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it'd be nice if some native speakers could provide a sound sample. -- Rajah ( talk) 21:20, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
consists in the merge of the two palatal approximant phonemes (the glide /j/ and the lateral /ʎ/) into one, and the pronunciation of both in several other ways, usually as a fricative or as an affricate. [...] Some dialects pronounce the merged palatal phoneme as [j] (a palatal approximant, as in English yet and the traditional "standard" pronunciation of y). Most dialects, however, realize this phoneme as a voiced fricative, either [ʝ] (palatal) or [ʒ] (postalveolar). In other cases, the phonetic realization is devoiced, or becomes a soft affricate sound (commonly [dʒ], as in English gin).[...]Curiously, yeísmo is not uniformly applied to words. Those words which an orthographical y or ll undergo the merge, but the word-initial rising diphthongs with the glide element represented in writing with hi keep the original pronunciation as [j]. That is, the initial phonemes of both llano "flat" and yema "yolk" are pronounced the same (with yeísmo), but hielo "ice" is not (it remains ['jelo]).
There seems to be a deep misundestanding in the above description. Spanish does not have a glide /j/ phoneme; instead, there is a consonantal phoneme which phonologically aligns with the plosive/fricative/approximant voiced obstruents (/b/, /d/, /g/) and whose pronunciation varies from dialect to dialect, the most widespread being a palatal plosive/affricate/fricative (postalveolar fricative is distinctively used in Rioplatense, and only some fringe dialect uses a glide, a feature which sounds definitely foreignish to speakers of mainstream dialects). Now, yeismo is not the merging of a lateral and a glide phoneme into a different fricative/affricate phoneme, but merely the merging and loss of the lateral phoneme into the fricative/affricate phoneme: that's why it's called yeismo, because words like "lluvia" and "llorar" get pronounced as if they were "yuvia" and "yorar". The first phoneme in "hielo" is not the fricative/affricate one (let alone the lateral), but the vowel /i/ (unlike in English, diphthongs are not phonemic units in Spanish but merely two vowels in a row within the same syllable), and in mainstream Spanish the glide sound [j] that in English is a distinct phoneme is merely the allophone of vowel /i/ used at the start of a diphthong, so that's what you hear in the (careful) pronunciation of "hielo". But note that there is a strong tendency in colloquial Spanish to avoid glides in syllable-initial diphthongs by raising them into fricative consonantal sounds, and so effectively merging "hi-" with the palatal fricative "y-" and "hu-" with the sequence "gü-" (somehow, we native speakers of mainstream Spanish dialects find that syllable-initial glides are "uncomfortable" to pronounce while the corresponding fricatives are "easier", even though native English speakers most probably would think viceversa). However, this is a different issue from yeismo altogether and the merging of "hi-" with "y-" does not occur to my knowledge in Rioplatense where the sound of "y" is not that of a palatal fricative and thus does not correspond to the raised version of the glide; this explains the erroneous perception of yeismo not being "uniformly applied to words" mentioned in the article. Uaxuctum 04:00, 7 May 2005 (UTC)
LABIAL DENTAL ALVEOLOPALATAL GUTTURAL | bilab labiod | interd dent | apicoalv palat | velar uvul | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------| tense | p | t | ch | c/qu/k | lax | b/v | d | y | g(u) | spirant | f | c/z | s | j/g | -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Isn't it generalized except among bilingual speakers of Catalan and Quechua?
Has this anything to do with why Majorca is written "Mallorca" rather than "Mayorca"? -- Henrygb 23:16, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
I am not a linguist and I speak only a few words Spanish. I was born and raised in Europe and mostly exposed to "Spanish Spanish". Then I moved to the U.S. and got exposed to Spanish spoken by people in the U.S.. Then I married an Argentinean and got exposed to things like voseo, but also, differences in yeismo...
Having stated my (limited) experience, I'd like to use the phrase "Llame ya" (which I have seen used many times in Argentinian TV commercials) as an example:
Also, compare Spanish "ñ" to Portuguese "nh" and Italian "gn". Interesting parallel with Spanish "ll", Portuguese "lh" and Italian "gl", just that there never seems to have been an "l" with a tilde...
At least, that is the impression I got. I hope someone much better at the different dialects of Spanish can add something about this to this article.
Addition: Yes, I understand that what I said here does not change the fact that in yeismo, either "ll" and "y" are pronounced the same way or they are not. Just 2 possibilities. But I think a nuance should be added. Either to this article or the Spanish dialects and varieties. Because I think there are at least 3 ways of pronouncing: (1) The same, one way. (2) The same, a different way. (3) Differently. wjmt ( talk) 21:26, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
Just to add a little more on the variant question. The Caribbean dialect differ from what is spoken in Andalusia and the Canary Islands in a few instances. The actual "ll" and "y" pronunciation actually varies a little more towards either a sound similar to that of the "j" in the English word jump or it can sound similar to the "zh" sound in some Rio Platense speech. This is a growing phenomenon in Latin America especially in the country of Panama were the Caribbean dialect is spoken (I have a lot of experience in this dialect). The only word I can think of in Spanish that still caries that yeismo sound uniformally is the word "calle" (road). I've never heard that using the "y" or "zh" sound. Sorry for the more scientific on this discussion, I've never been able to figure out how to write in "IPA" format.
Wellsjamesd (
talk) 05:55, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
The article says that "yeísmo is already the majority in Galician". This sentence doesn't sound right ("yeísmo is already mainstream in Galician" would sound English), and furthermore, it doesn't cite references. The Spanish version of this article says the very opposite (while citing references), namely that Spaniards from bilingual regions of Spain, including Galicia, tend to distinguish between ll and y. -- 217.42.90.141 ( talk) 21:11, 22 February 2011 (UTC)
This article seems to be a collection of different users' personal opinions and impressions. Even if these impressions are right, they are still WP:OR. What is more, I rather doubt they are right. For example, both the map and the text claims 'll' and 'y' are distinct in Bogotá. This is in sharp contradiction to numerous linguistic works saying the exact opposite. According to Lipski, who reviews the academic literature, the distinction was still present in the early 20th century, but was almost lost by the 1950s, and completely lost for decades already. Jeppiz ( talk) 13:26, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
El español hablado en América, por su parte, ha sido dividido en quince dialectos, muchos de los cuales se utilizan en más de un país. Así, por ejemplo, el dialecto centroamericano corresponde a Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica y el estado mexicano de Chiapas, en tanto que el dialecto caribeño es el que se habla en Panamá, Cuba, República Dominicana, Puerto Rico, la mayor parte de Venezuela y el área costeña atlántica de Colombia. El español ribereño pacífico, por su parte, es el que corresponde al área costeña pacífica de Colombia, Ecuador y Perú, en tanto que el andino ecuatorial se habla en partes de Colombia y Ecuador, y el andino norteño en la mayor parte de Colombia y en el área andina de Venezuela. Para designar al español que se emplea en la zona andina de Perú y Bolivia, por su parte, hemos utilizado la denominación "español andino altoperuano", en tanto que el español amazónico es el de la zona amazónica de Colombia y Perú. Los otros dialectos que abarcan más de un país son los que hemos denominado "cordillerano central" (que se refiere al español hablado en el norte de Chile, sur de Bolivia y noroeste de la Argentina), "cordillerano austral" (centro y sur de Chile, y las provincias argentinas de Mendoza y San Luis), "paraguayo" (Paraguay y cuatro provincias de noreste argentino) y "rioplatense" (Uruguay y zona centro, este y sur de la Argentina).
I was born in Buenos Aires in 1944 and lived there until I moved to the US in 1995. It's hard to pinpoint dates when things change gradually, but the final result is clear: the "ye" sound for letters "ll" and "y" I grew up with has been almost completely replaced by "she". Lavalle street, or "calle Lavalle", which always sounded "caye lavaye", is now "cashe lavashe". I was just listening to SonAr, the podcast from the Argentine National Archives, and all the speakers use the "sh". Has the origin of this change been studied? Where did it come from? Why? Alejandro Milberg ( talk) 18:30, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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It is requested that one or more audio files be
included in this article to
improve its quality. Please see Wikipedia:Requested recordings for more on this request. |
it'd be nice if some native speakers could provide a sound sample. -- Rajah ( talk) 21:20, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
consists in the merge of the two palatal approximant phonemes (the glide /j/ and the lateral /ʎ/) into one, and the pronunciation of both in several other ways, usually as a fricative or as an affricate. [...] Some dialects pronounce the merged palatal phoneme as [j] (a palatal approximant, as in English yet and the traditional "standard" pronunciation of y). Most dialects, however, realize this phoneme as a voiced fricative, either [ʝ] (palatal) or [ʒ] (postalveolar). In other cases, the phonetic realization is devoiced, or becomes a soft affricate sound (commonly [dʒ], as in English gin).[...]Curiously, yeísmo is not uniformly applied to words. Those words which an orthographical y or ll undergo the merge, but the word-initial rising diphthongs with the glide element represented in writing with hi keep the original pronunciation as [j]. That is, the initial phonemes of both llano "flat" and yema "yolk" are pronounced the same (with yeísmo), but hielo "ice" is not (it remains ['jelo]).
There seems to be a deep misundestanding in the above description. Spanish does not have a glide /j/ phoneme; instead, there is a consonantal phoneme which phonologically aligns with the plosive/fricative/approximant voiced obstruents (/b/, /d/, /g/) and whose pronunciation varies from dialect to dialect, the most widespread being a palatal plosive/affricate/fricative (postalveolar fricative is distinctively used in Rioplatense, and only some fringe dialect uses a glide, a feature which sounds definitely foreignish to speakers of mainstream dialects). Now, yeismo is not the merging of a lateral and a glide phoneme into a different fricative/affricate phoneme, but merely the merging and loss of the lateral phoneme into the fricative/affricate phoneme: that's why it's called yeismo, because words like "lluvia" and "llorar" get pronounced as if they were "yuvia" and "yorar". The first phoneme in "hielo" is not the fricative/affricate one (let alone the lateral), but the vowel /i/ (unlike in English, diphthongs are not phonemic units in Spanish but merely two vowels in a row within the same syllable), and in mainstream Spanish the glide sound [j] that in English is a distinct phoneme is merely the allophone of vowel /i/ used at the start of a diphthong, so that's what you hear in the (careful) pronunciation of "hielo". But note that there is a strong tendency in colloquial Spanish to avoid glides in syllable-initial diphthongs by raising them into fricative consonantal sounds, and so effectively merging "hi-" with the palatal fricative "y-" and "hu-" with the sequence "gü-" (somehow, we native speakers of mainstream Spanish dialects find that syllable-initial glides are "uncomfortable" to pronounce while the corresponding fricatives are "easier", even though native English speakers most probably would think viceversa). However, this is a different issue from yeismo altogether and the merging of "hi-" with "y-" does not occur to my knowledge in Rioplatense where the sound of "y" is not that of a palatal fricative and thus does not correspond to the raised version of the glide; this explains the erroneous perception of yeismo not being "uniformly applied to words" mentioned in the article. Uaxuctum 04:00, 7 May 2005 (UTC)
LABIAL DENTAL ALVEOLOPALATAL GUTTURAL | bilab labiod | interd dent | apicoalv palat | velar uvul | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------| tense | p | t | ch | c/qu/k | lax | b/v | d | y | g(u) | spirant | f | c/z | s | j/g | -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Isn't it generalized except among bilingual speakers of Catalan and Quechua?
Has this anything to do with why Majorca is written "Mallorca" rather than "Mayorca"? -- Henrygb 23:16, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
I am not a linguist and I speak only a few words Spanish. I was born and raised in Europe and mostly exposed to "Spanish Spanish". Then I moved to the U.S. and got exposed to Spanish spoken by people in the U.S.. Then I married an Argentinean and got exposed to things like voseo, but also, differences in yeismo...
Having stated my (limited) experience, I'd like to use the phrase "Llame ya" (which I have seen used many times in Argentinian TV commercials) as an example:
Also, compare Spanish "ñ" to Portuguese "nh" and Italian "gn". Interesting parallel with Spanish "ll", Portuguese "lh" and Italian "gl", just that there never seems to have been an "l" with a tilde...
At least, that is the impression I got. I hope someone much better at the different dialects of Spanish can add something about this to this article.
Addition: Yes, I understand that what I said here does not change the fact that in yeismo, either "ll" and "y" are pronounced the same way or they are not. Just 2 possibilities. But I think a nuance should be added. Either to this article or the Spanish dialects and varieties. Because I think there are at least 3 ways of pronouncing: (1) The same, one way. (2) The same, a different way. (3) Differently. wjmt ( talk) 21:26, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
Just to add a little more on the variant question. The Caribbean dialect differ from what is spoken in Andalusia and the Canary Islands in a few instances. The actual "ll" and "y" pronunciation actually varies a little more towards either a sound similar to that of the "j" in the English word jump or it can sound similar to the "zh" sound in some Rio Platense speech. This is a growing phenomenon in Latin America especially in the country of Panama were the Caribbean dialect is spoken (I have a lot of experience in this dialect). The only word I can think of in Spanish that still caries that yeismo sound uniformally is the word "calle" (road). I've never heard that using the "y" or "zh" sound. Sorry for the more scientific on this discussion, I've never been able to figure out how to write in "IPA" format.
Wellsjamesd (
talk) 05:55, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
The article says that "yeísmo is already the majority in Galician". This sentence doesn't sound right ("yeísmo is already mainstream in Galician" would sound English), and furthermore, it doesn't cite references. The Spanish version of this article says the very opposite (while citing references), namely that Spaniards from bilingual regions of Spain, including Galicia, tend to distinguish between ll and y. -- 217.42.90.141 ( talk) 21:11, 22 February 2011 (UTC)
This article seems to be a collection of different users' personal opinions and impressions. Even if these impressions are right, they are still WP:OR. What is more, I rather doubt they are right. For example, both the map and the text claims 'll' and 'y' are distinct in Bogotá. This is in sharp contradiction to numerous linguistic works saying the exact opposite. According to Lipski, who reviews the academic literature, the distinction was still present in the early 20th century, but was almost lost by the 1950s, and completely lost for decades already. Jeppiz ( talk) 13:26, 19 April 2015 (UTC)
El español hablado en América, por su parte, ha sido dividido en quince dialectos, muchos de los cuales se utilizan en más de un país. Así, por ejemplo, el dialecto centroamericano corresponde a Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica y el estado mexicano de Chiapas, en tanto que el dialecto caribeño es el que se habla en Panamá, Cuba, República Dominicana, Puerto Rico, la mayor parte de Venezuela y el área costeña atlántica de Colombia. El español ribereño pacífico, por su parte, es el que corresponde al área costeña pacífica de Colombia, Ecuador y Perú, en tanto que el andino ecuatorial se habla en partes de Colombia y Ecuador, y el andino norteño en la mayor parte de Colombia y en el área andina de Venezuela. Para designar al español que se emplea en la zona andina de Perú y Bolivia, por su parte, hemos utilizado la denominación "español andino altoperuano", en tanto que el español amazónico es el de la zona amazónica de Colombia y Perú. Los otros dialectos que abarcan más de un país son los que hemos denominado "cordillerano central" (que se refiere al español hablado en el norte de Chile, sur de Bolivia y noroeste de la Argentina), "cordillerano austral" (centro y sur de Chile, y las provincias argentinas de Mendoza y San Luis), "paraguayo" (Paraguay y cuatro provincias de noreste argentino) y "rioplatense" (Uruguay y zona centro, este y sur de la Argentina).
I was born in Buenos Aires in 1944 and lived there until I moved to the US in 1995. It's hard to pinpoint dates when things change gradually, but the final result is clear: the "ye" sound for letters "ll" and "y" I grew up with has been almost completely replaced by "she". Lavalle street, or "calle Lavalle", which always sounded "caye lavaye", is now "cashe lavashe". I was just listening to SonAr, the podcast from the Argentine National Archives, and all the speakers use the "sh". Has the origin of this change been studied? Where did it come from? Why? Alejandro Milberg ( talk) 18:30, 17 January 2022 (UTC)