Although it hurts many, interchanging the letters ‘b’ and ‘v’ in words is one of the most common misspellings. The lack of reading habit leads many people to write the words as they sound, which sometimes causes confusion because there are practically the same sounds that correspond to different spellings. Thus, a recurring query in digital dictionaries and in search engines is “to wash or to wash, how do you write?”
The Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) recognizes that the letters “b” and “v” represent the “same sonorous bilabial sound” (donkey, glass, ball or wart, all sound the same), so “the writing of words with those letters can lead to errors”. The academics point out that the labiodental articulation of “v” is only pronounced spontaneously by speakers from Valencia, Majorca and from some areas of Catalonia due to the influence of Catalan, as well as from certain places in America due to the influence of Amerindian languages.
Going back to the word in question. Wash or wash? We are talking about the first conjugation verb that means “to clean something with water or another liquid”, as defined in the RAE dictionary. It also means “to purify, to remove a stain or discredit defect” or “to launder” (especially money), among other meanings. In any case, it is always written with “v”, to wash.
What’s more, “labar”, written with “b”, is a term that is not included in the dictionary, it does not exist, so writing it like this is a major misspelling.
The fact that this verb is written with a “v” has to do with its origin, since to wash comes from the Latin “lavare”. When inheriting a word from another language, what is usual in Spanish is that part of the original writing of the term is respected; It is what is known as etymological criteria.
Etymology is not the only way to know how to write a word that contains a voiced bilabial sound. Here is a brief review of the rules on the uses of ‘b’ and ‘v’:
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
