When you say v in Spanish, do you pronounce it with a b sound or a v sound?

Question

This is for fluent spanish speakers. Do you say it with the v or b sound generlly? I know that the rule is to say the b sound, but how do most people say it? But don't some people also do both?

Answer 1

Teah, sure. I've been paying attention to that.
First, must of us DON'T make a dinstinction between b and v. As mentioned before, you may hear /b/eso or /v/eso. Of course, the right spelling is "Beso". But speakers will say in one way or the other without noticing.
And almost nobody can tell them apart. What I mean is that they don't pay attention to the difference between /b/ and /v/. They will rely entirely on context.
The difference between those two is already lost. Some radio host try to keep it. It is funny to listen to them. I try to make the correct sound. But I have to do an effort to sing a song that goes "pásame la botella. Voy a beber en nombre de ella". If I say that without paying attention... I might get some mixed /v/.
I saw this effect when tried for the first time to explain Spanish pronunciation to some friends.
What I tell them is that... natives won't bother to pronounce /b/ and /v/ as different sounds. But they may mix them very often. And if you are wondering how to pronounce them... you can chose the way you pronounce in English and your message will get through perfectly.
I don't think this is an issue. Almost a "do whatever you want" thing. Yes..., we Spanish native speakers are weird.

Answer 2

I'm not a fluent spanish speaker (yet--though I would consider myself very proficient), but I've studied Spanish extensively and I have a ton of Spanish speaking friends. I also get a lot of compliments on my accent in Spanish, so I must be doing something right, and hopefully I can help you.

Both "b" and "v" are pronounced somewhere in between the two. Just make a very very light b sound and don't really let your lips touch, and super lightly touch your top teeth to the back of your bottom lip. Neither are like the American English "b" or "v." The two letters generally make the same sound in Spanish (or at least, a very close sound). Which is why if you ever IM a native speaker who isn't that good at spelling, you'll see a bunch of "llevava" and "llebaba" (I've personally seen both of those in two sentences right next to each other from a Spanish friend of mine. He meant "llevaba" for both.)

Answer 3

To start with, the letters "b" and "v" are pronounced the same in Spanish. It's very important to realize that these letters are pronounced the same. However, there are two possible pronunciations for these letters, depending on the sounds around them.

If the sound is between two vowels, it's a bilabial fricative. (You can produce this sound by bringing your lips very close, but not touching them. This sound does not exist in English.)

If the sound is in any other environment (such as at the beginning of a word or next to a consonant), it's an unaspirated bilabial stop. (You can produce this sound by bringing the lips together and releasing, similar to the "b" sound that native speakers of English would say in "rubber".)

Unfortunately, English doesn't have either of these sounds in the same sound environments, so English speakers often have difficulty both hearing and producing these sounds. Any other answerers who tell you it's exactly like a certain sound in English might not be able to hear that the sound they say is different from the one Spanish speakers say.

As I previously mentioned, English does have unaspirated bilabial stops between vowels, in words like "rubber". The trick will be to produce this sound at the beginning of a word instead of the aspirated bilabial stop that English speakers usually do at the beginnigs of words like "ball". When you say a word in English beginning with the "b" sound, a strong puff of air comes out. These puffs are never used in Spanish, so this contributes to your English accent in Spanish. You can test whether you are using the puff or not at the beginning of a word in a couple of ways. You can hold your mouth close to the flame of a lit candle and see how much the flame is disturbed when you say a word like "vaca" or "brincar". (You should try to disturb the flame as little as possible.) If you don't have a candle or don't want to use one, just hold a piece of tissue paper in front of your mouth and see how much the paper moves, or even put your hand in front of your mouth and see whether you can feel air or not.

I get compliments on my Spanish accent all the time, and I often "cheat" by using labiodental fricative, which is the sound that English speakers say for the letter "v". I guess this sound is close enough because it's not aspirated (in other words, you can't hear a puff of air when I say that sound).

All that discussion aside, if you are truly interested in improving the overall understandability of your Spanish accent, I feel that working on the length of your syllables would be much more important. English has syllables of many different lengths, but Spanish speech gives the impression of having syllables of all about the same length, and all short. For English speakers, then, the secret is to make sure that they are pronouncing some vowels much shorter than they would pronounce them in English, so that the overall rhythm of the language is very steady short-short-short-short, not having a variety of short and long syllables like in English. You could practice this by speaking along to a metronome or any other rhythmic beat (clapping an even rhythm, walking, jogging, etc.)

Answer 4

Hi! I'm a fluent spanish speaker, and I live in a spanish speaking country, again, formerly I lived in Argentina. Over there, in Argentina, mostly in Buenos Aires, most people pronounce both B and V very similarly, due to speedy pronounciation . They can say "vamos a ver" (let's see) and make it sound like "bamos a ber" which of course is incorrect.

Answer 5

Pronounce it with the soft "b" (almost a 'v' sound).

Actually, you sent me to the dictionary for this one because I was always told the "b"/"v" had to do with the castillian origin but if you read the dictionary explanation, below, you can see that "b" would be pronounced with a slight "v" sound.

"B", b, n.f. the second letter of the Spanish alphabet: pronounced as a plosive (similarly to English b) after a pause and after a nasal consonant; pronounced as a bi-labial fricative (a sound with no exact correspondence in English; rather softer than the English b, it is produced by joining the lips without pressure) in all other positions; saber algo b por b, or b por c, or c par b, to know something in all it's details.

Answer 6

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Answer 7

In Mexico, it is difficult to hear a "v" sound. Most people use a hard "b" sound.

You're supposed to pronounce the "v" (if it's the 1st letter of a word) as a hard "b". Wehn the "v" is in the word (not the 1st letter), the sound is a cross between a "v" and "b". Here in Mexico, people constantly misspell words that contain "v". Like "voy" (I go), spelled "boy", stuff like that. I even saw the spelling of "abierto" (open) as "avierto".

Answer 8

Both sounds can happen according to the spelling
BESO Kiss is pronounced like baby in English

VERDE green is pronounced like venture i n English

Answer 9

Simple answer here.

"Veh" with "V" sound

"Beh" with "B" sound

This is the proper spanish and although not everybody does pronounce it the way is supposed to, it's the law. Good pronunciation, keep the good job and remember ignorance doesn't know boundaries (Any language has different levels of education).

Answer 10

The correct pronounciation of v is v. Yes, some people use the sounds interchangeably, but that's technically incorrect. In any language, some people are purists but most will pronounce things as they darn well please. And, yes,I speak Spanish fluently.