This article is about the It deals with current phonology and Phonetics as well as with historical developments thereof, including geographical variants (for details, see the articles on History Of The Spanish Language and Spanish Dialects And Varieties ).
Spanish has many Allophone s, so it is important here to distinguish Phoneme s (written in slashes / /) and corresponding allophones (written in brackets ).
By the 16th Century the consonantal system of "Castilian" Spanish underwent the following important changes that differentiated it from such Related Romance Languages as Portuguese , Ladino and Catalan :
- The initial , which had evolved into a vacillating , was lost in most words (although this etymological ''h-'' has been preserved in spelling).
- The voiced bilabial fricative (written ''u'' or ''v'') merged with the bilabial occlusive (written ''b''). Contemporary Spanish letters ''b'' and ''v'' do not correspond to different phonemes, nor to medieval-Spanish ones, as the spelling has been modified to reflect the etymological distribution of ''b'' and ''v'' in Latin.
- The voiced alveolar fricative (written ''s'' between vowels) merged with the voiceless (written ''s'', or ''ss'' between vowels), now written ''s'' everywhere.
- Voiced alveolar affricate (written ''z'') merged with the voiceless (written ''ç'', or ''c'' before ''e'' and ''i''), and then evolved into the interdental , now written ''z'', or ''c'' before ''e'' and ''i''. But in Andalucia, the Canary Islands and the Americas these sounds merged with as well. Notice that the ''ç'' (''c'' with '' Cedilla '') was in its origin a Spanish letter.
- Note that in the Andalucian merger of with , the resulting unitary phoneme could be either. Coastal regions preferred , and are called Ceceo dialects. More inland regions preferred , and are called Seseo dialects. The Seseo region included Seville , the major Spanish port at that time (actually on a river, Guadalquivir ); and hence most of those who were destined to settle the new worlds stayed for a while in Seville before heading off, and nearby locals supplied many of the seamen and other hands on ship. It should not be surprising, then, that the entire Spanish-speaking new world speaks a language derived, essentially, from the language of Seville .
- The voiced postalveolar fricative (written ''j'', or ''g'' before ''e'' and ''i'') merged with the voiceless (written ''x'', as in '' Quixote ''), and then evolved by the 17th century into the modern velar sound , now written ''j'', or ''g'' before ''e'' and ''i''. In much of Latin America, the same letters correspond to the sound.
Later is the merger, in most dialects, of the palatal lateral and non-lateral consonants and (historical) into a single non-lateral consonant, generally a palatal fricative (but also postalveolar and/or affricate in some dialects). This merger is called Yeísmo (from the name of the letter ''y''). (Hammond 2001)
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