Talk:Yeísmo

Glide

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)

I've gone and corrected my mistakes in the article. From the beginning I thought it wasn't alright, but could get my mind around a suitable description for y, and defaulted to the traditional prescription (which is still, BTW, hammered into children's minds) that y is underlyingly [j]. I should have known better myself. However I'm still under the impression that some dialects (not fringe ones) do use [j], or something that sounds more approximant than fricative. It's curious that you mention that this phoneme aligns with the phonemic voiced stops, because in Rioplatense, while y is a rather forcefully pronounced fricative, the realization of the voiced stops has shifted from weakly fricative towards approximant, or zero (especially /d/).

Should the article mention prescriptiveness? Here in Argentina, when primary schoolteachers dictate carefully to students, they still use [j] and [λ] for y and ll, in order to show there's a difference. What's the situation in other Spanish-speaking countries?

--Pablo D. Flores 14:23, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

In Spain, we are never (to my knowledge) told to pronounce "y" as the semivowel [j]. In fact, Spaniards learning English usually replace English "y" (which definitely is /j/) with the Spanish plosive/affricate/fricative "y" (effectively merging the pronunciation of English "y" and "j"), because as mentioned above we find it "uncomfortable" to pronounce syllable-initial glides. To my ear, the sound [j] is not related in any way to the phoneme "y" so far as native-sounding speech is concerned; instead I hear it clearly as an allophone of the vowel phoneme "i". Thus, hearing it where the sound of "y" is expected is something my ear instantly detects (e.g. instead of "yo ya sé" with initial consonants, it will sound to me like "hio hia sé" with initial diphthongs) and I strongly relate it to foreign-sounding or Spanglish accent.

I think that the misrepresentation of "y" as [j] made by prescriptivist Argentinians may have to do with Rioplatense not having anything like the mainstream plosive/affricate/fricative sound of other dialects like Castilian, instead having a postalveolar "zh"-like sound, so that to an Argentinian ear the "y" of mainstream dialects (whose allophonic range goes from plosive all the way through affricate and fricative and up to very close to, though never fully, a glide) may sound closer to the palatal glide [j] allophone of "i" (such as in "hielo") than to the Argentinian postalveolar fricative "zh", and so the sound of mainstream "y" may have been misidentified as [j]. Or maybe it is a product of contact with languages such as Italian and English (which could also explain the introduction of the spurious labiodental sound for orthographical "v", also mistakenly taught as "the proper pronunciation" in Argentinian schools).

As for "ll", nowadays (mostly thanks to half a century of TV broadcast throughout the country from Madrid, which had become mainly yeista long ago because of the many Andalusians that settled there) most Spaniards (certainly the immense majority of the younger generations raised outside Catalan or Basque bilingual areas) cannot for the life of them pronounce it as a palatal lateral, and we are no longer told at school to do so, so most people nowadays tend to think of it as an archaic thing not belonging to the present language, not even to that of educated people. In fact, yeismo is already so deeply rooted, that many people over here usually refer improperly to the plosive/affricate/fricative phoneme "y" as "the sound of ll" because for them orthographic "ll" is always pronounced that way (unlike orthographic "y" which corresponds to vowel "i" in cases like "y hoy hay una ley").

As for the alignment of phoneme "y" with "b/d/g", in Castilian there is an underlying symmetry and regularity in the obstruent consonants:

               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  |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note that the "tense" item in each order features only one main allophone, which is tense, voiceless and involves plosivity (either pure or affricated). Each "lax" item features two allophones (let's call them the "fortis" and "lenis" ones), with a distribution of:

- fortis allophone in initial and postnasal position (pronounced with a lax voiced sound featuring plosivity, either pure or affricated, e.g. in "ambos", "donde", "cónyuge", "tengo")

- lenis allophone elsewhere (pronounced with a lax voiced sound featuring varying degrees of lenition from fricative to approximant, to near or total loss when syllable- and especially word-final)

Finally, each "spirant" item features a main tense voiceless allophone, and a secondary tense voiced allophone when followed by a voiced consonant (as in "afgano", "hallazgo", "desde", "reloj grande"). Also, notice the "displacement" of the spirants in each order with respect to the non-spirant items, and that the apicoalveolar nature of Castilian "s" (which makes it feature a slight sh-like acoustic quality when compared with laminoalveolar and dental sibilants) and the presence of the interdental sibilant "c/z", makes this "s" fit well in the alveolopalatal order.

Alas, this neat organization of the Castilian obstruents is destabilized in seseante/ceceante dialects where "c/z" and "s" are merged, and where the pronunciation of certain items changed (such as the de-affrication of "ch" into "sh" in Andalusia and the Caribbean; and the turning of "y" into a "zh"-like, more recently devoiced into "sh", always-fricative sound in Rioplatense, because of substratum from indigenous Tupi-Guarani languages if I'm not mistaken). This can lead to rearrangements in order to restore some symmetry, like that of Andalusian, where the alveolopalatal order, now featuring only two items, detatches from the main obstruent paradigm to form its own paradigm based in a voicing constrast of fricatives (voiceless "ch" pronounced as fricative "sh" vs. yeista voiced fricative "y/ll"). Uaxuctum 16:54, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

This is extremely interesting. Have you checked whether this information is present in any of the articles related to Spanish phonology? I wish it could be integrated somewhere. BTW, what the immediately above means is that the Rioplatense system is rather scr-- ah... disbalanced. The explanation you give about my confusion is of course true; when I hear a palatal y (in the non-Rioplatense dialects I'm exposed to on TV, mostly) my ear approximates it to [j]. As for confusion in other languages, English y and j are both most often pronounced sh over here, even by English-knowledgeable people when speaking it carelessly; however, most get initial English [j] right easily, when they bother. --Pablo D. Flores 10:45, 9 May 2005 (UTC)

Generalized

Isn't it generalized except among bilingual speakers of Catalan and Quechua? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.250.143.131 (talk) 11:49, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

No, there are still non-yeístas in other places like Paraguay, Colombia and the Philippines (even though the indigenous languages of those areas do not feature the palatal lateral), as well as in other areas in Spain, particularly in rural areas in northern Castile and other northern parts of the country and also among those who grew up in said areas or in families from said areas but who now live in big cities. I meet some of them from time to time, and a few well-known Spanish media voices are non-yeísta, such as Iñaki Gabilondo and someone else whose name I can't recall but who routinely dubs many of the documentaries that are broadcast on TVE-2. But ever more in Spain the distinction is becoming restricted to older speakers who grew up hearing it; the younger generations are too influenced by the language they hear on radio and TV, which is mostly yeísta because for many decades most of it has been originating from Madrid, which became a radiating focus of yeísmo long ago. To my dismay, I've even heard of originally non-yeísta people who have renounced to making the distinction they learned from childhood, so as to not sound "odd" among the yeísta crowd in places like Madrid. However, I am one of the unfortunately-not-so-many who proudly keeps the distinction despite the sociolinguistic pressure of surrounding yeístas; in fact, I'm a fan of the palatal lateral and don't like yeísmo at all, I personally find it sounds just ugly. This reference describes the areas in Latin America that keep the distinction. It also mentions the difference between yeísmo confundidor (the merger of ll with y, which is what yeísmo usually refers to) and yeísmo distinguidor (where ll has lost its lateral feature, becoming a rehilado sound like Rioplatense ll/y, but is still distinguished from the non-rehilado sound of y); something should be added to the article regarding these two kinds of yeísmo. Uaxuctum 00:31, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Iñaki Gabilondo is half Basque half Catalan. Both Basque and Catalan have a distinction between y and ll... 31.221.221.129 (talk) 13:52, 27 July 2023 (UTC)

Mallorca

Has this anything to do with why Majorca is written "Mallorca" rather than "Mayorca"? --Henrygb 23:16, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Nope, its about pronunciation, not writing. LL and Y are (where?) supposed to have different sounds, but they are very often pronunced the same. Mariano(t/c) 08:35, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

But might it be a phonetic transcription error hearing the Latin maior or major and taking it to be ll rather than y? --Henrygb 10:01, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I have found this reference confirming that the etymologically anomalous form "Mallorca" is a by-product of ieisme—a hypercorrected form due to a mistaken interpretation that speakers of continental Catalan made of the ieisme etimològic that is characteristic of the Balearic speech: Diccionari català-valencià-balear, Institut d'Estudis Catalans (look up the term "Mallorca"): "La forma catalana antiga era Maiorca, i d'aquesta pronúncia trobam deixalles en les antigues grafies Mayorca i Mayorques; però com en la majoria dels casos en què el mallorquí té una i intervocàlica, el català de Barcelona té una ll (com orella oreia, palla paia, etc.), la i de Maiorca fou interpretada pels catalans continentals com un dialectalisme mallorquí, al qual ells oposaren la pronúncia Mallorca, i aquesta, predominant en l'escriptura, acabà per imposar-se fins i tot als mateixos mallorquins. Aquesta és l'explicació, completament satisfactòria, que del canvi de Maiorca en Mallorca donà B. Schädel en Rev. Dial. Rom., i, 267." (translation: "The old Catalan form was Maiorca, and we find remnants of this pronunciation in the old spellings Mayorca and Mayorques; but given that in the majority of cases where the Majorcan dialect has an intervocalic i, Barcelonian Catalan has an ll (e.g., orella/oreia, palla/paia, etc.), the i in Maiorca was interpreted by continental Catalans as a Majorcan dialectal form, to which they opposed the pronunciation Mallorca, and this one, prevalent in the written form, got finally imposed on the very Majorcans. This is the explanation, completely satisfactory, that Bernhard Schädel gave for the change from Maiorca to Mallorca in Revue de Dialectologie Romane, tome i, page 267.") Uaxuctum 15:29, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

sound sample?

it'd be nice if some native speakers could provide a sound sample. --Rajah (talk) 21:20, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

At least 3 variants?

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:

• In most of Spain, it would be pronounced something close to English "lyah-meh yah". (Note the leading "l".)
• In Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay, it would be something like the English "jah-meh jah". (Where the "j" sounds like the "g" in "gin".)
• In other Latin American countries (I know Peru is one), it would be something like English "yah-meh yah". This also seems how most Spanish speakers in the U.S. pronounce it.

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)

Stop using English to describe Spanish. If you don't understand IPA, then use Spanish to describe Spanish. That's what many languages do when describing dialects. The reason why there is no tilde on "l" is because a "l" is a very tall letter. A tilde would simply not fit. --2.245.140.128 (talk) 04:57, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

English has ways to approximate the distinctions, whereas Spanish doesn't, so, since we're writing in English, why wouldn't we use English as the frame of reference? As for the tilde not fitting, we manage to write Ñ, and we put accents on top of the upper-case letters, so that can't be the reason. —Largo Plazo (talk) 11:22, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Yeísmo in Galicia

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)

I fixed the sentence, and added a {{cn}} tag. The claim in the en article is not quite the opposite of the claim in the es article - the en article says that yeismo is spreading to Galician and Catalan, while the es article says that in areas where Galician and Catalan are spoken, yeismo is less common in Castilian. Argyriou (talk) 06:25, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Sources??

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)

Why don't you add the sources yourself? --Jotamar (talk) 16:17, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

Because I don't have them. Though I will remove the claims myself if no sources are given.Jeppiz (talk) 16:07, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

The map is definitely incorrect. If someone wishes to alter it based on Coloma (2011), cited in the article, he lists 15 different dialects and says that the distinction is present in "Andino ecuatorial" ("se habla en partes de Colombia y Ecuador"), "Andino altoperuano", "Boliviano oriental", and "Paraguayo." Here is his description of the geographic distribution of the dialects:

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).

— Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 18:02, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

"She" in 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)

It has been studied, and I'm pretty sure it came from Buenos Aires. this paper goes over its beginning in the background section, "sh" was widespread in young women's speech in BA in the 70s and early 80s, it must've spread from there. Erinius (talk) 22:04, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Thank you, very interesting! I'll have to learn all the tech terms, but I do appreciate this.Alejandro Milberg (talk) 01:00, 18 January 2022 (UTC)