one confused me more than the first. You get used to “katakana-izing” everything in Japanese. No real sense in adding “v” sounds as they aren’t pronounced anyway. The ヴ can be used to help disambiguate things sometimes I guess. Or for more modern brands and technical complex loan words to be more fancy. But usually it’s obvious from context what the loan word might be.