How to pronounce b and v in Spanish

[@filigrana4]

I am a spanish native-speaker and I am surprised about the level of accuracy these videos have...congratulations!

[@filigrana4]

Todas las explicaciones son muy acertadas, muy buen trabajo.

[@tenminutespanish]

Thank you very much for your kind comment.

[@tenminutespanish]

@@filigrana4 Gracias por tu comentario.

[@JuanMoreno-wo5yb]

@@tenminutespanish Bery mucho jajaja. Gracias. R U Hispanic? Your English is perfect so I wonder. 🤔

[@Benjamin_556]

These videos are amazing! thank you for putting this information out there in such a clear and helpful way. My pronunciation has really improved.

[@tenminutespanish]

I'm so glad you've found them useful.

[@rauljvila]

I am a native-speaker from Spain and I learn a lot from your videos. High quality content and a very pleasant presentation. Thanks!

[@tenminutespanish]

Thank you for your kind comment!

[@JorgeGarcia-lw7vc]

You nailed it ! One other point is that most native Spanish speakers do not even realize between the occlusive and 'normal" b/v 's . Failing to make a distinction between the occ/non occ sounds often gives non native speakers (often from other Romance languages) an automatic giveaway, without the the native speakers actually knowing exactly why. They will tend to say that the non native speaker speaks "stiffly" , "forced" or not exactly fluently.

[@colinchiu7113]

OMG - this is so precise and accurately described. I mean descrived.

[@tenminutespanish]

Thank you!

[@tabletopgamer6886]

Thank you so much for all of your wonderful videos! I feel fortunate that I had only been studying Spanish for a couple of months when I realized that my English speaking habits are causing me to speak Spanish with a heavy "gringo accent." I've started over, doing my best to first set a foundation based on trying to learn proper pronunciation before focusing more on expanding my vocabulary. Your channel has been more helpful to me than any other content in this regard.

[@tenminutespanish]

@@tabletopgamer6886 Thank you so much for your kind words.

[@tabletopgamer6886]

For those looking for a written description on the proper pronunciation of the bilabial approximant, the author describes this in two of his comments below. The description that I found the most helpful is "For fricative or approximant /b/, you bring your lips very close together without quite touching. Imagine you're making the [v] sound, only instead of touching your upper lip to your lower teeth, touch your upper lip to your lower lip. Then make the sound. Air escaping will cause the lips to part a little."

[@danielenriqueballondelariv4346]

Tip: as a rule in spanish, "n" can't come before a "b" (or "p"); and "m" can't come before a "v" (or "f"). So, the words containing these combinations of letters can only be spelt like this: "mp", "mb", "nv", "nf". Ej: campo, también, envase, ánfora, etc.

[@Skeletone56]

Interesting

[@RUT812]

How are they pronounced then?

[@jamiedavis2264]

Thank you! I look forward to the others!

[@tenminutespanish]

You're welcome. I hope this was along the lines of what you were looking for.

[@jTiKey]

Finally, a video that actually has a logical explanation and not "oh i say they way feel"

[@dep.deity3605]

Thank you for uploading these videos. I've been very unsure as to whether or not this was a solid rule or strictly a dialectal thing. I feel much more confident now about implementing this into my spanish speech. I definitely subbed. :)

[@tenminutespanish]

Thank you! I'm so glad you found the video helpful.

[@kevalinkitcharoen8660]

Really glad I came across your channel. It’s really good, keep up the good work! Regarding the teacher who told students that there are different pronunciation between B and V, I think they are wrong because RAE confirms that there are no different pronunciation between these two letters.

[@davidrachlin3557]

Thank you, Thank you! I had native speakers all through high school and they never corrected our incorrect use of [v]. This was excellent!

[@tenminutespanish]

Glad you liked the video.

[@SevenMilliFrog]

Tu canal es muy genial

[@angelic5374]

This is extremely helpful. I'm thankful.

[@tenminutespanish]

You're welcome!! I'm glad you found it useful.

[@stonezhao2231]

Muy bien, muchas gracias profesor por la lección perfecta. Yo soy un principiante de español y siempre estoy confundido con P y B. Espero que puedas hacer una lección para explicar la diferencia entre P y B en pronunciación por favor!

[@susanwired]

Super video! Thank you so much. 🤩

[@Nails_bruh]

Thanks for the video. At some point, could you explain how to pronounce the approximate or whatever b sound. The softer one, I mean. I have no idea how to pronounce the sound, and everyone says it’s like the normal b but the lips don’t touch, which seems to only pronounce a regular W sound for me. 🤷🏻 I’m worried because it’d be a shame if I learned Spanish just to not be able to ever speak it 😅

[@tenminutespanish]

The lips are pursed and rounded for a /w/ sound. They're not pursed and rounded for an approximant /b/. Think about how you make a labiodental English /v/ sound. Try making that same sound, only instead of using your lower lip and upper teeth, use your lower and upper lip. In other words, try making an English /v/ sound with just your lips. No teeth.

[@K.Sovereignson]

Having some knowledge in Greek helps with these pronunciations

[@aspidoscelis]

As an English speaker, I have to admit both the occlusive and the approximant sound like “b” to me. The occlusive only barely softer than English “b” and the approximant only barely softer than the occlusive. The approximant might reasonably be called neither “b” nor “v”, but if I had to pick one it would have to be “b” for both. And if I were just listening to Spanish, I would probably have concluded that you just pronounce “b” and “v” identically and as “b” in all contexts.

[@mo1leydo1ly]

Thank you! This always troubled me because I grew up speaking Spanish from my dad and mom. Which was a hassle to understand My dad has a big distinction between B and V in Spanish. While my mom says B and V the same. It was always confusing because my mom said my dad was wrong but my dad said that's just how he grew up. It's good to know that it's not just my dad who has a distinction!

[@domitian671]

Great video. Do you think it's also helpful to note that B is a stop consonant whereas V is not? I've mentioned that to English learning Spanish-speakers who have a hard time hearing the difference between the two.

[@jordillach3222]

_"B is a stop consonant whereas V is not"_ Not in Spanish. Letters b and v both represent the same two sounds in Spanish: /b/ and /β/.

[@renaldrenn3010]

very helpful. Love love love

[@tenminutespanish]

I'm so glad you found this useful.

[@shellymartinez3807]

Excellent explanation.

[@tenminutespanish]

Thanks!

[@userts-b6l]

The most important feature of Spanish soft b/v apart from English v is to not include the teeth at all.

[@tenminutespanish]

I agree.

[@ChadAgain]

I sometimes hear B and V pronounced almost like the English W sound.

[@EPA18]

I understand the distinction you're making between a bilabial occlusive and a bilabial approximate. However, to the ears of a native English speaker, the sounds you're making seem almost identical. I think you should have exaggerated the differences somewhat, to really clarify the distinction.

[@tenminutespanish]

This is a tough situation. If I exaggerate the difference, then I'm not pronouncing it the way natives actually do. If you then imitate my exaggeration, you'll be doing it wrong. I understand what you're saying, but I think it is critically important to model the pronunciation accurately.

[@robynluisi8914]

excellent quality, very high standard

[@tenminutespanish]

Thank you!

[@RUT812]

My Latin American husband described the v sound as a softer sound that’s in between v and b.

[@tenminutespanish]

Lots of native speakers have explicit beliefs about pronunciation that they don't practice when speaking normally and naturally (and not self-monitiring). This is particularly true of b and v. But b and v have been the same phoneme in Spanish for centuries. Native speakers only pronounce them differently when consciously thinking about it. I talk about this more in the following video at around the 6.28 mark: kzbin.info/www/bejne/pKTFiWpnq7Knn9E

[@xyz3881]

Top explained. One more question: does the “s” at the end of a word remain silent? For example: “Todas las locuras” in the song “Por una cabeza”, I don’t hear the s sound in the version of Carlos Gardel. Thanks in advance.

[@tenminutespanish]

Thanks for your kind words. To answer your question: many dialects of Spanish reduce /s/ ant the end of syllables, which includes at the end of utterances. People don't always sing exactly the way they speak. So someone who reduces /s/ may pronounce it most of the time when singing and only reduce it sporadically. I have a whole video on /s/ reduction here. kzbin.info/www/bejne/oprLiqWgbdl6pck

[@xyz3881]

Thanks for your answer. I’ve already watched your another video on /s/ reduction. Top as well 👍

[@ivanfloresvazquez7490]

I'm a native speaker, and I'm learning some characteristics I didn't realize spanish had. And I swear I thought there was a distinction between 'b' and 'v', the same as in english, although I don't remember who told me that, which teacher.

[@tenminutespanish]

What country are you from? I know it's common for teachers in some regions to teach that there is a difference. I believe this is because in old Spanish there was a difference, and language arts teachers prefer older forms.

[@ivanfloresvazquez7490]

@@tenminutespanish From Zacatecas in central Mexico, and since I studied engineering, I know it probably had to be a teacher in my basic (maybe elementary) education

[@ticholopeluche]

​@@tenminutespanish Tuve esta misma duda hace poco y en la RAE dice esto: "En general, en español la b y v se pronuncian igual: con [b] bilabial. La articulación labiodental de v solo es espontánea en hablantes valencianos o mallorquines y de zonas de Cataluña por influencia del catalán, y en puntos de América por influjo de las lenguas amerindias." Así entiendo que la creencia de que se pronuncian diferente es por la influencia de otros idiomas. A mí en la escuela me enseñaron q se pronuncian igual pero a mi madre le enseñaron que la v era labiodental y me lo enseñó cuando era chica aunque al hablar nunca he visto a nadie pronunciar la v así. (Soy de Uruguay)

[@ChristinaGerman]

This is so in depth 🤤

[@simonservetar5391]

I really can't hear the difference, but maybe that comes with time?

[@danielshalev50]

Hi , thank you very much for the video ! I have 1 question : I would like to know what you meant by saying "ACROSS WORD BOUNDARIES" .

[@tenminutespanish]

When one word starts with a b/v and the preceding word ends in a vowel, the two words are pronounced as a single word, and the b/v is pronounced as it would if it were in the middle of a word. This principle holds for all rules of Spanish pronunciation, and for utterances of any length between pauses.

[@danielshalev50]

Alright , thank you ! Another very important question for me is what dialect of spanish you teaching in ALL of your videos ? First by region : is it Spanish of Spain(and if yes so what specific dialect is it) or it is spanish of one of latin america countries(and if this is spanish of one of latin america countries- what main region/country is it and what is the more specific area of the spanish you teach us ? I ask it also because I have an app which is a Spanish translator & dictionary named "Spanishdict" (on Android)and the prnounciation in the app doesnt always matching your pronounciation rules ...

[@tenminutespanish]

@@danielshalev50 The pronunciation I teach in my videos is Latin American, not Spanish of Spain. It is a very neutral Latin American, with maybe some light South American overtones. If you want to know what I mean by "neutral", here is a video about that: kzbin.info/www/bejne/e4uZl4mBqNiZY7c

[@danielshalev50]

@@tenminutespanish Hi , 2 questios please : what do youmean by overtones? 2- I watched your whole video about neutral dialect , and I still dont understand what SPECIFIC dialect you teach . If you can tell me if it is a KIND OF a mix of dialects/a main dialect in latin america that has those pronounciation in common ; or it is a dialect of an area of a specific country, and if yes , I would like to know the country and the area in that country. I will be really thankful for knowing .

[@tenminutespanish]

@@danielshalev50 @Daniel Shalev Tibi 1) By overtones, I mean slight accent that natives would recognize but without obvious specific features. A native might say, "You have a slight South American accent," but if I asked them to specify what features they think sound South American, they might have a hard time specifying. 2) I do not teach a specific dialect. That's the whole point of neutral pronunciation. It isn't exactly like any single regionally specific dialect. It contains the dialectally unmarked features of most/all Latin American dialects. It doesn't sound exactly Mexican. It doesn't exactly sound Colombian, it doesn't exactly sound Peruvian. It doesn't exactly sound Argentine. It contains elements of all of those in a way that all of them find sort of neutral sounding. The most specific thing you can say about the pronunciation I teach is that it is Latin American, not Spanish of Spain. You can also say that it has a slight South American sound in a way that's hard to specify. That's it. You can't specify more than that, because I make an effort NOT to teach a specific dialect from a specific region or country. I make every effort to teach dialectally unmarked pronunciation.

[@Brighton1422]

Hey man just found about your channel, because you did a nice explanation of the rr. So I immediately looked for an explanation of b and v, and you've covered this as well, so thanks for your videos. However, it left me wondering how this bilabial approximant [b] is pronounced. Maybe you could do a short video of the pronounciation of these two different b sounds. Besides, I noticed that you pronounced the c in ce as an [s] instead of [th], but you promote in this video to learn standard Spanish pronounciation. So I'm just curious why you make an exception for the ce/ci/z.

[@tenminutespanish]

Thanks for the compliment on the videos. I appreciate it. To answer your questions: The bilabial approximant is pronounced by bringing the lips close together without quite touching. The bilabial occlusive is pronounced much like the English /b/ only not quite so explosive. I recommend that you use headphones or ear buds and listen to the example words in the very closely. Apart from what I put in the video, I'm not sure what else I could say about it. Regarding the pronunciation of ce/ci/z in Spain, I wasn't trying to promote that pronunciation, only to explain it. About 1/10th of Spanish speakers in the world reside in Spain. I pronounce ce/ci/z like the other 9/10. The purpose of the video is to correct misunderstandings about the 1/10 who live in Spain, not necessarily to promote that pronunciation. If course, if you like how Spaniards talk and want to imitate that pronunciation, my video can help you understand it so you do it correctly. I appreciate how Spaniards speak. I find the pronunciation of north central Spain lovely. But I, myself, don't speak that way. I speak South American Spanish which uses seseo.

[@Brighton1422]

@@tenminutespanish Thanks for your fast response, I'll listen again to the b sounds. I am now in Spain (Barcelona) for 5 months, so I'll also ask/test some native speakers about all pronounciations that you mentioned in the videos you've made.

[@tenminutespanish]

@@Brighton1422 You're welcome. I LOVE Barcelona. L-O-V-E it. I'm really jealous. Of course, you'll find small differences between what I teach and the Spanish of Barcelona. My Spanish is definitely South American. Still, the general principles I teach should apply. I hope you enjoy your time there!

[@spacecat3198]

Curse my inability to distinguish sounds I need to read lips too (a throwback to the days when i was a kid with conductive hearing loss, mostly normal now but I can't distinguish some sounds even in English can anyone help? 😭

[@IgorYentaltsev]

people who speak Spanish and use the sound [v] as in English, how do they sound? Are they impossible to understand? like, if I say Venga! as [venga] and not as [benga], will that sound absolutely unbearable? or funny?

[@tenminutespanish]

It's perfectly understandable to Spanish speakers. They know of the [v] sound. Some use it as an allophone of /b/ in some instances. Some Spanish language arts teachers even teach natives they should use [v] for . So it's not a super distracting mispronunciation. But it's not exactly how natives pronounce that sound in normal speech. An analogy I can think of is this: Think about how we English speakers pronounce at the beginning of the word "tall". Now imagine pronouncing all /t/ sounds that way all the time. It would be perfectly understandable, but it wouldn't sound normal. Plenty of people might not be able to specify what's wrong with it, they'd just hear it as part of a foreign accent.

[@IgorYentaltsev]

@@tenminutespanish you have really intrigued me by saying that some Spanish language arts teachers teach natives to use the sound [v]. could you please let me have a link to a resource that talks about this? it can be in Spanish I'll understand. thank you!

[@tenminutespanish]

@@IgorYentaltsev I was told this by native Spanish speakers, including the professor who taught me dialectology and sociolinguistics who is a native of the Dominican Republic. I was also told this by native Spanish speaking classmates from all over the worldincludingArgentinaand Spain. I've never researched it beyond that.

[@Top_Striker9]

👍🏾👍🏾👍🏾

[@tenminutespanish]

Thanks!

[@theknightswhosay]

I feel like I need to do research to even understand the vocabulary in this video. I hear a lot of v sounds from some native speakers. I guess it depends on location.

[@tenminutespanish]

I'll summare for you as simply as i can. 1) In all dialects of Spanish and are the same phoneme and they have been for centuries. 2) Standard Spanish has no [v] sound. 3) Some dialects of Spanish use the [v] sound for both and in some phonetic contexts. 4) Native Spanish language arts teachers sometimes teach students that [v] is the correct pronunciation of . This makes it so that some Spanish speakers pronounce [v] when reading aloud or when speaking slowly and articulating carefully. 5) Very importantly, you hear what you expect to hear. Part of the reason close to 100% of people speak their second language with a strong foreign accent is that they think they hear things that aren't there. This phenomenon is called "native language interference". It prevents you from making accurate observations about your foreign language.

[@theknightswhosay]

@@tenminutespanish for instance, I don’t hear V when Spanish people say vale, but I do hear V when Mexicans say Victor. Maybe it’s just Mexican-Americans or Mexicans who speak some English. I didn’t understand the part about closing your lips all the way or almost closing them.

[@tenminutespanish]

@@theknightswhosay Are you talking about bilingual Spanish speakers living in the United States? You definitely can't use them as a model of Spanish phonology, because there is cross over in their brains between English and Spanish phonology. And when it comes to proper names, such as Victor, there's an extra layer of confusion, because people sometimes give proper names unique pronunciation. I have a sister-in-law from New Zealand who pronounces her name, Maria, with a tapped r. And everyone in her family pronounces it with a tapped r. This might lead someone to conclude that New Zealand English has a tapped r. It doesn't. In my videos, I don't discuss all the possible permutations of culture, language combinations, bilingualism, and geography that might cause someone to vary from standard Spanish phonology. I just teach standard phonology. And in standard Spanish, there is no [v] sound. I promise. Regarding bringing your lips all the way together, I don't know what to say other than what I've said. For occlusive /b/, you bring your lips all the way together, just like regular /b/. For fricative or approximant /b/, you bring your lips very close together without quite touching. Imagine you're making the [v] sound, only instead of touching your upper lip to your lower teeth, touch your upper lip to your lower lip. Then make the sound. Air escaping will cause the lips to part a little.

[@theknightswhosay]

@@tenminutespanish ok, maybe I’m hearing that small difference as a different sound. I will acknowledge it’s not quite the same as the v in English, it’s not fully pronounced as English normally pronounces a leading consonant harder than the vowel. Not sure which one sounds more like a v. I mention the word victor because I hear that as an example when someone is spelling outloud. A better example is vamos. I always hear Vicente as a b though. I can’t think of many in Mexican Spanish/Spanglish that are always b. Almost everyone I speak to is at least somewhat bilingual, so maybe this video just isn’t that helpful for me since I’m not trying to learn your idealized version of Spanish. I say “your” because others want v and b to sound different. I think I’m better understood if I pronounce b and v differently because I don’t always pronounce the rest of the word correctly (there is no v involved, but I really have to concentrate to make hambre and hombre sound different, for instance). At least they’ll know what that letter is.

[@tenminutespanish]

@@theknightswhosay When native speakers speak their native language, they don't care about "letters". You and I care about letters, because we're adults who learned our foreign language partly through literacy. So you're concerned that natives be able to tell whether youre saying this letter or that letter. This is of zero concern to a native speaker. Natives don't learn their language that way. So, they don't care what sound is represented by the letter "b' or the letter "v". They just produce sounds. They learn literacy later in childhood after they've already learned to speak. So, when you hear a native Spanish speaker make the [v] sound, it stimulates in your mind an image of the letter "v". If that sound corresponds with a word that uses the letter "v", your notice it. This is called "confirmation bias". You only notice the occasion when the thing you expected to happen happens. But when the native speaker uses the [b] or [β] sound for the letter "v", you don't really notice, because it's not something you're looking for. In addition (and this is VERY important) when they use the [v] sound corresponding to the letter "b", which I guarantee they do if they're using it for the letter "v", since "b" and "v" are the same phoneme, you either don't notice, or you imagine that's another example of [v] associated with the letter "v". All this gives the impression that they're pronouncing "v" as [v] and "b" as [b]. It is very important to remember that all of us, including you, suffer from native language interference. This makes it impossible for you to make accurate observations about your foreign language. In all this conversation, you're earnestly telling me about the observations you've made about how [v] corresponds with "v", and you're do so with a level of certainty about the accuracy of your observations. Your confidence in your observations is unjustified. NOBODY makes accurate observations about his/her foreign language, especially in the intermediate stages of learning. Just for reference, most learners never get past the beginner or intermediate stages. Most people with a 4-year university degree are in the beginner or intermediate stages. In the end you're a free man, and you can do whatever you want. But well more than 95% of the Spanish speaking world uses standard Spanish phonological rules, and the 5% that don't follow standard phonology still feel that standard phonology is "proper" and sounds good to their ears, even if they themselves vary from it. The phonology I teach in my videos isn't "mine". Even if you can identify native speakers who vary from it, 95% of native speakers use it. The fact that you can find some natives who you think don't use it doesn't make what I'm teaching unusual. I'm teaching STANDARD Spanish phonology. Imagine if I were teaching General American English, and you came and said, "I've met these people from rural Louisiana, whose English is influenced by French Creole, and they don't do it the way you teach." Ok. I understand that not everyone speaks General American English. Do you really want your model of English to be that of rural Louisiana? Maybe you do if you're from rural Louisiana. But if you're planning on speaking English in the rest of the US and Canada, or in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, or virtually anywhere other than rural Louisiana, you'd prefer to speak some dialect of Standard English.

[@turcanewyork]

Nobody writes BACA ...... almost 100% of us know is with V 😅..... the others mistakes are more common 😃

[@PopescuVicentiu]

With respect, the Word "vaca" in most romance languages is pronounced with V, not B. Who created this stupid rule...? V is v and B is b, there should be clear grammar rules. In French language "la vache qui rit" is cleary pronounced with V. In italian "la vacca" is with V, in Romanian also. I spell "Boavista" with B and "Valencia" with V. How would sound "voavista" and "balencia"...?

[@tenminutespanish]

In language, rules aren't orders to tell people how they must speak, but descriptions of how people do speak. Centuries ago, proto-Spanish distinguished between b and v, but over time those two sounds merged. This didn't occur because someone failed to establish a sensible grammar rule (or in this case a pronunciation rule). It happened for the same reason all languages change over time. Spanish is not unique in this regard. And languages don't adopt patterns of pronunciation because of what outsiders think is logical. It makes no difference how these letters are pronounced in other languages. All languages have oddities and peculiarities in their spelling and pronunciation, your native language included.

[@albayzinHCHO]

@@tenminutespanish didn't the romans make fun of the iberians for confusing the "b" and the "v"? so maybe old spanish had the distinction in some areas and not others (??)

[@tenminutespanish]

@@albayzinHCHO Here's everything I know about the history of b/v in Spanish. There is evidence of Iberians confusing b and v as early as 250 AD. Obviously, in 250 AD there was no Old Spanish yet. They were just speaking the Hispanic dialects of Vulgar Latin. But in spite of some confusion, b and v remained separate phonemes in Iberian Romance. Catalan, Portuguese, and Galician all distinguish between b and v, so whatever confusion there had been, b and v remained separate phonemes in all the historical dialects of Iberian romance. Castilian was the only one where the distinction was lost. When, exactly, was it lost? Not sure. It was after the divergence of Spanish and Portuguese, but before the spread of Castilian into Andalusia. So, sometime in the 12th century? It seems unlikely that Old Spanish maintained the distinction in ordinary speech anywhere. By the time Castilian had risen to prominence in Spain, the distinction was probably lost. But, you have to remember that all the other historical languages of Spain maintained it, and it was still taught to everyone who got an education. So, while most common Castilian speakers didn't use it in ordinary speech, it was kept alive in some ways.

[@aldairteran9538]

@@tenminutespanish In Latin the “v” sounded like a “w”. Spanish never had the v sound. In Spanish the approximate pronunciation of Latin remains, although b and v have the same pronunciation.

[@tenminutespanish]

@@aldairteran9538 The phonology of Spanish doesn't derive directly from Classical Latin, but from Iberian Romance, the variety of Vulgar Latin spoken in Iberia. It is well attested that in many regional varieties of Vulgar Latin, v was pronounced as a voiced labiodental fricative by as early as the first century. This was the case with Iberian Romance, as well. So, yes, ancestral varieties of proto-Spanish did have the v sound.

[@gaelga]

Summary: Labiodental 'V' has never existed in spanish. Only a voiced bilabial stop B at beginning of words or syllables and voiced bilabial fricative intervocalically for either grapheme B or V.