V's and B's

Question

Hi, I have not long started on SpanishDict ( which I think is great btw ) but I have listened to Michelle Thomas' learn Spanish and have now confused myself !

Paralee pronounces V's as V's for example vevir whereas I have come to understand that the Spanish pronounce their V's as B's so it would be said bebir

Can someone explain which is which ? Am I trying to learn two sorts of Spanish ?

Thanks

Andy

Answer 1

My Mexican/Honduran/Dominican/Colombian/Guatemalan friends pronounce the 'V' and 'B' identically. I do the same and I've never been corrected (that's in light of the fact that I've been corrected for absolutely every other thing in this world). If you want to sound like a native, forget about the 'V' except for writing. I've never heard a native use the 'vee' sound. What got me hooked on this initially is, I get to talk mostly to my Colombian friends, and they seem to hit the 'b' pretty hard, there's no mistaking what you're hearing. I knew almost immediately that "hey, I've got to drop this 'vee' business"

Answer 2

Welcome to the forum, Andy.

You're right, a V should always be pronounced like a B in Spanish.

Answer 3

Hi Andy and welcome to the forum,

The confusion you have between the sounds of these two letters is something that most experience when they are new to Spanish.

I'm sure someone else can explain this more eloquently, but in Spanish, these two letters sound very similar, almost like a combination of the two sounds.

Paralee is American, therefore, she will have a tendency to pronounce the letter "v" the way most English speaking people do. However, depending on what country you are in, the sound that the letter "v" makes will either sound more like "b", more like "v" or a combination of the two. Don't worry too much about this, as you will probably be understood whichever way you wind up pronouncing words beginning with "v".

Answer 4

No, I have heard the V pronounced like the English V , but it not considered standard The V and B sound alike and thankfully there are no regional difference in the pronuncation of these two letters

Answer 5

My first Spanish teacher was a man from Barcelona and I was 10 years old and he was teaching me: Voy al banco and I was thinking. why does it sound more like boy al banco ? lol

Yes, so you are right about the sounds of b and v sounding alike.

The native speakers do pronounce their b's like v's. I suspect that Paralee may be teaching and pronouncing these sounds like the way their English counterparts b and v sound so that new people learning will have some idea how to recognise the spelling of these words and not spell voy as boy

I could be wrong about Paralee's reason