When to pronounce "v" as "b" or is this incorrect?
Hello everyone, was I mistaken or taught wrong when told that "v" can sometimes be pronounced as "b"? If I am not wrong, then when does one use the different pronunciations? Gracias!
3 Answers
In various different areas, "b" and "v" are pronounced in different ways. For example, in some countries they both sound much like a "v" and in some places they both sound like a soft "b". In other places, their pronunciation is much like the English, with a distinction between the two.
Most of the people I know pronounce "v" like a softer "b", where you keep your lips slightly more apart, letting more air pass between them. Try listening to some recordings of native speakers, if you don't know any personally, and see how they pronounce it, then try to imitate them. 
In Spanish the "v" and "b" are pronounced exactly the same. This is one of the reasons many native speakers often spell words incorrectly using the "v" instead of "b" and vice versa. Phonetically both the "b" and "v" are represented by the phoneme /b/. However, this phoneme can have two different sounds depending on the environment in which it is found. These two distinct sounds are represented by the allophones [b] and [?]. The allophone [b] is an occlusive consonant. Without getting too technical, this means that when we produce this sound there is a complete obstacle in the way of its production (mouth, lips, teeth, etc.) Because of this we must produce a small explosion of air resulting in a more abrupt "b" sound. This occurs in words were the "b" or "v" is found after a nasal constant (n,m) or it is found after a pause or at the beginning of a word or phrase. In any other environment the /b/ occurs as the allophone [?] which is a fricative constant, that is when only a partial blockage occurs in the mouth. This is what people call a "softer" b sound.
In Spanish the "v" is NEVER pronounced like the English "v". This only occurs when a native Spanish speaker is influenced by the English language.
From my personal experience in Argentina (im not sure how different their spanish is from Spain) but sometimes they DO pronounce v like v and b as b, "A donde vas?", "Quieres ver?", "Veni", "La vaca", for example.
HOWEVER the same people also pronounce my name (Bilal) as Vidal, even though I enunciated it CLEARLY so they DONT mis pronounce it lmao
So really I dont know, in my personal opinion I think spanish is a lazy language, lots of words almost require that you mumble them sorta (which is what pissed me off the most when living in Argentina, because my mother speaks with very clear diction so im more used to clear enunciation I guess)
Anyway, just sharing 
