Castilian Spanish Explained

In English, Castilian Spanish can mean the variety of Peninsular Spanish spoken in northern and central Spain, the standard form of Spanish, or Spanish from Spain in general.^{[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]} In Spanish, the term Spanish; Castilian: castellano (Castilian) can either refer to the Spanish language as a whole, or to the medieval Old Spanish, a predecessor to Early Modern Spanish.

Terminology

The term Castilian Spanish is used in English for the specific varieties of Spanish spoken in north and central Spain. This is because much of the variation in Peninsular Spanish is between north and south, often imagined as Castilian versus Andalusian. Typically, it is more loosely used to denote the Spanish spoken in all of Spain as compared to Spanish spoken in Latin America. In Spain itself, Spanish is not a uniform language and there exist several different varieties of Spanish; in addition, there are other official and unofficial languages in the country, although Spanish is official throughout Spain.

Castellano septentrional ("Northern Castilian") is the Spanish term for the dialects from the Northern half of Spain, including those from Aragón or Navarre, which were never part of Castile. These dialects can be distinguished from the southern varieties of Andalusia, Extremadura, and Murcia. Español castellano, the literal translation of Castilian Spanish, is not a common expression; it could refer to varieties found in the region of Castile; however, the dialects of Castile, like other dialects, are not homogenous, and they tend to merge gradually with the dialects of other regions.

Phonology

• Word-final pronounced as //d// may be pronounced as a voiceless pronounced as /link/ instead of the standard voiced pronounced as /link/.^[7] This is most common in the provinces of Burgos, Palencia, Valladolid, the east of León and Zamora, northern Segovia and Ávila, and Soria. This pronunciation is present, though less common, in La Rioja, Guadalajara, Cuenca, and Madrid, and it is scarcely documented in Toledo, Ciudad Real, and Albacete.^[8]
• pronounced as //d// is elided in the ending Spanish; Castilian: -ado throughout nearly all of Spain. In other environments, elision of intervocalic pronounced as //d// is characteristic of southern varieties of Spanish.^[9]
• Syllable-final pronounced as //s// is often aspirated in Madrid and Castilla–La Mancha. Before a pronounced as //k// sound, it can be realized as a voiceless velar fricative pronounced as /[x]/, such that Spanish; Castilian: es que 'it's that' sounds like pronounced as /[exke]/.^[10]
• pronounced as /link/, spelled as (ch), is pronounced as a palatalized voiceless alveolar affricate pronounced as /[t͡sʲ]/, at least in Madrid.^[11]
• Spanish from most of the Iberian Peninsula, including Castile, uses an apical pronounced as /link/, as opposed to the non-retracted voiceless alveolar fricative of Andalusian, Canarian, and Latin American Spanish, as well as of English.^{[12] [13]}

Grammar

• A wide swath of central Castile is home to leísmo. The Royal Spanish Academy considers leísmo to be incorrect, though it considers it to be admissible when referring to a single, male person.^[14]

See also

• Andalusian Spanish
• Canarian Spanish
• Castúo
• Murcian Spanish
• Standard Spanish – the standard form that is very different from the medieval Spanish language-base

Sources

• Book: Fernández-Ordóñez . Inés . Gutiérrez-Rexach . Javier . Enciclopedia de Lingüística Hispánica . 2016 . Routledge . Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon . 9781315713441 . http://www.uam.es/FyL/documento/1446774238570/2016_Dialectos%20del%20espa%C3%B1ol%20peninsular.pdf . 18 March 2022 . https://web.archive.org/web/20200712235153/http://www.uam.es/FyL/documento/1446774238570/2016_Dialectos%20del%20espa%C3%B1ol%20peninsular.pdf . July 12, 2020 . Dialectos del Español Peninsular.
• Book: Lipski , John . John M. Lipski . 2012 . Geographical and Social Varieties of Spanish: An Overview . Blackwell Publishing Ltd . 1–26 . 9781405198820 . 10.1002/9781118228098.ch1 . http://www.personal.psu.edu/jml34/geo.pdf . The Handbook of Hispanic Linguistics . Hualde . José Ignacio . Olarrea . Antxon . O'Rourke . Erin.
• Book: Lipski . John M. . John M. Lipski . Boberg . Charles . Nerbonne . John . Watt . Dominic . Charles Boberg . John Nerbonne . The handbook of dialectology . 2018 . Hoboken, NJ . 9781118827550 . 498–509 . 10.1002/9781118827628.ch30 . Dialects of Spanish and Portuguese . http://www.personal.psu.edu/jml34/Dialectology%20chapter.pdf.
• Book: Penny . Ralph J. . Variation and change in Spanish . 2000 . Cambridge University Press . Cambridge . 0521780454 . 21 June 2022 . registration . 10.1017/CBO9781139164566.

External links

• WordNet 3.0. Princeton University
• COSER, Audible Corpus of Spoken Rural Spanish

Notes and References

1. Book: Random House Unabridged Dictionary . 2006 . Random House Inc..
2. Book: The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language . 2006 . 4th . Houghton Mifflin Company.
3. Book: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary . 1998 . MICRA, Inc.
4. Web site: Encarta World English Dictionary . 2008-08-05 . 2007 . Bloomsbury Publishing Plc . https://web.archive.org/web/20091109115747/http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_1861595345/Castilian.html . 2009-11-09 . dead .
5. 2021-04-04.
6. Encyclopedia: Castilian. Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary. Merriam-Webster. 2021-04-04.
7. Molina Martos . Isabel . Variación de la -/d/ final de palabra en Madrid: ¿prestigio abierto o encubierto? . Boletín de filología . December 2016 . 51 . 2 . 347–367 . 10.4067/S0718-93032016000200013 . free . es.
8. García Mouton . Pilar . Molina Martos . Isabel . La –/d/ final en el atlas dialectal de Madrid (ADIM): un cambio en marcha . Lapurdum . 1 January 2016 . 19 . 283–296 . 10.4000/lapurdum.3375 . free . es. 10261/265245 . free .
9. Estrada Arráez . Ana . The Loss of Intervocalic and Final /d/ in the Iberian Peninsula . Dialectologia . 2012 . Special Issue III . 7–22 . 25 January 2022 . 2013-2247.
10. Wright. Robyn . 2017 . The Madrileño ejke : a study of the perception and production of velarized /s/ in Madrid. The University of Texas at Austin . PhD . 2152/60470 . 993940787.
11. Web site: Castilian Spanish – Madrid. Klaus Kohler.
12. Martnez-Celdrn . Eugenio . Fernndez-Planas . Ana Ma. . Carrera-Sabat . Josefina . Castilian Spanish . Journal of the International Phonetic Association . December 2003 . 33 . 2 . 255–259 . 10.1017/S0025100303001373 . 232344066 . 18 March 2022. free .
13. Dalbor . John B. . Observations on Present-Day Seseo and Ceceo in Southern Spain . Hispania . March 1980 . 63 . 1 . 5–19 . 10.2307/340806 . 340806.
14. Web site: Uso de los pronombres lo(s), la(s), le(s). Leísmo, laísmo, loísmo . rae.es . Spanish.