pronounced as /notice/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.[1] 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 (pronounced as // //), while phonetic representations are written in brackets (pronounced as /[ ]/).
| Labial | Dental | Alveolar | Post-alv./ Palatal | Velar | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||||||||
| Stop | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |||
| Continuant | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | (pronounced as /link/) | pronounced as /link/ | ||||||
| Lateral | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |||||||||
| Tap | pronounced as /link/ | ||||||||||
| Trill | pronounced as /link/ | ||||||||||
The phonemes pronounced as //b//, pronounced as //d//, and pronounced as //ɡ// are pronounced as voiced stops only after a pause, after a nasal consonant, or—in the case of pronounced as //d//—after a lateral consonant; in all other contexts, they are realized as approximants (namely pronounced as /[{{IPAplink|β̞}}, {{IPAplink|ð̞}}, {{IPAplink|ɣ˕}}]/, hereafter represented without the downtacks) or fricatives.[2]
The realization of the phoneme pronounced as //ʝ// varies greatly by dialect.[3] In Castilian Spanish, its allophones in word-initial position include the palatal approximant pronounced as /[j]/, the palatal fricative pronounced as /[ʝ]/, the palatal affricate pronounced as /[ɟʝ]/ and the palatal stop pronounced as /[ɟ]/.[3] After a pause, a nasal, or a lateral, it may be realized as an affricate (pronounced as /link/); in other contexts, /ʝ/ is generally realized as an approximant pronounced as /link/.
The phoneme pronounced as //ʎ// is distinguished from pronounced as //ʝ// in some areas in Spain (mostly northern and rural) and South America (mostly highland). Other accents of Spanish, comprising the majority of speakers, have lost the palatal lateral as a distinct phoneme and have merged historical pronounced as //ʎ// into pronounced as //ʝ//: this is called yeísmo.
In addition, pronounced as /[ʒ]/ and pronounced as /[ʃ]/ occurs in Rioplatense Spanish as spoken across Argentina and Uruguay, where it is otherwise standard for the phonemes pronounced as //ʝ// or pronounced as //ʎ// to be realized as voiced palato-alveolar fricative pronounced as /link/ instead of pronounced as /link/ and pronounced as //ʎ//, 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 pronounced as //ʒ// to pronounced as /link/ ("sheísmo").[4] In other dialects pronounced as //ʃ// is a marginal phoneme that occurs only in loanwords or certain dialects; many speakers have difficulty with this sound, tending to replace it with pronounced as //tʃ// or pronounced as //s//. In a number of dialects (most notably, Northern Mexican Spanish, informal Chilean Spanish, and some Caribbean and Andalusian accents) pronounced as /link/ occurs, as a deaffricated pronounced as //tʃ//.
Many young Argentinians have no distinct pronounced as //ɲ// phoneme and use the pronounced as /[nj]/ sequence instead, thus making no distinction between huraño and uranio (both pronounced as /[uˈɾanjo]/).
Most varieties spoken in Spain, including those prevalent on radio and television, have both pronounced as //θ// and pronounced as //s// (distinción). However, speakers in parts of southern Spain, the Canary Islands, and nearly all of Latin America have only pronounced as //s// (seseo). Some speakers in southernmost Spain (especially coastal Andalusia) have only pronounced as /link/ (a consonant similar to pronounced as //θ//) and not pronounced as //s// (ceceo). This "ceceo" is not entirely unknown in the Americas, especially in coastal Peru. The word distinción itself is pronounced with pronounced as //θ// in varieties that have it.
The exact pronunciation of /s/ varies widely by dialect, with some realizing it as [h] or opting to omit it entirely [∅].[5]
The phonemes pronounced as //t// and pronounced as //d// are laminal denti-alveolar (pronounced as /[{{IPAplink|t̪}}, {{IPAplink|d̪}}]/). The phoneme pronounced as //s// becomes dental pronounced as /[s̪]/ before denti-alveolar consonants, while pronounced as //θ// remains interdental pronounced as /[θ̟]/ in all contexts.
Before front vowels pronounced as //i, e//, the velar consonants pronounced as //k, ɡ, x// (including the lenited allophone of pronounced as //ɡ//) are realized as post-palatal pronounced as /[{{IPAplink|k̟}}, {{IPAplink|ɡ˖}}, {{IPAplink|x̟}}, {{IPAplink|ɣ˕˖}}]/.
According to some authors,[6] pronounced as //x// is post-velar or uvular in the Spanish of northern and central Spain.[7] Others[8] describe pronounced as //x// as velar in European Spanish, with a uvular allophone (pronounced as /link/) appearing before pronounced as //o// and pronounced as //u// (including when pronounced as //u// is in the syllable onset as pronounced as /[w]/).
A common pronunciation of pronounced as //f// in nonstandard speech is the voiceless bilabial fricative pronounced as /link/, so that fuera is pronounced pronounced as /[ˈɸweɾa]/ rather than pronounced as /[ˈfweɾa]/. In some Extremaduran, western Andalusian, and American varieties, this softened realization of pronounced as //f//, when it occurs before the non-syllabic allophone of pronounced as //u// (pronounced as /link/), is subject to merger with pronounced as //x//; in some areas the homophony of fuego/juego is resolved by replacing fuego with lumbre or candela.
Some of the phonemic contrasts between consonants in Spanish are lost in certain phonological environments, especially in syllable-final position. In these cases, the phonemic contrast is said to be neutralized.
In syllable-initial position, the nasal consonants show a three-way phonemic contrast between pronounced as //m//, pronounced as //n//, and pronounced as //ɲ// (e.g. cama 'bed', cana 'grey hair', caña 'sugar cane') but in syllable-final position, 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 pronounced as /[baŋ.ko]/. An exception to coda nasal place assimilation is the sequence pronounced as //mn// that can be found in the middle of words such as Spanish; Castilian: alumno, Spanish; Castilian: columna, Spanish; Castilian: himno.
At the end of a word, the only nasal consonant that occurs in native vocabulary is pronounced as //n//. When followed by a pause, it is realized for most speakers as alveolar pronounced as /[n]/ (though in Caribbean varieties, this may instead be pronounced as /link/ or an omitted nasal with nasalization of the preceding vowel). When followed by another consonant, morpheme-final pronounced as //n// shows variable place assimilation depending on speech rate and style.
Word-final pronounced as //m// and pronounced as //ɲ// in stand-alone loanwords or proper nouns may be adapted to pronounced as /[n]/, e.g. álbum pronounced as /[ˈalβun]/ ('album').[9] [10]
Similarly, pronounced as //l// 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 pronounced as //ʎ//, there is no contrast between pronounced as //ʎ// and pronounced as //l// in coda position, and syllable-final pronounced as /[ʎ]/ appears only as an allophone of pronounced as //l// in rapid speech.
| lateral | |||||
| word | IPA | gloss | word | IPA | gloss |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| invierno | 'winter' | ||||
| ánfora | 'amphora' | ||||
| encía | 'gum' | alzar | 'to raise' | ||
| antes | 'before' | alto | 'tall' | ||
| ancha | 'wide' | colcha | 'quilt' | ||
| cónyuge | 'spouse' | ||||
| rincón | 'corner' | ||||
| enjuto | 'thin' | ||||
The alveolar trill pronounced as /link/ and the alveolar tap pronounced as /link/ are in phonemic contrast word-internally between vowels (as in carro 'car' vs. caro 'expensive'), 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 morpheme (e.g. el rey 'the king', la reina 'the queen') or at the start of a syllable when the preceding syllable ends with a consonant, namely pronounced as //l//, pronounced as //n//, or pronounced as //s// (e.g. alrededor, enriquecer, desratizar), possibly as well as with /θ/ (e.g. lazrar).[11]
Only the tap can occur after a word-initial obstruent consonant (e.g. tres 'three', frío 'cold').
Either a trill or a tap can be found word-medially after pronounced as //b//, pronounced as //d//, pronounced as //t// depending on whether the rhotic consonant is pronounced in the same syllable as the preceding obstruent (forming a complex onset cluster) or in a separate syllable (with the obstruent forming the coda of the preceding 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 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 Real "Ciudad Real", and romántico "Romantic".
In syllable-final position inside a word, the tap is more frequent, but the trill can also occur (especially in emphatic or oratorical style) with no semantic difference—thus arma ('weapon') may be either pronounced as /[ˈaɾma]/ (tap) or pronounced as /[ˈarma]/ (trill).In word-final position the rhotic is usually:
Morphologically, a word-final rhotic always corresponds to the tapped pronounced as /[ɾ]/ in related words. Thus the word Spanish; Castilian: olor 'smell' is related to Spanish; Castilian: olores, oloroso 'smells, smelly' and not to Spanish; Castilian: *olorres, *olorroso.[3]
When two rhotics occur consecutively across a word or prefix boundary, they result in one trill, so that da rocas ('s/he gives rocks') and dar rocas ('to give rocks') are either neutralized or distinguished by a longer trill in the latter phrase.[12]
The tap/trill alternation has prompted a number of authors to postulate a single underlying rhotic; the intervocalic contrast then results from gemination (e.g. tierra pronounced as //ˈtieɾɾa// > pronounced as /[ˈtjera]/ 'earth').
The phonemes pronounced as //θ//, pronounced as //s//, and pronounced as //f// may be voiced before voiced consonants, as in Spanish; Castilian: jazmín ('Jasmine') pronounced as /[xaðˈmin]/, Spanish; Castilian: rasgo ('feature') pronounced as /[ˈrazɣo]/, and Spanish; Castilian: Afganistán ('Afghanistan') pronounced as /[avɣanisˈtan]/. There is a certain amount of free variation in this, so Spanish; Castilian: jazmín can be pronounced pronounced as /[xaθˈmin]/ or pronounced as /[xaðˈmin]/. Such voicing may occur across word boundaries, causing Spanish; Castilian: feliz navidad ('merry Christmas') /feˈliθ nabiˈdad/ to be pronounced [feˈlið naβ̞iˈð̞að̞].[5] In one region of Spain, the area around Madrid, word-final pronounced as //d// is sometimes pronounced pronounced as /[θ]/, especially in a colloquial pronunciation of the city's name, Madriz .[13] More so, in some words now spelled with -z- before a voiced consonant, the phoneme pronounced as //θ// is in fact diachronically derived from original pronounced as /[ð]/ or pronounced as //d//. For example, Spanish; Castilian: yezgo comes from Old Spanish yedgo, and Spanish; Castilian: juzgar comes from Old Spanish judgar, from Latin Latin: jūdicāre.[14]
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 -Spanish; Castilian: bt- and -Spanish; Castilian: pt- in the words Spanish; Castilian: obtener and Spanish; Castilian: optimista are pronounced exactly the same way:
Similarly, the spellings Spanish; Castilian: -dm- and Spanish; Castilian: -tm- are often merged in pronunciation, as well as -Spanish; Castilian: gd- and -Spanish; Castilian: cd-:
Traditionally, the palatal consonant phoneme pronounced as //ʝ// is considered to occur only as a syllable onset, whereas the palatal glide pronounced as /[j]/ that can be found after an onset consonant in words like bien is analyzed as a non-syllabic version of the vowel phoneme pronounced as //i// (which forms part of the syllable nucleus, being pronounced with the following vowel as a rising diphthong). The approximant allophone of pronounced as //ʝ//, which can be transcribed as pronounced as /[ʝ˕]/, differs phonetically from pronounced as /[j]/ in the following respects: pronounced as /[ʝ˕]/ has a lower F2 amplitude, is longer, can be replaced by a palatal fricative pronounced as /link/ in emphatic pronunciations, and is unspecified for rounding (e.g. viuda 'widow' vs. ayuda 'help').
After a consonant, the surface contrast between pronounced as /[ʝ]/ and pronounced as /[j]/ depends on syllabification, which in turn is largely predictable from morphology: the syllable boundary before pronounced as /[ʝ]/ corresponds to the morphological boundary after a prefix.[3] A contrast is therefore possible after any consonant that can end a syllable, as illustrated by the following minimal or near-minimal pairs: after pronounced as //l// (italiano pronounced as /[itaˈljano]/ 'Italian' vs. y tal llano pronounced as /[italˈɟʝano]/ 'and such a plain'[3]), after pronounced as //n// (enyesar 'to plaster' vs. aniego 'flood') after pronounced as //s// (desierto pronounced as //deˈsieɾto// 'desert' vs. deshielo pronounced as //desˈʝelo// 'thawing'[3]), after pronounced as //b// (abierto pronounced as //aˈbieɾto// 'open' vs. abyecto pronounced as //abˈʝeɡto// 'abject'[3]).
Although there is dialectal and idiolectal variation, speakers may also exhibit a contrast in phrase-initial position.[15] In Argentine Spanish, the change of pronounced as //ʝ// to a fricative realized as pronounced as /[ʒ ~ ʃ]/ has resulted in clear contrast between this consonant and the glide pronounced as /[j]/; the latter occurs as a result of spelling pronunciation in words spelled with (hi), such as Spanish; Castilian: hierba pronounced as /[ˈjeɾβa]/ 'grass' (which thus forms a minimal pair in Argentine Spanish with the doublet Spanish; Castilian: yerba pronounced as /[ˈʒeɾβa]/ 'maté leaves').
There are some alternations between the two, prompting scholars like [16] to postulate an archiphoneme pronounced as ////, so that ley would be transcribed phonemically as pronounced as //ˈle// and leyes as pronounced as //ˈlees//.
In a number of varieties, including some American ones, there is a similar distinction between the non-syllabic version of the vowel pronounced as //u// and a rare consonantal pronounced as //w̝//.[17] Near-minimal pairs include deshuesar ('to debone') vs. desuello ('skinning'), son huevos ('they are eggs') vs. son nuevos ('they are new'), and huaca ('Indian grave') vs. u oca ('or goose').
| Front | Central | Back | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Close | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||
| Mid | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | ||
| Open | pronounced as /link/ |
Spanish has five vowel phonemes, pronounced as //i//, pronounced as //u//, pronounced as //e//, pronounced as //o// and pronounced as //a// (the same as Asturian-Leonese, Aragonese, and also Basque). Each of the five vowels occurs in both stressed and unstressed syllables:
| unstressed | ||||||
| word | gloss | word | gloss | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| piso | 'I step' | pisó | 's/he stepped' | |||
| pujo | 'I bid' (present tense) | pujó | 's/he bid' | |||
| peso | 'I weigh' | pesó | 's/he weighed' | |||
| poso | 'I pose' | posó | 's/he posed' | |||
| paso | 'I pass' | pasó | 's/he passed' | |||
Nevertheless, there are some distributional gaps or rarities. For instance, an unstressed close vowel in the final syllable of a word is rare.[18]
There is no surface phonemic distinction between close-mid and open-mid vowels, unlike in Catalan, Galician, French, Italian and Portuguese. In the historical development of Spanish, former open-mid vowels pronounced as //ɛ, ɔ// were replaced with diphthongs pronounced as //ie, ue// in stressed syllables, and merged with the close-mid pronounced as //e, o// in unstressed syllables. The diphthongs pronounced as //ie, ue// regularly correspond to open pronounced as //ɛ, ɔ// in Portuguese cognates; compare siete pronounced as //ˈsiete// 'seven' and fuerte pronounced as //ˈfuerte// 'strong' with the Portuguese cognates sete pronounced as //ˈsɛtɨ// and forte pronounced as //ˈfɔɾtɨ//, meaning the same.
There are some synchronic alternations between the diphthongs pronounced as //ie, ue// in stressed syllables and the monophthongs pronounced as //e, o// in unstressed syllables: compare heló pronounced as //eˈlo// 'it froze' and tostó pronounced as //tosˈto// 'he toasted' with hiela pronounced as //ˈʝela// 'it freezes' and tuesto pronounced as //ˈtuesto// 'I toast'. It has thus been argued that the historically open-mid vowels remain underlyingly, giving Spanish seven vowel phonemes.
Because of substratal Quechua, at least some speakers from southern Colombia down through Peru can be analyzed to have only three vowel phonemes pronounced as //i, u, a//, as the close pronounced as /[i, u]/ are continually confused with the mid pronounced as /[e, o]/, resulting in pronunciations such as pronounced as /[dolˈsoɾa]/ for dulzura ('sweetness'). When Quechua-dominant bilinguals have pronounced as //e, o// in their phonemic inventory, they realize them as pronounced as /[{{IPAplink|ɪ}}, {{IPAplink|ʊ}}]/, which are heard by outsiders as variants of pronounced as //i, u//. Both of those features are viewed as strongly non-standard by other speakers.
Phonetic nasalization occurs for vowels occurring between nasal consonants or when preceding a syllable-final nasal, e.g. cinco pronounced as /[ˈθĩŋko]/ ('five') and mano pronounced as /[ˈmãno]/ ('hand').
Arguably, Eastern Andalusian and Murcian Spanish have ten phonemic vowels, with each of the above vowels paired by a lowered or fronted and lengthened version, e.g. la madre pronounced as /[la ˈmaðɾe]/ ('the mother') vs. las madres pronounced as /[læː ˈmæːðɾɛː]/ ('the mothers').[19] However, these are more commonly analyzed as allophones triggered by an underlying pronounced as //s// that is subsequently deleted.
There is no agreement among scholars on how many vowel allophones Spanish has; an often[20] postulated number is five pronounced as /[{{IPAplink|i}}, {{IPAplink|u}}, {{IPAplink|e̞}}, {{IPAplink|o̞}}, {{IPAplink|a̠}}]/.
Some scholars,[21] however, state that Spanish has eleven allophones: the close and mid vowels have close pronounced as /[{{IPAplink|i}}, {{IPAplink|u}}, {{IPAplink|e}}, {{IPAplink|o}}]/ and open pronounced as /[{{IPAplink|ɪ}}, {{IPAplink|ʊ}}, {{IPAplink|ɛ}}, {{IPAplink|ɔ}}]/ allophones, whereas pronounced as //a// appears in front pronounced as /link/, central pronounced as /link/ and back pronounced as /link/ variants. These symbols appear only in the narrowest variant of phonetic transcription; in broader variants, only the symbols (IPA|i, u, e, o, a) are used, and that is the convention adopted in the rest of this article.
Tomás Navarro Tomás describes the distribution of said eleven allophones as follows:[22]
According to Eugenio Martínez Celdrán, however, systematic classification of Spanish allophones is impossible due to the fact that their occurrence varies from speaker to speaker and from region to region. According to him, the exact degree of openness of Spanish vowels depends not so much on the phonetic environment, but rather on various external factors accompanying speech.
| Falling | Rising | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| a | pronounced as /[aj]/ | Spanish; Castilian: italic=no|aire | air | pronounced as /[ja]/ | Spanish; Castilian: italic=no|hacia | towards | |
| pronounced as /[aw]/ | Spanish; Castilian: italic=no|pausa | pause | pronounced as /[wa]/ | Spanish; Castilian: italic=no|cuadro | picture | ||
| e | pronounced as /[ej]/ | Spanish; Castilian: italic=no|rey | king | pronounced as /[je]/ | Spanish; Castilian: italic=no|tierra | earth | |
| pronounced as /[ew]/ | Spanish; Castilian: italic=no|neutro | neutral | pronounced as /[we]/ | Spanish; Castilian: italic=no|fuego | fire | ||
| o | pronounced as /[oj]/ | Spanish; Castilian: italic=no|hoy | today | pronounced as /[jo]/ | Spanish; Castilian: italic=no|radio | radio | |
| pronounced as /[ow]/[23] | Spanish; Castilian: italic=no|bou | seine fishing | pronounced as /[wo]/ | Spanish; Castilian: italic=no|cuota | quota | ||
| Falling | Rising | ||||||
| i | pronounced as /[wi]/ | Spanish; Castilian: italic=no|fuimos | we went | ||||
| u | pronounced as /[uj]/[24] | Spanish; Castilian: italic=no|muy | very | pronounced as /[ju]/ | Spanish; Castilian: italic=no|viuda | widow | |
Spanish has six falling diphthongs and eight rising diphthongs. While many diphthongs are historically the result of a recategorization of vowel sequences (hiatus) as diphthongs, there is still lexical contrast between diphthongs and hiatus. Some lexical items vary amongst speakers and dialects between hiatus and diphthong: words like Spanish; Castilian: biólogo ('biologist') with a potential diphthong in the first syllable and words like Spanish; Castilian: diálogo with a stressed or pretonic sequence of pronounced as //i// and a vowel vary between a diphthong and hiatus. hypothesize that this is because vocalic sequences are longer in these positions.
In addition to synalepha across word boundaries, sequences of vowels in hiatus become diphthongs in fast speech; when this happens, one vowel becomes non-syllabic (unless they are the same vowel, in which case they fuse together) as in Spanish; Castilian: poeta pronounced as /[ˈpo̯eta]/ ('poet') and Spanish; Castilian: maestro pronounced as /[ˈmae̯stɾo]/ ('teacher'). Similarly, the relatively rare diphthong pronounced as //eu// may be reduced to pronounced as /[u]/ in certain unstressed contexts, as in Spanish; Castilian: Eufemia, pronounced as /[uˈfemja]/. In the case of verbs like Spanish; Castilian: aliviar ('relieve'), diphthongs result from the suffixation of normal verbal morphology onto a stem-final pronounced as //j// (that is, Spanish; Castilian: aliviar would be |pronounced as /alibj/| + |pronounced as /ar/|).[25] This contrasts with verbs like Spanish; Castilian: ampliar ('to extend') which, by their verbal morphology, seem to have stems ending in pronounced as //i//.[26]
Non-syllabic pronounced as //e// and pronounced as //o// can be reduced to pronounced as /[j]/, pronounced as /[w]/, as in Spanish; Castilian: beatitud pronounced as /[bjatiˈtuð]/ ('beatitude') and Spanish; Castilian: poetisa pronounced as /[pweˈtisa]/ ('poetess'), respectively; similarly, non-syllabic pronounced as //a// can be completely elided, as in (e.g. Spanish; Castilian: ahorita pronounced as /[oˈɾita]/ 'right away'). The frequency (though not the presence) of this phenomenon differs amongst dialects, with a number having it occur rarely and others exhibiting it always.
Spanish also possesses triphthongs like pronounced as //uei// and, in dialects that use a second person plural conjugation, pronounced as //iai//, pronounced as //iei//, and pronounced as //uai// (e.g. Spanish; Castilian: buey, 'ox'; Spanish; Castilian: cambiáis, 'you change'; Spanish; Castilian: cambiéis, '(that) you may change'; and Spanish; Castilian: averiguáis, 'you ascertain').
Spanish is usually considered a syllable-timed language. Even so, stressed syllables can be up to 50% longer in duration than non-stressed syllables. Although pitch, duration, and loudness contribute to the perception of stress, pitch is the most important in isolation.[27]
Primary stress occurs on the penultima (the next-to-last syllable) 80% of the time. The other 20% of the time, stress falls on the ultima (last syllable) or on the antepenultima (third-to-last syllable).
Nonverbs are generally stressed on the penultimate syllable for vowel-final words and on the final syllable of consonant-final words. Exceptions are marked orthographically (see below), whereas regular words are underlyingly phonologically marked with a stress feature [+stress].
In addition to exceptions to these tendencies, particularly learned words from Greek and Latin that feature antepenultimate stress, there are numerous minimal pairs which contrast solely on stress such as sábana ('sheet') and sabana ('savannah'), as well as límite ('boundary'), limite ('[that] he/she limit') and limité ('I limited').
Lexical stress may be marked orthographically with an acute accent (ácido, distinción, etc.). This is done according to the mandatory stress rules of Spanish orthography, which parallel the tendencies above (differing with words like distinción) and are defined so as to unequivocally indicate where the stress lies in a given written word. An acute accent may also be used to differentiate homophones, such as mi (my), and mí (me). In such cases, the accent is used on the homophone that normally receives greater stress when used in a sentence.
Lexical stress patterns are different between words carrying verbal and nominal inflection: in addition to the occurrence of verbal affixes with stress (something absent in nominal inflection), underlying stress also differs in that it falls on the last syllable of the inflectional stem in verbal words while those of nominal words may have ultimate or penultimate stress. In addition, amongst sequences of clitics suffixed to a verb, the rightmost clitic may receive secondary stress, e.g. búscalo pronounced as //ˈbuskaˌlo// ('look for it').[28]
Spanish syllable structure consists of an optional syllable onset, consisting of one or two consonants; an obligatory syllable nucleus, consisting of a vowel optionally preceded by and/or followed by a semivowel; and an optional syllable coda, consisting of one or two consonants. This can be summarized as follows (parentheses enclose optional components):
The following restrictions apply:
Maximal onsets include transporte pronounced as //tɾansˈpor.te//, flaco pronounced as //ˈfla.ko//, clave pronounced as //ˈkla.be//.
Maximal nuclei include buey pronounced as //buei//, Uruguay pronounced as //u.ɾuˈɡuai//.
Maximal codas include instalar pronounced as //ins.taˈlar//, perspectiva pronounced as //peɾs.peɡˈti.ba//.
Spanish syllable structure is phrasal, resulting in syllables consisting of phonemes from neighboring words in combination, sometimes even resulting in elision. The phenomenon is known in Spanish as enlace.[33] For a brief discussion contrasting Spanish and English syllable structure, see .
Because of the phonotactic constraints, an epenthetic pronounced as //e// is inserted before word-initial clusters beginning with pronounced as //s// (e.g. escribir 'to write') but not word-internally (transcribir 'to transcribe'), thereby moving the initial pronounced as //s// to a separate syllable. The epenthetic pronounced as //e// is pronounced even when it is not reflected in spelling (e.g. the surname of Carlos Slim is pronounced pronounced as //eˈslim//).[40] While Spanish words undergo word-initial epenthesis, cognates in Latin and Italian do not:
In addition, Spanish adopts foreign words starting with pre-nasalized consonants with an epenthetic pronounced as //e//. Spanish; Castilian: Nguema, a prominent last name from Equatorial Guinea, is pronounced as pronounced as /[eŋˈɡema]/.
When adapting word-final complex codas that show rising sonority, an epenthetic pronounced as //e// is inserted between the two consonants. For example, Spanish; Castilian: [[Muqtada al-Sadr|al Sadr]] is typically pronounced pronounced as /[al.sa.ðeɾ]/.
Occasionally Spanish speakers are faced with onset clusters containing elements of equal or near-equal sonority, such as Spanish; Castilian: Knoll (a German last name, common in parts of South America). Assimilated borrowings usually delete the first element in such clusters, for example Spanish; Castilian: (p)sicología 'psychology'. When attempting to pronounce such words for the first time without deleting the first consonant, Spanish speakers insert a short, often devoiced, schwa-like svarabhakti vowel between the two consonants.
Some alternations exist in Spanish that reflect diachronic changes in the language and arguably reflect morphophonological processes rather than strictly phonological ones. For instance, some words alternate between pronounced as //k// and pronounced as //θ// or pronounced as //ɡ// and pronounced as //x//, with the latter in each pair appearing before a front vowel:
| word | gloss | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| opaco | pronounced as //oˈpako// | 'opaque' | opacidad | pronounced as //opaθiˈdad// | 'opacity' | |
| sueco | pronounced as //ˈsweko// | 'Swedish' | Suecia | pronounced as //ˈsweθja// | 'Sweden' | |
| belga | pronounced as //ˈbelɡa// | 'Belgian' | Bélgica | pronounced as //ˈbelxika// | 'Belgium' | |
| análogo | pronounced as //aˈnaloɡo// | 'analogous' | analogía | pronounced as //analoˈxi.a// | 'analogy' |
Note that the conjugation of most verbs with a stem ending in pronounced as //k// or pronounced as //ɡ// does not show this alternation; these segments do not turn into pronounced as //θ// or pronounced as //x// before a front vowel:
| word | gloss | word | gloss | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| seco | pronounced as //ˈseko// | 'I dry' | seque | pronounced as //ˈseke// | '(that) I/he/she dry (subjunctive)' | |
| castigo | pronounced as //kasˈtiɡo// | 'I punish' | castigue | pronounced as //kasˈtiɡe// | '(that) I/he/she punish (subjunctive)' | |
There are also alternations between unstressed pronounced as //e// and pronounced as //o// and stressed pronounced as //ie// (or pronounced as //ʝe//, when initial) and pronounced as //ue// respectively:
| word | gloss | word | gloss | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| heló | pronounced as //eˈlo// | 'it froze' | hiela | pronounced as //ˈʝela// | 'it freezes' | |
| tostó | pronounced as //tosˈto// | 'he toasted' | tuesto | pronounced as //ˈtuesto// | 'I toast' | |
Likewise, in a very small number of words, alternations occur between the palatal sonorants pronounced as //ʎ ɲ// and their corresponding alveolar sonorants pronounced as //l n// (doncella/doncel 'maiden'/'youth', desdeñar/desdén 'to scorn'/'scorn'). This alternation does not appear in verbal or nominal inflection (that is, the plural of doncel is donceles, not *doncelles). This is the result of geminated pronounced as //ll// and pronounced as //nn// of Vulgar Latin (the origin of pronounced as //ʎ// and pronounced as //ɲ//, respectively) degeminating and then depalatalizing in coda position. Words without any palatal-alveolar allomorphy are the result of historical borrowings.
Other alternations include pronounced as //ɡs// ~ pronounced as //x// (anexo vs. anejo), pronounced as //ɡt// ~ pronounced as //tʃ// (nocturno vs. noche). Here the forms with pronounced as //ɡs// and pronounced as //ɡt// are historical borrowings and the forms with pronounced as //x// and pronounced as //tʃ// forms are inherited from Vulgar Latin.
There are also pairs that show antepenultimate stress in nouns and adjectives but penultimate stress in synonymous verbs (vómito 'vomit' vs. vomito 'I vomit').
Phonological development varies greatly by individual, both those developing regularly and those with delays. However, a general pattern of acquisition of phonemes can be inferred by the level of complexity of their features, i.e. by sound classes. A hierarchy may be constructed, and if a child is capable of producing discrimination on one level, they will also be capable of making the discriminations of all prior levels.
This hierarchy is based on production only, and is a representation of a child's capacity to produce a sound, whether that sound is the correct target in adult speech or not. Thus, it may contain some sounds that are not included in adult phonology but are produced as a result of error.
Spanish-speaking children will accurately produce most segments at a relatively early age. By around three-and-a-half years, they will no longer productively use phonological processes the majority of the time. Some common error patterns (found 10% or more of the time) are cluster reduction, liquid simplification, and stopping. Less common patterns (evidenced less than 10% of the time) include palatal fronting, assimilation, and final consonant deletion.
Typical phonological analyses of Spanish consider the consonants pronounced as //b//, pronounced as //d//, and pronounced as //ɡ// the underlying phonemes and their corresponding approximants pronounced as /[β]/, pronounced as /[ð]/, and pronounced as /[ɣ]/ allophonic and derivable by phonological rules. However, approximants may be the more basic form because monolingual Spanish-learning children learn to produce the continuant contrast between pronounced as /[p t k]/ and pronounced as /[β ð ɣ]/ before they do the lead voicing contrast between pronounced as /[p t k]/ and pronounced as /[b d ɡ]/. (In comparison, English-learning children are able to produce adult-like voicing contrasts for these stops well before age three.) The allophonic distribution of pronounced as /[b d ɡ]/ and pronounced as /[β ð ɣ]/ produced in adult speech is not learned until after age two and not fully mastered even at age four.
The alveolar trill pronounced as /[r]/ is one of the most difficult sounds to produce in Spanish and, as a result, is acquired later in development. Research suggests that the alveolar trill is acquired and developed between the ages of three and six years. Some children acquire an adult-like trill within this period, and some fail to properly acquire the trill. The attempted trill sound of the poor trillers is often perceived as a series of taps owing to hyperactive tongue movement during production. The trill is also often very difficult for those learning Spanish as a second language, sometimes taking over a year to be produced properly.[41]
One research study found that children acquire medial codas before final codas, and stressed codas before unstressed codas. Since medial codas are often stressed and must undergo place assimilation, greater importance is accorded to their acquisition. Liquid and nasal codas occur word-medially and at the ends of frequently used function words, so they are often acquired first.
Research suggests that children overgeneralize stress rules when they are reproducing novel Spanish words and that they have a tendency to stress the penultimate syllables of antepenultimately stressed words, to avoid a violation of nonverb stress rules that they have acquired. Many of the most frequent words heard by children have irregular stress patterns or are verbs, which violate nonverb stress rules. This complicates stress rules until ages three to four, when stress acquisition is essentially complete, and children begin to apply these rules to novel irregular situations.
Some features, such as the pronunciation of voiceless stops pronounced as //p t k//, have no dialectal variation. However, there are numerous other features of pronunciation that differ from dialect to dialect.
See main article: Yeísmo. One notable dialectal feature is the merging of the voiced palatal approximant pronounced as /link/ (as in ayer) with the palatal lateral approximant pronounced as /link/ (as in calle) into one phoneme (yeísmo), with pronounced as //ʎ// losing its laterality. While the distinction between these two sounds has traditionally been a feature of Castilian Spanish, this merger has spread throughout most of Spain in recent generations, particularly outside of regions in close linguistic contact with Catalan and Basque. In Spanish America, most dialects are characterized by this merger, with the distinction persisting mostly in parts of Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, and northwestern Argentina. In the other parts of Argentina, the phoneme resulting from the merger is realized as pronounced as /link/; and in Buenos Aires the sound has recently been devoiced to pronounced as /link/ among the younger population; the change is spreading throughout Argentina.
See main article: Phonological history of Spanish coronal fricatives. Speakers in northern and central Spain, including the variety prevalent on radio and television, have both pronounced as //θ// and pronounced as //s// (distinción, 'distinction'). However, speakers in Latin America, Canary Islands and some parts of southern Spain have only pronounced as //s// (seseo), which in southernmost Spain is pronounced pronounced as /[θ]/ and not pronounced as /[s]/ (ceceo).
The phoneme pronounced as //s// has three different pronunciations depending on the dialect area:
Obaid describes the apico-alveolar sound as follows:[42]
Dalbor describes the apico-dental sound as follows:[43]
In some dialects, pronounced as //s// may become the approximant pronounced as /[ɹ]/ in the syllable coda (e.g. doscientos pronounced as /[doɹˈθjentos]/ 'two hundred').[44] In southern dialects in Spain, most lowland dialects in the Americas, and in the Canary Islands, it debuccalizes to pronounced as /[h]/ in final position (e.g. niños pronounced as /[ˈniɲoh]/ 'children'), or before another consonant (e.g. fósforo pronounced as /[ˈfohfoɾo]/ 'match') so the change occurs in the coda position in a syllable. In Spain, this was originally a southern feature, but it is now expanding rapidly to the north.
From an autosegmental point of view, the pronounced as //s// phoneme in Madrid is defined only by its voiceless and fricative features. Thus, the point of articulation is not defined and is determined from the sounds following it in the word or sentence. In Madrid, the following realizations are found: pronounced as //pesˈkado// > pronounced as /[pexˈkao]/[45] and pronounced as //ˈfosfoɾo// > pronounced as /[ˈfofːoɾo]/. In parts of southern Spain, the only feature defined for pronounced as //s// appears to be voiceless; it may lose its oral articulation entirely to become pronounced as /[h]/ or even a geminate with the following consonant (pronounced as /[ˈmihmo]/ or pronounced as /[ˈmimːo]/ from pronounced as //ˈmismo// 'same'). In Eastern Andalusian and Murcian Spanish, word-final pronounced as //s//, pronounced as //θ// and pronounced as //x// regularly weaken, and the preceding vowel is lowered and lengthened:
pronounced as //is// > pronounced as /link/ e.g. mis pronounced as /[mɪː]/ ('my' pl)
pronounced as //es// > pronounced as /link/ e.g. mes pronounced as /[mɛː]/ ('month')
pronounced as //as// > pronounced as /link/ e.g. más pronounced as /[mæː]/ ('plus')
pronounced as //os// > pronounced as /link/ e.g. tos pronounced as /[tɔː]/ ('cough')
pronounced as //us// > pronounced as /link/ e.g. tus pronounced as /[tʊː]/ ('your' pl)
A subsequent process of vowel harmony takes place so lejos ('far') is pronounced as /[ˈlɛxɔ]/, tenéis ('you [plural] have') is pronounced as /[tɛˈnɛj]/ and tréboles ('clovers') is pronounced as /[ˈtɾɛβɔlɛ]/ or pronounced as /[ˈtɾɛβolɛ]/.
Southern European Spanish (Andalusian Spanish, Murcian Spanish, etc.) and several lowland dialects in Latin America (such as those from the Caribbean, Panama, and the Atlantic coast of Colombia) exhibit more extreme forms of simplification of coda consonants:
The dropped consonants appear when additional suffixation occurs (e.g. compases pronounced as /[komˈpase]/ 'beats', venían pronounced as /[beˈni.ã]/ 'they were coming', comeremos pronounced as /[komeˈɾemo]/ 'we will eat'). Similarly, a number of coda assimilations occur:
Final pronounced as //d// dropping (e.g. mitad pronounced as /[miˈta]/ 'half') is general in most dialects of Spanish, even in formal speech.
The neutralization of syllable-final pronounced as //p//, pronounced as //t//, and pronounced as //k// is widespread in most dialects (with e.g. Pepsi being pronounced pronounced as /[ˈpeksi]/). It does not face as much stigma as other neutralizations and may go unnoticed.
The deletions and neutralizations show variability in their occurrence, even with the same speaker in the same utterance, so non-deleted forms exist in the underlying structure. The dialects may not be on the path to eliminating coda consonants since deletion processes have been existing for more than four centuries.[46] argues that it is the result of speakers acquiring multiple phonological systems with uneven control like that of second language learners.
In Standard European Spanish, the voiced obstruents pronounced as //b, d, ɡ// before a pause are devoiced and laxed to pronounced as /[{{IPAplink|β̥˕}}, {{IPAplink|ð̥˕}}, {{IPAplink|ɣ̊˕}}]/, as in club pronounced as /[kluβ̥˕]/ ('[social] club'), sed pronounced as /[seð̥]/ ('thirst'), zigzag pronounced as /[θiɣˈθaɣ̊˕]/.[47] However, word-final pronounced as //b// is rare, and pronounced as //ɡ// even more so. They are restricted mostly to loanwords and foreign names, such as the first name of former Real Madrid sports director Predrag Mijatović, which is pronounced pronounced as /[ˈpɾeð̞ɾaɣ̊˕]/; and after another consonant, the voiced obstruent may even be deleted, as in iceberg, pronounced pronounced as /[iθeˈβeɾ]/.[48] In Madrid and its environs, sed is alternatively pronounced pronounced as /[seθ]/, where the aforementioned alternative pronunciation of word-final pronounced as //d// as pronounced as /[θ]/ coexists with the standard realization,[49] but is otherwise nonstandard.[13]
The fricative pronounced as //ʃ// may also appear in borrowings from other languages, such as Nahuatl and English. In addition, the affricates pronounced as /link/ and pronounced as /link/ also occur in Nahuatl borrowings. That said, the onset cluster pronounced as //tl// is permitted in most of Latin America, the Canaries, and the northwest of Spain, and the fact that it is pronounced in the same amount of time as the other voiceless stop + lateral clusters pronounced as //pl// and pronounced as //kl// support an analysis of the pronounced as //tl// sequence as a cluster rather than an affricate in Mexican Spanish.
This sample is an adaptation of Aesop's "El Viento del Norte y el Sol" (The North Wind and the Sun) read by a man from Northern Mexico born in the late 1980s. As usual in Mexican Spanish, pronounced as //θ// and pronounced as //ʎ// are not present.
Spanish; Castilian: El Viento del Norte y el Sol discutían por saber quién era el más fuerte de los dos. Mientras discutían, se acercó un viajero cubierto en un cálido abrigo. Entonces decidieron que el más fuerte sería quien lograse despojar al viajero de su abrigo. El Viento del Norte empezó, soplando tan fuerte como podía, pero entre más fuerte soplaba, el viajero más se arropaba. Entonces, el Viento desistió. Se llegó el turno del Sol, quien comenzó a brillar con fuerza. Esto hizo que el viajero sintiera calor y por ello se quitó su abrigo. Entonces el Viento del Norte tuvo que reconocer que el Sol era el más fuerte de los dos.
pronounced as //el ˈbiento del ˈnoɾte i el ˈsol diskuˈti.an poɾ saˈbeɾ ˈkien ˈeɾa el ˈmas ˈfueɾte de los ˈdos ‖ mientɾas diskuˈti.an se aseɾˈko un biaˈxeɾo kuˈbieɾto en un ˈkalido aˈbɾiɡo enˈtonses desiˈdieɾon ke el ˈmas ˈfueɾte seˈɾi.a kien loˈɡɾase despoˈxaɾ al biaˈxeɾo de su aˈbɾiɡo ‖ el ˈbiento del ˈnoɾte empeˈso soˈplando tan ˈfueɾte komo poˈdi.a peɾo entɾe ˈmas ˈfueɾte soˈplaba el biaˈxeɾo ˈmas se aroˈpaba enˈtonses el ˈbiento desisˈtio se ʝeˈɡo el ˈtuɾno del ˈsol kien komenˈso a bɾiˈʝaɾ kon ˈfueɾsa ˈesto ˈiso ke el biaˈxeɾo sinˈtieɾa kaˈloɾ i poɾ ˈeʝo se kiˈto su aˈbɾiɡo ‖ enˈtonses el ˈbiento del ˈnoɾte ˈtubo ke rekonoˈseɾ ke el ˈsol ˈeɾa el ˈmas ˈfueɾte de los ˈdos//
pronounced as /[el ˈβjento ðel ˈnoɾte j‿el ˈsol diskuˈti.am por saˈβeɾ ˈkjen eɾa‿e̯l ˈmas ˈfweɾte ðe los ˈðos ‖ ˈmjentɾas ðiskuˈti.an ˌse̯‿aseɾˈko‿wm bjaˈxeɾo kuˈβjeɾto̯‿en uŋ ˈkaliðo̯‿aˈβɾiɣo {{!}} enˈtonses ðesiˈðjeɾoŋ k‿el ˈmas ˈfweɾte seˈɾi.a kjen loˈɣɾase ðespoˈxaɾ al βjaˈxeɾo ðe swaˈβɾiɣo ‖ el ˈβjento ðel ˌnoɾt‿empeˈso soˈplando taɱ ˈfweɾte ˌkomo poˈði.a {{!}} ˈpeɾo̯‿entɾe ˈmas ˈfweɾte soˈplaβa el βjaˈxeɾo ˈmas ˌse̯‿aroˈpaβa {{!}} enˈtonses el ˈβjento ðesisˈtjo {{!}} se ʝeˈɣo̯‿el ˈtuɾno ðel sol ˌkjeŋ komenˈso̯‿a βɾiˈʝar koɱ ˈfweɾsa {{!}} ˈesto‿jso k‿el βjaxeɾo sinˈtjeɾa kaˈloɾ i poɾ eʝo se kiˈto swaˈβɾiɣo ‖ enˈtonses el ˈβjento ðel ˈnoɾte ˈtuβo ke rekonoˈseɾ ˌkel ˈsol ˈeɾa‿e̯l ˈmas ˈfweɾte ðe los ˈðos]/