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Ribera vs. Rivera


bdlngton

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Today I saw that poles with signs reading "Ciclopista de la Rivera" were being installed over the bicycle path between Riberas del Pilar and San Antonio. I have also noticed that on immigration letters the Chapala office is noted as "Rivera de Chapala." To my understanding "rivera" is a stream or brook and "ribera" is the shoreline of a river or lake or a shoreline community. It seems to me that Riberas del Pilar are named that because of being on the shoreline of Lake Chapala and have seen local businesses with Riveras del Pilar. I am unaware of what stream or brook the word "rivera" might be referring to locally. Does anybody have any other take on why "rivera" often appears locally rather than "ribera"? I attribut it to one of two possibility: a confusion of the difference in the meaning of the two words or a spelling error due to the "b" and "v" having the same sound and therefore often misspelled? Of course it doesn't help when government agencies misspell it too.

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I'm going to guess and say it's a confusion with the sound of the letter b/v. Ribera does mean shore, edge, bank, riverside... that kind of thing. River has nothing to do with rivera, at least not here (maybe in L.A.); that's a rio, and arroyo or corriente is a stream.

Whenever I give my address, they write down Riveras del Pilar, because the "b" sound is so universally mixed up.

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I'm going to guess and say it's a confusion with the sound of the letter b/v. Ribera does mean shore, edge, bank, riverside... that kind of thing. River has nothing to do with rivera, at least not here (maybe in L.A.); that's a rio, and arroyo or corriente is a stream.

Whenever I give my address, they write down Riveras del Pilar, because the "b" sound is so universally mixed up.

I didn't say "rivera" meant "river." However "rivera" can be a brook or stream:

rivera
speaker-index2.pngESCUCHAR:ESPAÑA

Inflexiones de 'rivera' (n): fpl: riveras

WordReference English-Spanish Dictionary © 2015:

Principal Translations rivera nf (arroyo pequeño) brook, stream n (US/AUS/NZ) creek n Los niños chapoteaban en la rivera que corre delante de la casa. rivera nf (cauce de arroyo) streambed, stream bed, creek bed n los niños cogieron piedras de la rivera.

As I said, I suspect it is a spelling error based on the fact that the "b" and "v" have the same sound.

The French "riviera" could also have something to do it, especially since Mexico seems to have adopted that word as in "Riviera Maya" and "Riviera Nayarit."

I just hate to see government agencies perpetuating this error.

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I believe this is a spelling error. My husband and I deal with this all the time,as,our last name is RIBERA. Our last name is actually Italian. When having to give our last name here in Mexico we get the strangest looks and they still write it as Rivera. One person even told us Ribera couldn't be our last name as it is a place and Rivera is a name!

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I find this spelling issue often with locals, even Tapatios, for words with V and B in them.

Probably one of the most common spelling errors in Spanish, along with s/c/z, ll/y and leaving out an h.

I'm just always surprised, given how phonetic Spanish is and therefore so easy to spell and so little to memorize, that there are so many misspellings. Compare that to English spelling. I even see misspellings by my educated native Spanish-speaking friends.

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Y la palabra rivera se escribe con v chica, no con b grande. Existen las dos palabras. Me molesta que ni aun el gobierno sabe la diferencia.

Of course,v chica..b grande is correct,but I like the b de burro..version,it's more fun.

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I prefer the v de vaca (versus b de burro) also. I A L W A Y S have to spell my name. :lol:

Actually the official names are now "be" for b and "uve" for v, according to recent changes made by the Acedemia Real. Also the y is now "ye" instead of "i griegs" and i is just "i," not "i latina" as it was sometimes called.

Source: http://www.spanishdict.com/answers/164432/ch-ch-changes-spanish-spelling-rules-get-updated

And, of course, the ch and ll are no longer individual letters.

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Actually the official names are now "be" for b and "uve" for v, according to recent changes made by the Acedemia Real. Also the y is now "ye" instead of "i griegs" and i is just "i," not "i latina" as it was sometimes called.

Source: http://www.spanishdict.com/answers/164432/ch-ch-changes-spanish-spelling-rules-get-updated

And, of course, the ch and ll are no longer individual letters.

Thanks for the link.

I like i griega better than ye.

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My first name has a "v" and my last name has a "y". So I'm screwed. But then, I don't care what the Academia has to say, I just want to get around the block and be understood. ;)

Hensley, I saw the new signs too, and they will be gone in the blink of an eye!

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"But then, I don't care what the Academia has to say, I just want to get around the block and be understood."

I agree, Travis! People who have time and energy to be concerned with such things are living blessed lives indeed. I hope they appreciate it.

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My first name has a "v" and my last name has a "y". So I'm screwed. But then, I don't care what the Academia has to say, I just want to get around the block and be understood. ;)

Hensley, I saw the new signs too, and they will be gone in the blink of an eye!

I would guess it will take a generation or more to actually see these changes in spoken Spanish. I wonder how many people still refer to the ch and ll as one letter rather than "ce hache" and "ele ele."

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"But then, I don't care what the Academia has to say, I just want to get around the block and be understood."People h

I agree, Travis! People who have time and energy to be concerned with such things are living blessed lives indeed. I hope they appreciate it.

People have different interests. Nothing wrong with that. After all this forum is for people to learn about Spanish.

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De acuerdo,bdlngton.Personally I find it to be a very interesting topic and would welcome more participation,you would think that more people on the forum would be interested in improving their Spanish language skills given the fact that most of them live in a Spanish speaking country.

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I liked the post that contained the experssion “ni aun“, which usage helped me understand the meanings of “ni“ much better.

Thanks for that post.

You're welcome. Glad you are willing to learn new things. Not everybody wants to be a linguist but that doesn't mean that our goal should not always be to speak Spanish as correctly as possible.

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