why are words with "V" in the program pronounced as the V in english and not B.........the v is pronounced as a B in every latin american country I have been to.........this is confusing

Hola Leo. It turns out that there's a good deal of variety in how things are pronounced. You might find this earlier discussion interesting: *__http://www.rocketspanish.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=138__*

buy what is the general Consensus with "V" , ex. pronounce vidrio (glass) as bidrio voy as boy what do the fluent speakers here think........I care about latin america not how they speak in the islands........I just dont want to sound stupid when I go back to central america next month

Hi Leo, You will find that most Hispanic speakers are quite lazy when it comes to pronouncing words properly on your everyday conversations. When I was at school in Chile way back... we studied Castellano the same way we study English in English speaking countries. Castellano is the official Spanish dialect of South America. I clearly remember my Castellano teacher telling me how to differentiate between the V and the B sounds on our spelling tests... V is soft and B is strong... so I'll stick to what he taught me and maybe because of my experience with the English language I tend to differentiate them even more than your average South American. You are right though, in Latin American streets you probably could not tell the difference between the two unless you had very well trained ears. I hope that helps. Mauricio.

Mauricio, In lesson 3 of the conversation manual, it sounds to me like you are pronouncing rubio as ruvio. Baja sounds like vaja. I thought it was supposed to be the other way around, with both the v and b sounding like b's. Maybe my ear is picking it up wrong. Is this a South American pronunciation? I don't hear this from the Cubans or Puerto Ricans in Central Florida, who tend to make v's sounds like b's and b's like b's. Thank you, Greg