}
Sibilants Most Spanish dialects in Spain differentiate, at least in pre-vocalic position, between the sounds represented in traditional spelling by and (before and ), pronounced , and that of , pronounced . However, in many areas of Andalusia, the two phonemes are not distinguished and is used for both, which is known as
seseo . In other areas, the sound manifests as (a sound close, but not identical to ), which is known as (). Unless a specific dialect is transcribed, transcriptions in this article follow the standard pattern found in the syllable onset, so that the orthographic and the soft are transcribed with , whereas the orthographic is transcribed with . Additionally, in most regions of Andalusia which distinguish and , the distinction involves a
laminal , as opposed to the
apico-alveolar of most of Spain. The pronunciation of these sounds in Andalusia differs geographically, socially, and among individual speakers, and there has also been some shift in favor of the standard . As testament to the prevalence of intra-speaker variation, found that many Andalusians alternate between a variety of sibilants, with little discernible pattern. Additionally, the idea that areas of rural Andalusia at one time exclusively used has been challenged, and many speakers described as or -using have in fact alternated between use of and with little pattern. While is stigmatized and usually associated with rural areas, it is worth noting that it was historically found in some large cities such as
Huelva and
Cádiz, although not in the more prestigious cities of
Seville and
Córdoba. Above all in eastern Andalusia, but also in locations in western Andalusia such as Huelva,
Jerez, and Seville, there is a shift towards . Higher rates of are associated with education, youth, urban areas, and monitored speech. The strong influence of media and school may be driving this shift. provides a map showing the different ways of pronouncing these sounds in different parts of Andalusia. The map's information almost entirely corresponds to the results from the
Linguistic Atlas of the Iberian Peninsula, realized in the early 1930s in Andalusia and also described in . These sources generally highlight the most common pronunciation, in colloquial speech, in a given locality. According to , the distinction between a laminal and is native to most of
Almería, eastern
Granada, most of
Jaén, and northern
Huelva, while the distinction between an apical and , as found in the rest of Peninsular Spanish, is native to the very northeastern regions of Almería, Granada and Jaén, to northern
Córdoba, not including the
provincial capital, and to a small region of northern Huelva. Also according to and , predominates in much of northwestern Huelva, the city of Seville as well as northern Seville province, most of southern Córdoba, including the capital, and parts of Jaén, far western Granada, very northern
Málaga, and the city of Almería. Likewise, is found in southern Huelva, most of Seville, including an area surrounding but not including the capital, all of
Cádiz including the capital, was likewise found, in 1933, in a southern, coastal area of
Murcia around the city of
Cartagena, and in parts of southern
Alicante such as
Torrevieja, near the linguistic border with
Valencian. was also found in the Murcian villages of Perín and
Torre-Pacheco, also near the coast.
Other general features Andalusian Spanish phonology includes a large number of other distinctive features, compared to other dialects. Many of these are innovations, especially
lenitions and
mergers, and some of Andalusian Spanish's most distinct lenitions and mergers occur in the
syllable coda. Most broadly, these characteristics include
yeísmo, the pronunciation of the sound like the English , velarization of word- and phrase-final to , elision of between vowels, and a number of reductions in the syllable coda, which includes occasionally merging the consonants and and leniting or even
eliding most syllable-final consonants. A number of these features, so characteristic of Spain's south, may have ultimately originated in
Astur-leonese speaking areas of north-western Spain, where they can still be found. The leniting of syllable-final consonants is quite frequent in middle-class speech, and some level of lenition is sociolinguistically unmarked within Andalusia, forming part of the local standard. That said, Andalusian speakers do tend to reduce the rate of syllable-final lenition in formal speech.
Yeísmo, or the merging of into , is general in most of Andalusia, and may likely be able to trace its origin to Astur-leonese settlers. is usually aspirated, or pronounced , except in some eastern Andalusian sub-varieties (i.e.
Jaén,
Granada,
Almería provinces), where the dorsal is retained. This aspirated pronunciation is also heard in most of
Extremadura and parts of
Cantabria. Word-final often becomes a velar nasal , including when before another word starting in a vowel, as in for 'they disgust me'. This features is shared with many other varieties of Spanish, including much of Latin America and the Canary Islands, as well as much of northwestern Spain, the likely origin of this velarization. Intervocalic is
elided in most instances, for example for ('heavy'), for ('often'). This is especially common in the past participle; e.g. becomes ('I have finished'). For the - suffix, this feature is common to all peninsular variants of Spanish, while in other positions it is widespread throughout most of the southern half of Spain. Also, as occurs in most of the Spanish-speaking world, final is usually dropped. This widespread elision of intervocalic throughout the vocabulary is also shared with several Asturian and Cantabrian dialects, pointing to a possible Asturian origin for this feature. This feature may be connected to northwestern settlers during the reconquista, who came from areas such as eastern Asturias where had, as in Old Castile, become . • Word-final can also be pronounced as , or elided entirely, before a following word that starts with a vowel sound, like for 'the waves'. Thus, in these varieties one distinguishes
casa ('house') and
casas ('houses') by vowel quality, whereas northern Spanish speakers would have central vowels in both words and a terminal alveolar in
casas. • There is disagreement as to whether or not are affected by this process, although most evidence shows they are lowered to a moderate degree. • The quality of word-final lax , typically transcribed , differs according to a number of geographic and social factors. It may be lower than a typical word-final , or it may instead simply be fronted. In some towns, in the mid-20th century at least, it overlapped with the quality of, or even merged with, , the lax allophone of . • As a result, these varieties have five vowel phonemes, each with a tense allophone (roughly the same as the normal realization in northern Spanish; , , , , , hereafter transcribed without diacritics) and a lax allophone (, , , , ). In addition to this, a process of
vowel harmony may take place where tense vowels that precede a lax vowel may become lax themselves, e.g.
trébol ('clover, club') vs
tréboles ('clovers, clubs'). More recently, it has been postulated that Eastern Andalusian could have ten – five tense, five lax –, or even up to fourteen phonemes: /a, as, aθ, ar, e, e{s, θ, r}, i, i{s, θ, r}, o, os, oθ, or, u, u{s, θ, r}. e.g.
perla ('pearl'),
carne ('meat'),
adquirí ('I acquired'),
mismo ('same'),
desde ('from'),
rasgos ('traits'). • In Andalusian Spanish a
voiced obstruent may assimilate the voicelessness of a preceding , while that same may assimilate the place of articulation of the following consonant. As a result, both merge as a single voiceless consonant; Thus, is often assimilated to before (), as in
desbaratar → *
effaratar ('to ruin, to disrupt'), to before , as in 'the attics', and to beore , as in 'feature'. This kind of devoicing is less widespread, geographically and socially, than simple assimilation. as in
ascensor ('lift'). • Mainly in Western Andalusia, /s/-aspiration can result in post-aspiration of following voiceless stops, as in pronounced . • Intervocalic are usually voiced, especially in male speech, and can even become
approximants. This means much of the phonetic distinction between intervocalic and is in fact maintained by differences in voicing and
post-aspiration. • may be
pronounced as in syllable-final position, as in instead of for
alma ('soul') or instead of for
el ('the'). The opposite may also happen, i.e.
becomes (e.g.
sartén 'frying pan'). As briefly mentioned above, aspirated and assimilated realizations ( for ) are also common. Neutralization of final and never occurs before a vowel, even at word boundaries. is always . These consonants may also be dropped in utterance-final position. Merging syllable-final and is associated with rural and uncultured speech, but it has made some headway in urban speech. Because of this variation in final liquid consonants, transcriptions in this article follow the distribution found in Standard Peninsular Spanish. • In Western Andalusian, an aspirated before can be elided due to the fact that itself is glottal. Thus,
virgen ('virgin') varies between and , with the latter being degeminated from . == Morphology and syntax ==