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granjuanillo -> RE: Jaleo Identification/Translation (Nov. 21 2012 16:53:18)
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There are two separate things going on:
(i) the soft-b sound in Spanish is not the same as the English 'v' - in English, 'v' is made with the lips and the teeth; the Spanish sound, is is made with both lips, slightly vibrating (a 'fricative' - i.e., involves friction). Since English doesn't have this sound, English speakers tend to hear it as a 'v' sound. Also some American Spanish speakers (e.g. some second generation Latinos) may sometimes use an English 'v' pronunciation (this has been reported in the literature).
(ii) There is no difference between what is written 'b' vs 'v' in Spanish (at least Standard Spanish, there is some dialect variation, see above). Both are sometime pronounced as 'hard-b' (like and English 'b' - the air is stopped and then released - hence, the term 'stop'), and sometimes as the soft-b sound described above. This depends on the context:
(a) at the beginning of a word or an utterance, you tend to get the hard-b
(b) in the middle of a word (usually, particularly between vowels) you get the soft-b; when words come together, as in 'Sara Baras', the 'B' tends to act like it is between vowels.
Again there is a certain amount of individual and dialect variation here, but this is the general pattern.
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