Spanish phonology

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. 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 (/ /), while phonetic representations are written in brackets ([ ]).

The phonemes /b/, /d/, and /ɡ/ are pronounced as voiced stops only after a pause, after a nasal consonant, or—in the case of /d/—after a lateral consonant; in all other contexts, they are realized as approximants (namely [β̞, ð̞, ɣ̞], hereafter represented without the downtacks) or fricatives.

The phoneme /ʎ/ is distinguished from /ʝ/ only in some areas of 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 /ʎ/ into /ʝ/: this is called yeísmo.

The realization of the phoneme /ʝ/ varies greatly by dialect. In Castilian Spanish, its allophones in word-initial position include the palatal approximant [j], the palatal fricative [ʝ], the palatal affricate [ɟʝ] and the palatal stop [ɟ]. After a pause, a nasal, or a lateral, it may be realized as an affricate ([ɟʝ]); in other contexts, /ʝ/ is generally realized as an approximant [ʝ˕]. In Rioplatense Spanish, spoken across Argentina and Uruguay, the voiced palato-alveolar fricative [ʒ] is used in place of [ʝ] and [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 /ʒ/ to [ʃ] ("sheísmo").

The phone [ʃ] occurs as a deaffricated pronunciation of /tʃ/ in some other dialects (most notably, Northern Mexican Spanish, informal Chilean Spanish, and some Caribbean and Andalusian accents). Otherwise, /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 /tʃ/ or /s/.

Many young Argentinians have no distinct /ɲ/ phoneme and use the [nj] sequence instead, thus making no distinction between huraño and uranio (both [uˈɾanjo]).

Most varieties spoken in Spain, including those prevalent on radio and television, have a phonemic contrast between /s/ and /θ/. Speakers with this contrast (which is called distinción) use /s/ in words spelled with ⟨s⟩, such as casa 'house' [ˈkasa], and /θ/ in words spelled with ⟨z⟩ or ⟨c⟩ (when it occurs before ⟨i⟩ or ⟨e⟩), such as caza 'hunt' [ˈkaθa]. However, speakers in parts of southern Spain, the Canary Islands, and all of Latin America lack this distinction, merging both consonants as /s/. The use of [s] in place of [θ] is called seseo. Some speakers in southernmost Spain (especially coastal Andalusia) merge both consonants as [s̄]: this is called ceceo, since [s̄] sounds similar to /θ/. This "ceceo" is not entirely unknown in the Americas, especially in coastal Peru.