With 'b' or with 'v'? These two letters represent quite a challenge for those who are learning to write or for those who do not master the basic rules of spelling. The problem presented by this pair is similar to the use of the 'g' or the 'j' and the 'll' and the 'y', as well as the always mistreated letter 'h'. The errors are generally due to the tendency to write the words as they sound, since there are practically the same sounds that correspond to different spellings. Returning to the second and twenty-third letters of the Spanish alphabet, we give as an example a frequent query in search engines and digital dictionaries. Pivón or pibón, how do you spell it?
We refer to the term used colloquially in Spain to say that a person is very attractive, especially women. The Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) waited until 2014 to incorporate the word in the updated online version of its dictionary (it will appear registered in the twenty-fourth edition of the work, in 2026) after confirming that its use was not a passing fad, but rather has established itself in the language.
It is an augmentative of pibe or piba, a word used in Argentina, Uruguay and Bolivia with the meaning of child or youth. For this reason pibón is written with the letter 'b', being a term that has been lexicalized with a specific meaning, as pointed out by the Fundación del Español Urgente.
Pivón, with 'v', is not a word found in the dictionary, it does not exist, so writing it like this is a considerable misspelling.
At this point in the exhibition, it would not hurt to briefly review the rules on the uses of 'b' and 'v' wielded by the RAE. The academics emphasize that both letters represent the "same voiced bilabial sound" (boat, life, bag or vice versa, all sound the same), so "writing words with those letters can lead to errors." The RAE highlights 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.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
