Pronunciación de V

Question

Sé que en el mundo de habla español la V se pronuncia como una B suave.

Pero lo que me pregunto es que si no hay paises o regiones en el mundo de habla español en que la V se pronuncia como la V en ingles?

Answer 1

Hay regiones bilingües donde el otro idioma tiene el sonido labiodental de la v inglesa, y ahí tienden a pronunciarla también así cuando hablan español.

Por cierto, la b tiene dos sonidos en español, no uno. Después de una pausa, m o n, suena como en inglés. En todos los demás casos los labios no llegan a tocarse y el sonido es mucho más sueve; este sonido no existe en inglés. Las mismas reglas se aplican para la v, por supuesto.

Answer 2

My wife was following the BBC's "Mi Vida Loca" online, and asked me to help her at one point, the instructor/narrator pronounced a Spanish word (in a sentence) that started with V. She heard it as an English "V" and I heard it as a soft "B". The same shared video experience, and we each heard different sounds! I like to think that I'm right...

This narrator, by the way, is a native Spanish speaker, and I believe he speaks Castillian (I hear English "th" for his "c" sounds).

Yes! I think we sometimes hear the letter we're expecting, and if we don't know how a word is spelled, we hear it in a more "pure" way. - Luzbonita, Apr 4, 2011

If it was word/sentence initial then it wasn't a "soft" sound (or the speaker wasn't really a Spanish speaker). - samdie, Apr 4, 2011

See Lazarus's response for when the 'b'|'v' is soft or hard. - samdie, Apr 4, 2011

A lot of people here say "Buenos días" with a soft B. - lorenzo9, Apr 5, 2011

Answer 3

There are a range of sounds between the English b and v that the Spanish hear as b/v. Most English speakers similarly fail to differentiate between some sounds; I have listened to phonetics sites with a multitude of different n sounds pronounced with the toungue in different parts of the mouth and they all sounded exactly the same to me. I also come from a part of the US where "metal" and "medal" are pronounced the same way, as well as several other d/t pairs.

The two pronunciations of the Spanish b are a fact. If you don't pronounce them correctly, you sound very foreign. - lazarus1907, Apr 4, 2011

English speakers probably have the same problem differentiating between the two sounds of the Spanish B that we wave differentiating between b and v in English. - lazarus1907, Apr 4, 2011

It is the soft b sound that seems to change for me. What is probably happening is that my brain forces it to sound like either b or v depending on factors that I am unaware of. This is more pronounced when people are singing rather than talking. - lorenzo9, Apr 4, 2011

That's exactly the problem. It odesn't really sound like the English 'b' so you brain tries to map it onto the nearest familiar English sound. - samdie, Apr 4, 2011

Answer 4

I don't know of any Spanish-speaking country that differentiates the sound of "b" from "v," i.e., they both sound like a soft "b."