This paper examines the pre-vocalic long fricative /v:/ occurring in a context in which the difference in meaning between two sentences, one with a short fricative and one with a long fricative, is solely dependent on the perception of the consonant length. The goal is to investigate the perception of the segmental duration with the length varying between that of a short and that of long consonant. Perception is measured in terms of responses to stimuli of various lengths produced by 26 Polish subjects and in terms of the melodic variation (F0) found in their responses.