# Ceceo in Catalan and Spanish



## xandersun

Don't know if this is the right forum for this question, but it is about bilingual Castilian and Catalan pronunciation. Does Catalans have the "th" sound? I thought not, but sometimes when I listen to Catalans spoken, I'll here the "th" sound. Is this just a Castellano speaker just perhaps regressing, or are there some variations of Catalans that also use the "th"? Or if a Catalans speaker refers to something Castilian he'll just use the Castilian pronunciation? I seem to notice this in newscasts sometimes.


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## chamyto

Can you explain what "th" sound ?

th as in the ?
th as in Thomas ?
th as in theatre ?


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## Namarne

Hello, 


chamyto said:


> th as in theatre ?


I'll assume this. 


xandersun said:


> Does Catalans have the "th" sound?


No.  





> I thought not, but sometimes when I listen to Catalans spoken, I'll here the "th" sound. Or if a Catalans speaker refers to something Castilian he'll just use the Castilian pronunciation?


I think so. 


> ...or are there some variations of Catalans that also use the "th"?


Well, in fact I know some little villages (in the province of Huesca, near Catalonia) where this exists as a phenomenon. They speak Catalan and they pronounce like "th" some sounds written with "c" or "z". But this is very strange, and you'll never hear that in the media.


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## Food for thought

The "th" sound in Castillian usually becomes an "s" in Catalán. 
There's a lot of "X" pronounced "Ch" and also the English "Z" sound, but no "Th"
(At least not in Mallorca)


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## ampurdan

In the Catalan media, you'll only hear /θ/ when they pronounce a Spanish word in formal speech. Of course, some speakers may mix both languages and come up with mixed pronunciations, but this is not standard and it is not a dialect (except for the one Namarne has told us about, which I did not know).

Catalan and Spanish "s" is apical, unlike the English one. However, some people in Catalonia pronounce it like an English "s". Perhaps the contrast might have lead you to think it is a /θ/, but that's not likely, I guess.


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## samarkanda

The Catalan language does not have the /θ/ sound. However, us Catalans have learnt Castillian Spanish, so when we speak Spanish we do pronounce /θ/.


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## ernest_

xandersun said:


> Does Catalans have the "th" sound? I thought not, but sometimes when I listen to Catalans spoken, I'll here the "th" sound.



There is no /θ/ in Catalan. However, many people use this sound when they pronounce an acronym that contains the letter "c", such as PSC /pe se θe/ or CD /θe ðe/. Why they do it I don't know, but every day there are more and more people doing it.


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## ampurdan

ernest_ said:


> There is no /θ/ in Catalan. However, many people use this sound when they pronounce an acronym that contains the letter "c", such as PSC /pe se θe/ or CD /θe ðe/. Why they do it I don't know, but every day there are more and more people doing it.



Oh, yes! I hadn't thought about that. That's another possibility.


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## merquiades

From my personal experience, I have always admired that Catalans are bilingual in the extreme whether their mother tongue is Catalan or Spanish.  You can hear them speaking Castilian and then switch to Catalan, always with perfect accents. But I have to say I'm only familiar with the Barcelona area. Thus, when they speak Castilian Spanish everyone pronounces /θ/ and in Catalan /s/ or /z/ depending on the case.  So with cognate words they would say in Spanish Casa /casa/ and Caza /kaθa/ but in Catalan Casa /kaza/ and Caça /kasa/. Some people throw in words from Spanish when they speak Catalan and would use /θ/ if they have one. Likewise, non-Catalan names too.  On the radio no one would pronounce /Zapatero/ or /Sapatero/ always /θapatero/. I believe they would even say Pérez /Péreθ/ even if that particular person and his family had always lived in Catalonia.

Edit: on a personal note, perhaps off-subject, sorry. When I go to Barcelona everybody naturally speaks to me in Castilian.  I used to try to listen very hard to pick up some kind of Catalan accent, open a, dark l sounds, neutral vowels, no θ, use of some words rather than others (mirar not ver for example) to see if I could practice Catalan with them and it never worked. Now I just ask.


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## ampurdan

merquiades said:


> On the radio no one would pronounce /Zapatero/ or /Sapatero/ always /θapatero/. I believe they would even say Pérez /Péreθ/ even if that particular person and his family had always lived in Catalonia.



You are right. That's on the radio and in Barcelona. In everyday speech Catalan speakers in Girona have a stronger tendency to pronounce /Sa.pa.'te.ro/ and /'Pe.res/ when they speak in Catalan.


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## merquiades

I just re-read the original question about th.  If Xanderson is referring to the th /ð/ in that, either, brother it does exist both in Catalan and Castilian.  It's the d in casada /kazaða/, cada /kaða/.


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## xandersun

Wow, so many illuminating responses. Thank you all! Yes, I was referring the "th" in "theatre" (hence, the reference to ceceo). Now that people have mentioned it, I think I probably did hear people speaking Catalan but then pronouncing proper names or acronyms with a ceceo pronunciation. Or it might have been a Castellano native speaker lapsing here and there? I guess it would be rare to hear someone from one of those exceptional villages on the radio speaking Catalan but with "ths".


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