Spanish language

Phonology

The consonantal system of Castilian Spanish, by the 16th century, underwent the following important changes that differentiated it from some nearby Romance languages, such as Portuguese and Catalan:

Related Topics:
16th century - Nearby Romance languages - Portuguese - Catalan

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• The initial {{IPA|/f/}}, that had evolved into a vacillating {{IPA|/h/}}, was lost in most words (although this etymological h- has been preserved in spelling).
• The voiced labiodental fricative {{IPA|/v/}} (that was written u or v) merged with the bilabial oclusive {{IPA|/b/}} (written b). Orthographically, b and v do not correspond to different phonemes in contemporary Spanish, excepting some areas in Spain, particularly the ones influenced by Catalan/Valencian and some Andalusia.
• The voiced alveolar fricative {{IPA|/z/}} (that was written s between vowels) merged with the voiceless {{IPA|/s/}} (that was written s, or ss between vowels).
• The voiced alveolar affricate {{IPA|/dz/}} (that was written z) merged with the voiceless {{IPA|/ts/}} (that was written ç, ce, ci), and then {{IPA|/ts/}} evolved into the interdental {{IPA|/θ/}}, now written z, ce, ci. But in Andalucia, the Canary Islands and the Americas these sounds merged with {{IPA|/s/}} as well. Notice that the ç or c with cedilla was in its origin a Spanish letter, although is no longer used.
• The voiced postalveolar fricative {{IPA|/ʒ/}} (that was written j, ge, gi) merged with the voiceless {{IPA|/ʃ/}} (that was written x, as in Quixote), and then {{IPA|/ʃ/}} evolved by the 17th century into the modern velar sound {{IPA|/x/}}, now written j, ge, gi.
• The sound is an allophone of /n/ before velar consonants /g/ and /k/.
• Syllable-final is an allophone of /n/ before bilabial consonants /b/ and /p/.
• , , and are allophones of /b/, /d/, and /g/ in intervocalic positions.

The consonantal system of Medieval Spanish has been better preserved in Ladino, the language spoken by the descendants of the Sephardic Jews who were expelled from Spain in the 15th century.

Related Topics:
Ladino - Sephardic Jews - Spain

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Lexical stress

Spanish has a phonemic stress system — the place where stress will fall cannot be predicted by other features of the word, and two words can differ by just a change in stress. For example, the word camino (with penultimate stress) means "road" or "I walk" whereas caminó (with final stress) means "he/she/it walked". Also, since Spanish pronounces all syllables at a more or less constant tempo, it is said to be a syllable-timed language.

Related Topics:
Phonemic - Stress - Syllable-timed

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