Spanish phonology
This article is about the phonology and phonetics of the Spanish language. Unless otherwise noted, statements refer to Castilian Spanish, the standard dialect used in Spain on radio and television. For historical development of the sound system, see History of Spanish. For details of geographical variation, see Spanish dialects and varieties.
Phonemic representations are written inside slashes, while phonetic representations are written in brackets.
Consonants
The phonemes,, and are pronounced as voiced stops only after a pause, after a nasal consonant, or—in the case of —after a lateral consonant; in all other contexts, they are realized as approximants or fricatives.The phoneme is distinguished from only in some areas of Spain and South America. Other accents of Spanish, comprising the majority of speakers, have lost the palatal lateral as a distinct phoneme and have merged historical into : this is called yeísmo.
The realization of the phoneme varies greatly by dialect. In Castilian Spanish, its allophones in word-initial position include the palatal approximant, the palatal fricative, the palatal affricate and the palatal stop. After a pause, a nasal, or a lateral, it may be realized as an affricate ; in other contexts, /ʝ/ is generally realized as an approximant. In Rioplatense Spanish, spoken across Argentina and Uruguay, the voiced palato-alveolar fricative is used in place of and, a feature called "zheísmo". In the last few decades, it has further become popular, particularly among younger speakers in Argentina and Uruguay, to de-voice to .
The phone occurs as a deaffricated pronunciation of in some other dialects. Otherwise, is a marginal phoneme that occurs only in loanwords or certain dialects; many speakers have difficulty with this sound, tending to replace it with or.
Many young Argentinians have no distinct phoneme and use the sequence instead, thus making no distinction between huraño and uranio.
Most varieties spoken in Spain, including those prevalent on radio and television, have a phonemic contrast between and. Speakers with this contrast use in words spelled with, such as casa 'house', and in words spelled with or , such as caza 'hunt'. However, speakers in parts of southern Spain, the Canary Islands, and all of Latin America lack this distinction, merging both consonants as. The use of in place of is called seseo. Some speakers in southernmost Spain merge both consonants as : this is called ceceo, since sounds similar to. This "ceceo" is not entirely unknown in the Americas, especially in coastal Peru.
The exact pronunciation of varies widely by dialect. In many varieties, but not in Castilian Spanish, it may be pronounced as or omitted entirely, especially at the end of a syllable.
The phonemes and are laminal denti-alveolar. The phoneme becomes dental before denti-alveolar consonants, while remains interdental in all contexts.
Before front vowels, the velar consonants are realized as post-palatal.
According to some authors, is post-velar or uvular in the Spanish of northern and central Spain. Others describe as velar in European Spanish, with a uvular allophone appearing before and .
A common pronunciation of in nonstandard speech is the voiceless bilabial fricative, so that fuera is pronounced rather than. In some Extremaduran, western Andalusian, and American varieties, this softened realization of, when it occurs before the non-syllabic allophone of , is subject to merger with ; in some areas the homophony of fuego/juego is resolved by replacing fuego with lumbre or candela.
Consonant neutralizations and assimilations
Some of the phonemic contrasts between consonants in Spanish are lost in certain phonological environments, especially at the end of a syllable. In these cases, the phonemic contrast is said to be neutralized.Sonorants
Nasals and laterals
At the start of a syllable, there is a contrast between three nasal consonants:,, and , but at the end of a syllable, this contrast is generally neutralized, as nasals assimilate to the place of articulation of the following consonant—even across a word boundary.Within a morpheme, a syllable-final nasal is obligatorily pronounced with the same place of articulation as a following stop consonant, as in banco. An exception to coda nasal place assimilation is the sequence that can be found in the middle of words such as alumno, columna, himno.
Only one nasal consonant,, can occur at the end of words in native vocabulary. When followed by a pause, is pronounced by most speakers as alveolar . When followed by another consonant, morpheme-final shows variable place assimilation depending on speech rate and style.
Word-final and in stand-alone loanwords or proper nouns may be adapted to.
Similarly, assimilates to the place of articulation of a following coronal consonant, i.e. a consonant that is interdental, dental, alveolar, or palatal. In dialects that maintain the use of, there is no contrast between and in coda position, and syllable-final appears only as an allophone of in rapid speech.
Rhotics
The alveolar trill and the alveolar tap are in phonemic contrast word-internally between vowels, but are otherwise in complementary distribution, as long as syllable division is taken into account: the tap occurs after any syllable-initial consonant, while the trill occurs after any syllable-final consonant.Only the trill can occur at the start of a word or after a syllable-final consonant.
Only the tap can occur after a word-initial obstruent consonant.
Either a trill or a tap can occur word-medially after,, depending on whether the rhotic consonant is pronounced in the same syllable as the preceding obstruent or in a separate syllable. The tap is found in words where no morpheme boundary separates the obstruent from the following rhotic consonant, such as sobre 'over', madre 'mother', ministro 'minister'. The trill is only found in words where the rhotic consonant is preceded by a morpheme boundary and thus a syllable boundary, such as subrayar, ciudadrealeño, postromántico; compare the corresponding word-initial trills in raya 'line', Ciudad R'eal "Ciudad Real", and r'omántico "Romantic".
In syllable-final position before consonants inside a word, the tap is more frequent, but the trill can also occur with no semantic difference—thus arma may be either or .
In word-final position the rhotic is usually:
- either a tap or a trill when followed by a consonant or a pause, as in amo ''paterno, the former being more common;
- a tap when followed by a vowel-initial word, as in amo eterno.
When two rhotics occur consecutively across a word or prefix boundary, they result in one trill, so that da rocas and dar rocas'' are either neutralized or distinguished by a longer trill in the latter phrase.
The tap/trill alternation has prompted a number of authors to postulate a single underlying rhotic; the intervocalic contrast then results from gemination.
Obstruents
The phonemes,, and may be voiced before voiced consonants, as in jazmín , rasgo , and Afganistán . There is a certain amount of free variation in this, so jazmín can be pronounced or. This is consistently fricative, whereas the allophone of varies between a fricative and an approximant, like, and. In strict IPA, they would be written as and, respectively. Such voicing may occur across word boundaries, causing feliz navidad to be pronounced. In one region of Spain, the area around Madrid, word-final is sometimes pronounced, especially in a colloquial pronunciation of the city's name, which results being pronounced as. More so, in some words now spelled with -z- before a voiced consonant, the phoneme is in fact diachronically derived from original realization of the phoneme. For example, yezgo comes from Old Spanish yedgo, and juzgar comes from Old Spanish judgar, from Latin jūdicāre.Both in casual and formal speech, there is no phonemic contrast between voiced and voiceless consonants placed in syllable-final position. The merged phoneme is typically pronounced as a relaxed, voiced fricative or approximant, although a variety of other realizations are also possible. So the clusters -bt- and -pt- in the words obtener and optimista are pronounced exactly the same way:
- obtener
- optimista
- adminículo
- atmosférico
- amígdala
- anécdota
Semivowels
After a consonant, the surface contrast between and depends on syllabification, which in turn is largely predictable from morphology: the syllable boundary before corresponds to the morphological boundary after a prefix. A contrast is therefore possible after any consonant that can end a syllable, as illustrated by the following minimal or near-minimal pairs: after , after after , after .
Although there is dialectal and idiolectal variation, speakers may also exhibit a contrast in phrase-initial position. In Argentine Spanish, the change of to a fricative realized as has resulted in clear contrast between this consonant and the glide ; the latter occurs as a result of spelling pronunciation in words spelled with, such as hierba 'grass'.
There are some [|alternations] between the two, prompting scholars like to postulate an archiphoneme, so that ley would be transcribed phonemically as and leyes as.
In a number of varieties, including some American ones, there is a similar distinction between a non-syllabic version of the vowel and a consonantal. Near-minimal pairs include deshuesar vs. desuello , son huevos vs. son nuevos , and huaca vs. u oca .