# Are phonemic mergers less likely to spread if literacy is high and the orthography is phonetic?



## Red Arrow

For some reason, I have always taken this for granted, but now that I have written it down in another thread, I realize it's not that obvious.

In many American accents, words like "cot" and "caught" are now pronounced the same. Do you think a phonemic merger like this would be able to spread so widely if English spelling had been more phonetic?

When I look at the way my grandfather speaks, the way my parents speak and the way I speak, I can only conclude that every generation here speaks more and more like how we write. It is clear to me that Standard written Dutch has been a lot more influential on the way my generation speaks than Standard spoken Dutch.

My mother often jokingly says: "'t Is kou van september tot in mei." (It's cold from September till May)
What's so funny about that? Well, "kou" rhymes with "mei" if you talk like an elderly person. ei, ij and ou all sounded the same in our dialect. Somehow this merger has now been undone.

The pronunciation of short I and E also sounded the same, just like the Southern accent in the United States. Well, not anymore. There is absolutely no "Millennial" that would speak like that.

What do you guys think?

EDIT: I was not sure if this belongs in this forum or in Culture Café. Sorry if I picked the wrong forum.


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## Circunflejo

Red Arrow :D said:


> I can only conclude that every generation here speaks more and more like how we write.



It's exactly the opposite in the Spanish of Spain. Older generations spoke more like they wrote while younger generations keep the writting but tend to lose the pronounciation of some sounds like the _elle_ (except in some areas where Spanish is coofficial with languages that keep the elle sound) or the _equis_.


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## Dymn

One of the laws of sound change is it's irreversibility. If a merger becomes complete in a language, it can no longer reappear under normal conditions. The sound that has been lost can indeed show up again but only as part of other sound changes, or borrowing from other languages.

Of course, this doesn't account for the influence of a prestige dialect that does naturally distinguish between various sounds. If that's the case, it's likely that people adopt it. But it can also be the other way round.

In Spain in the 30s, there was quite an even split between people with _y-ll _merger (in the South) and people who distinguished them (in the North). Probably because Madrid was part of the southern half, this split has spread wildly throughout the country, and even young urban Catalan speakers show the merger.


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## Circunflejo

Dymn said:


> even young urban Catalan speakers show the merger



That's surprising. Do they show the merger just when they speak Castilian or do they show it too when they speak Catalan?


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## Dymn

Circunflejo said:


> That's surprising. Do they show the merger just when they speak Castilian or do they show it too when they speak Catalan?


When speaking both languages. Some people do show the merger only in Spanish, but among the youth in Barcelona I think it has become the rule with both languages.


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## Circunflejo

Dymn said:


> but among the youth in Barcelona I think it has become the rule with both languages.



Thanks for the info. Let's see how evolves the pronounciation of Catalan words and placenames like _perill_, _vull_, _Vallmoll_… Because I guess that final ll sound is affected too, isn't it?


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## Dymn

Circunflejo said:


> Because I guess that final ll sound is affected too, isn't it?


Yep.


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## berndf

Dymn said:


> Of course, this doesn't account for the influence of a prestige dialect that does naturally distinguish between various sounds. If that's the case, it's likely that people adopt it. But it can also be the other way round.


I agree, the phenomenon described by the OP has more to do with the growing influence of standard/prestige dialects over local dialects (as a result of electronic media and higher inter-regional mobility) then with the influence of spelling.


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## iezik

Red Arrow :D said:


> It is clear to me that Standard written Dutch has been a lot more influential on the way my generation speaks than Standard spoken Dutch.



Can you give some details why it's clear? For example, are there some writing distinctions that are absent in the standard speech and are spreading in the everyday speech? How do you distinguish influences between written and spoken forms? The mentioned examples (ei,ij) : (ou) and (e) : (i) show contrasts in both written and spoken form, don't they?


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## Red Arrow

Most people here don't pronounce "ei" like in Standard Belgian Dutch ("VRT Dutch"). We say [ɛ:], not [ɛi].
My mother pronounces kou and mei as [ka:] and [ma:] in that rhyme. To me and my siblings, she spoke as written and said [kɑu] and [mɛ:].


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## Red Arrow

iezik said:


> For example, are there some writing distinctions that are absent in the standard speech and are spreading in the everyday speech?


"dertig" (or any word ending in -ig)

Standard Belgian Dutch: [dɛrtəx], [dɛrtəç]
Dialects: [dɛ(r)təx], [dɛ(r)təç], [dɛ(r)təh]

Most younger people: [dɛrtɪx], [dɛrtɪç], [dɛrtɪh]

The vowel is pronounced like [ɪ] rather than a schwa.

Another example is perhaps the letter "x", which is pronounced [gz] between vowels, unlike "xc", which is pronounced [ks]. In Standard Belgian Dutch, both are pronounced voiceless.


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## Red Arrow

Another example is the article "het", which apparantly never had a pronounced h. The h was just there to mark the disappearance of a d. (dat > (h)et)
However, nowadays the word is often pronounced with an h, also in the Netherlands, although they say [hɛt], while we say [hət] nowadays. It is already discussed elsewhere that [hə] is not acceptable in other Germanic languages so "shouldn't" be acceptable either in ours.

But my original question wasn't about "spelling pronunciation", that is material for another thread... It was about already *existing *pronuncation that is also marked in spelling.


Dymn said:


> One of the laws of sound change is it's irreversibility.* If* a merger becomes *complete* in a language...


*its

Yeah, but I feel like mergers are less likely to become complete in languages with more phonetic spelling... That's what my question is about.

EDIT:


Dymn said:


> In Spain in the 30s, there was quite an even split between people with _y-ll _merger (in the South) and people who distinguished them (in the North). Probably because Madrid was part of the southern half, this split has spread wildly throughout the country, and even young urban Catalan speakers show the merger.


Okay, I understand now. That is a good counter example.


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## iezik

Red Arrow :D said:


> Do you think a phonemic merger like this would be able to spread so widely if ... spelling had been more phonetic?



Spelling two sounds the same way can participate in merger. I'm thinking of the following examples. 

There are some reports that Italians don't distinguish well between open and close /o/ and /e/. Dialects use both variants, but different dialects don't agree where exactly to use each one. And some Italians are no more aware of differences.

In Croatia, the region to the north of capital Zagreb (ok, and in other places) uses kajkavian dialect that doesn't distinguish in pronunciation between letters /ć/ and /č/. I assume that spelling difference helps retaining the different pronunciation.


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## Red Arrow

Exactly what I thought, but it doesn't seem to work in Spain  Does anyone know why? Is the dialect of Madrid more influential than the influential dialects of Flanders, Croatia and Italy?


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## Olaszinhok

iezik said:


> Italians don't distinguish well between open and close /o/ and /e/.



Tuscans and Italians from Central Italy (Florence and Rome included) can distinguish between open and closed /o/ and /e/ perfectly. Even Italians from most Northern and Southern regions can distinguish between them but they often follow different rules from the standard ones.


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## Zec

iezik said:


> Spelling two sounds the same way can participate in merger. I'm thinking of the following examples.
> 
> There are some reports that Italians don't distinguish well between open and close /o/ and /e/. Dialects use both variants, but different dialects don't agree where exactly to use each one. And some Italians are no more aware of differences.
> 
> In Croatia, the region to the north of capital Zagreb (ok, and in other places) uses kajkavian dialect that doesn't distinguish in pronunciation between letters /ć/ and /č/. I assume that spelling difference helps retaining the different pronunciation.



From my experience around Karlovac, the situation seems to be the same as in Spanish for <ll> and <y> - the orthographic distinction doesn't seem to prevent the merger from spreading.

In the urban dialect of Karlovac, <č> and <ć> are merged, while in the surrounding rural dialects, the distinction is largely preserved. However, the merger is spreading, due to the association of urban dialects with standard language - even in cases such as this when the feature of rural dialects is closer to the standard than the feature of the urban dialect.

As a speaker whose parents differ in that regard, (father has the distinction, mother has the merger), I frequently switch between distinguishing and merging these sounds depending on who I'm speaking to (distinguishing in formal situations and when speaking with father, merging when speaking with mother). In that case, I find the orthography helpful in finding out which sound is used in which word, but I still rely more on my instinct, sometimes causing divergences from the standard (eg. there's a common diminutive suffix -ićak in my dialect, which I substitute for a rather rare diminutive suffix -ičak in the standard language).

So, while I think spelling can slow down sound change and even reverse them through spelling pronunciation, I think it doesn't do much in the long run.


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## Dymn

I think high literacy and a phonetic orthography can indeed slow down sound mergers, but they are for the most part inevitable if they start in centers of power (cities, especially the capital) and quickly permeate the media.

Probably sound changes that incur in what is felt as a disruption of the orthography, are likely to be hindered. For example pronouncing _-ado _as _-ao _is widespread throughout all Spain in colloquial language, but it will hardly ever enter standard or formal speech because speakers don't feel like _-ado _"can be read" as _-ao, _because _-d-_ is consistently pronounced in all other words and that would make for an odd exception.


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## berndf

Red Arrow :D said:


> "dertig" (or any word ending in -ig)
> 
> Standard Belgian Dutch: [dɛrtəx], [dɛrtəç]
> Dialects: [dɛ(r)təx], [dɛ(r)təç], [dɛ(r)təh]
> 
> Most younger people: [dɛrtɪx], [dɛrtɪç], [dɛrtɪh]


There is another phenomenon that may better explain this development. In areas where the local dialect is not the prestige dialect of a language you have more spelling-induced hyper-corrections. If the same happened in Amsterdam, e.g., it would be more relevant. Does it happen there?


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## Red Arrow

Brabantian IS the prestige dialect of Flanders. (not that I'm proud of that)

Amsterdam definitley isn't. Not even in the Netherlands. People generally laugh with their accent. (Dutchmen can be quite mean when it comes to accents, especially local accents)

I don't know how people in Amsterdam say it. On Dutch television, I often* hear people say veertig, vijftig, zestig and zeventig with V's and Z's, even though it should be F and S.

(*pretty much always)


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## merquiades

I don't think mergers can be reversed because of written language.
In Spain v and b have merged everywhere in Castilian and in regional languages (except in parts of Catalonia were it's currently in progress).  Everyone is 100% literate nowadays, and know there has been this merger.  Older generations seem unsure when it comes to writing and make mistakes, put b where it should be v or the contrary.  I've seen quite a few.  Nowadays few younger people, like under 50, would make these spelling mistakes yet there is no widespread movement to reinstate this difference even when people have studied other languages and can make the difference. I've been told of actors or professors who try to distinguish them but they are in the minority, and people seem to talk about them in a negative light.
Same idea with the merger between s and z in the Canary Islands.  Recently I was told by someone there that he knew exactly how to make the difference easily if he wanted to, he showed me, but he doesn't because that just isn't the way that people speak there. 

The merger of the nasal vowels _un_ and _in_ is occurring in Paris, even with highly educated people.  People know when to write one or the other but they don't make the effort to correct their speech habits.  Some don't even seem to know there should be a difference between _brun_ and _brin_, and just think they are just spelling conventions to distinguish homonyms.
In the southern US short i and short e have also merged.  I heard an elegant woman say once in hotel that she was looking for a pin/pen.   She then specified she wanted a p-e-n by spelling it out.  

So no, I don't think spelling and education stop mergers or can undo them.  It takes, I suppose, some kind of strong will to do so and when it's lacking it won't happen.  Such will can exist though, speakers of Wallon and Picard in Belgium decided en masse to start speaking standard French, so a small vowel sound is nothing compared.


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## berndf

Red Arrow :D said:


> Brabantian IS the prestige dialect of Flanders. (not that I'm proud of that)
> 
> Amsterdam definitley isn't. Not even in the Netherlands. People generally laugh with their accent. (Dutchmen can be quite mean when it comes to accents, especially local accents)


Prestige dialect was maybe the wrong word. What I meat was the variety use most widely in intra-regional communication, especially in electronic media and that would not be any Belgian variety of Dutch. That is the same reason why Austrians started to use German expressions and Brits American expressions even if the is nothing "prestige" about them.


Red Arrow :D said:


> I don't know how people in Amsterdam say it. On Dutch television, I often* hear people say veertig, vijftig, zestig and zeventig with V's and Z's, even though it should be F and S.


I though in most parts of the Netherlands word-initial V-F are pretty much merged and there is no relevant difference any more.


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## Red Arrow

berndf said:


> I though in most parts of the Netherlands word-initial V-F are pretty much merged and there is no relevant difference any more.


I wouldn't say most parts, but yes, in many parts it is pretty much merged. Maybe that's why everyone on Dutch TV is mispronouncing these words.

Zeventig (70) and negentig (90) used to be tzestig and tnegentig, just like we still say tachtig (80) with a T. The T got dropped but the Z stayed unvoiced. The pronunciation of zestig (60) also changed to sestig, probably influenced by 70. So now all numbers from 60 till 79 have got an unvoiced Z.

I don't know why veertig and vijftig are pronounced with an F, but they just are. 41-49 and 51-59 are pronounced with a V, though. I can understand why Dutchmen find this confusing when trying to speak properly


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## Awwal12

Red Arrow :D said:


> For some reason, I have always taken this for granted, but now that I have written it down in another thread, I realize it's not that obvious.
> 
> In many American accents, words like "cot" and "caught" are now pronounced the same. Do you think a phonemic merger like this would be able to spread so widely if English spelling had been more phonetic?


Russian spelling is much more phonetic compared to English (even though it's actually primarily based on traditional and morphemic principles), but it doesn't prevent some underlying changes (it's especially curious to observe how certain verbs, which formally should end in -ят/-ат in 3rd.p.pl.present forms, instead often actually get the South Russian ending -ют/-ут in colloquial speech and the natives become unsure about their spelling, even though in this position /а/ and /у/ are generally distinguishable).
Although the orthography does influence the language developments without any doubt, and it is obvious from the Russian material as well.


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## berndf

Red Arrow :D said:


> Maybe that's why everyone on Dutch TV is mispronouncing these words.


Mispronounce is probably too big a word. Once to sounds merge, the difference that once constituted the distinction becomes irrelevant and the actual realization floats, often with the centre of gravity in the middle.


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## Dymn

merquiades said:


> (except in parts of Catalonia were it's currently in progress)


Balearic Islands and parts of Valencia, rather. I've always lived in one of the parts of Catalonia were people are said to distinguish b/v and I've never heard anybody distinguish them, you'd have to look at people older than 80 probably.



merquiades said:


> Same idea with the merger between s and z in the Canary Islands. Recently I was told by someone there that he knew exactly how to make the difference easily if he wanted to, he showed me, but he doesn't because that just isn't the way that people speak there.


Distinctions can reappear if the mainstream/prestige dialect follows them, especially if those who don't are stigmatized. The Canary Islands are strongly _seseante _but in some Andalusian cities there's a strong trend towards distinction.


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## merquiades

@Dymn I thought that the city of Granada had always made the distinction, as in most of Eastern Andalusia.
Anyway, I agree that there is diglossia in Andalusia for distinction between s/z but not in other situations.  Not pronouncing s at the end of words is solidly implanted and no signs of being replaced.  I was told once in Extremadura (well, Badajoz is not exactly Andalusia but...) that only sissies pronounced s at the ends of words.
In Seville, anyhow, you hear distinction, seseo, ceceo and any mixture thereof.  Giving that they say it's a seseo city and that's clearly not the case, this shows the diglosia, I guess.
The Canary Islands are different.  They seem to be very proud and self-confident in their way of speaking.  For example, machines that speak to you use seseo in Tenerife, and on regional television they use it too.  People proudly proclaim this is not the peninsula we say guagua, papa here... etc.

I could swear (but I wouldn't bet my life on it) that I heard some people pronouncing v on the Costa Daurada, but it was intervocalically, and they weren't 80, but not 18 either.  Then I read that there was distinction in that area... but if you don't make it or hear it I believe you.  They don't seem to be promoting it in Catalan or Castilian.


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## Red Arrow

berndf said:


> Mispronounce is probably too big a word. Once to sounds merge, the difference that once constituted the distinction becomes irrelevant and the actual realization floats, often with the centre of gravity in the middle.


Many Dutchmen don't make the distinction anymore, but many others still do, also in casual speech. I don't consider it irrelevant.

You will rarely hear Dutch dubbers pronounce "van" as [fɑn]. The v/f and s/z distinctions are treated differently from the g/ch distinction, which is optional but often preferably not distinguished. (as in: voice-overs in ads are asked to say [χ] rather than [ɣ] and [x])


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## berndf

Red Arrow :D said:


> Many Dutchmen don't make the distinction anymore, but many others still do, also in casual speech. I don't consider it irrelevant.


It is _irrelevant_ to the speaker group that does not make the distinction. That is in the nature of how mergers work. Those speakers would not understand what you are talking about when you say he would mispronounce something because he wouldn't hear the difference any more.

I love to make experiments and I once asked my uncle in law to describe the difference he hears between two words and I pronounced the standard German words _Haken_ und _hacken_. The difference is that the former has a long and the latter has a short _a_. He belongs to a generation that hadn't yet learned to actively speak standard German and his Austrian dialect has lost the phonemic distinction between long and short vowels and although he had been exposed to standard German for most of his life he still was unable to hear the difference.


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## merquiades

When b and v merge in Spanish it's easy to see why. There is a lot of leeway in how you close your lips to make these sounds and if you even close up the lips all the way, part of the way or not at all and with intensity or weakly.  You can see how in varying degrees you can meet halfway. Try pronouncing Cuba and Sevilla without letting your lips close and you get a week sound to be applied to both.
But I fail to see how v and f, or s and z can merge in Dutch. One is voiced, the other is voiceless, yet besides that they are the same sound pronounced the same way. How can you meet in the middle? Can we talk of slightly voiced consonants?  German pronounces v and f both as f and initial s as z.  Is this pattern now being applied to Dutch in Holland out of German influence?


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## merquiades

Circunflejo said:


> It's exactly the opposite in the Spanish of Spain. Older generations spoke more like they wrote while younger generations keep the writting but tend to lose the pronounciation of some sounds like the _elle_ (except in some areas where Spanish is coofficial with languages that keep the elle sound) or the _equis_.


Incidentally, Benito Perez Galdos seems to link literacy with pronunciation. In Fortunata y Jacinta he describes Fortunata's speech as lower class and says she pronounces ll as a y, and pronounces final s almost like a j, because she has been denied an education. It's interesting cause it shows 19th century Madrid wasn't so different


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## berndf

merquiades said:


> How can you meet in the middle?


Half voicing (voice onset in the middle of the sound), low energy pronunciation. Onset devoicing is a phenomenon similar to final devoicing. The end result is that the speaker loses the perceptual ability to distinguish between the voiced and unvoiced versions of a sound in certain positions.


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## Red Arrow

Dutchmen have the tendency to devoice v, z and g in any position.

The only remaining distinction in voiceness is d/t and b/p, but even the b/p distinction is not made by everyone. I have never actually heard anyone in real life say paard instead of baard, but I heard it in a quiz once. One of the candidates consistently devoiced b, just like he did with v, z and g. Unfortunately I forgot where he came from. I visit the Netherlands quite a lot but I have never heard that in real life.


berndf said:


> It is _irrelevant_ to the speaker group that does not make the distinction. That is in the nature of how mergers work. Those speakers would not understand what you are talking about when you say he would mispronounce something because he wouldn't hear the difference any more.


Maybe you will understand it this way. There are three groups:

1. A group that does not make the v/f distinction. The pronunciation is irrelevant to them. The letter F is left the way it is and the letter V is devoiced in various .
2. A group that tries to make the distinction, at least in proper speech. The pronunciation is clearly not irrelevant to them, otherwise they wouldn't try to make the distinction!
3. A group that does make the distinction, all the time.

The people who say veertig and vijftig with a V all come from group 2. You are making it look as if /f/ can get voiced, but that is simply not true. /v/ gets devoiced in various degrees by group 1, but /f/ is left the way it is.

Some people from group 1 have the tendency to pronounce W a bit more like a fricative, so [v] rather than [ʋ]. They would never voice /f/.

The only place I can think of where /f/ could be voiced, is in some areas in Limburg. They tend to voice consonants between vowels and at the end of words.
water => wader
Ik snap er niets van! => snabber
is een => izzen
wat een => wadden

This also happens in Brabantian, but only with final T and S. (izzen, wadden) "snabber" and "wader" sound quite funny (and even foreign) to us.


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## jmx

Dymn said:


> For example pronouncing _-ado _as _-ao _is widespread throughout all Spain in colloquial language, but it will hardly ever enter standard or formal speech because speakers don't feel like _-ado _"can be read" as _-ao, _because _-d-_ is consistently pronounced in all other words and that would make for an odd exception.



Keen observation.


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## jmx

merquiades said:


> In the southern US short i and short e have also merged.  I heard an elegant woman say once in hotel that she was looking for a pin/pen.   She then specified she wanted a p-e-n by spelling it out.


Apparently, they have merged when followed by a nasal consonant.


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## jmx

merquiades said:


> @DymnAnyway, I agree that there is diglossia in Andalusia for distinction between s/z but not in other situations. Not pronouncing s at the end of words is solidly implanted and no signs of being replaced. I was told once in Extremadura (well, Badajoz is not exactly Andalusia but...) that only sissies pronounced s at the ends of words.


That almost made me laugh. How do you expect Andalusians to stop aspirating their -s's when all across northern Spain it's becoming increasingly difficult to find someone who doesn't speak the same way?


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## merquiades

jmx said:


> Apparently, they have merged when followed by a nasal consonant.


  Perhaps that is the case in some areas but one of the cases I've noticed most often is that _set_ and_ sit_ have merged to the extent that certain people no longer know when to use one or the other.


jmx said:


> That almost made me laugh. How do you expect Andalusians to stop aspirating their -s's when all across northern Spain it's becoming increasingly difficult to find someone who doesn't speak the same way?


What? I've never been to Palencia but you want me to believe they speak the same as in Plasencia now?  In Madrid some people aspirate quite often before certain consonants but it's not become so routine and educated people don't. Some people there dismiss that as barrio talk. But in Old Castile? 
Why couldn't it be conceivable that some Andalusians might want to adopt orthographic speech?  I stress the "some" in all these sentences.  I guess you think that it's going to spread like wildfire like yeismo.


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## jmx

merquiades said:


> What? I've never been to Palencia but you want me to believe they speak the same as in Plasencia now?


Not Plasencia-style but Madrid and La Mancha-style. Though people assign the change to "Andalusian influence", check for instance  this post,  which mentions it while speaking about the Basque pronunciation of Spanish (the Basque Country is one of the areas where s-aspiration is still unusual, along with Asturias and Galicia, AFAIK; I mean among Spanish speakers of course). I'm talking about variable aspiration, that is, "a sociolinguistic variable".





merquiades said:


> In Madrid some people aspirate quite often before certain consonants but it's not become so routine and educated people don't. Some people there dismiss that as barrio talk.


All people from Madrid aspirate their -s's, with no exception. You have been fooled by the orthographic pronunciation they often adopt with outsiders, especially foreigners. You have to catch them off-guard when they're relaxed, speaking with friends and family. What they might dismiss as low-class speech is the inability to adopt orthographic pronunciation when the formality of the situation asks for it.


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## Delvo

I have an example from my childhood which seems to go the opposite direction from the one proposed in our original post here.

There's a type of accent in the USA in which /æ/ gets replaced with something more like /eja/, so the word "man" comes out more like "meyan" (at least for long vowels; I don't think I've heard it with "cat", for example, which typically has a shorter vowel even in accents that don't replace it). The kids in my family all knew that wasn't how we do that vowel, and the two-syllable replacement isn't common at all, so we got in the habit of memtally replacing /eja/ with /æ/ wherever we encountered it. But there is at least one word with something close to that two-syllable option even in accents without that general merger: mayonnaise (with a relatively open, schwa-like O). So our counter-replacement turned that into "mannaise". We knew the spelling, but that didn't change the fact that anything near /eja/ or /ejə/ just sounded wrong anywhere & everywhere, so our counter-merger stuck.

Because this happened at such an early age, it might introduce the complication that we could have already started merging those two things in speech before learning to read & write. But that could be a general trend affecting many other such cases, not a unique exception.


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## Circunflejo

merquiades said:


> But in Old Castile?



2 previous notes: 1) I'm from (Old) Castile. 2) I'm not good at discriminating sound nuances. Once said that, I think that the only area of (Old) Castile where -s's are usually aspirated is the one that it's on the Southern _meseta_ (Tiétar's valley) where they speak in what could be called the La Mancha style quoted by @jmx. Other than there, I don't find (yet) aspirated -s's one of our speaking features. And, definitely, I don't aspire them.



merquiades said:


> Why couldn't it be conceivable that some Andalusians might want to adopt orthographic speech?



There are some of them, indeed, but what they want is to write what they call _andalú_ (Spanish written the way they pronounce it).



jmx said:


> All people from Madrid aspirate their -s's, with no exception.


 I don't notice it neither when I speak with my familiars there nor when I visit Madrid... so if you were right, I guess my second previous note should read: I'm abysmal at discriminating sound nuances. But I seriously doubt that you are right with this statement. Sorry.


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## Dymn

Madrid belongs to the s-aspirating area according to the ALPI dialectal atlas carried out in the 30s. Of course lots of things have changed since then, but I'm not sure in what direction. The immigration that has arrived from Andalusia and Extremadura would have reinforced the phenomenon.

Somebody from the Horta de València (the area surrounding the city) told me that youngsters are already aspirating their s's even when speaking in Catalan. Here in Catalonia, Catalan speakers never show this aspiration and I can't see this happening anytime soon, while for Spanish speakers it's a mixed bag I think, my impression is that it often correlates with social class.


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## merquiades

I did my studies in Madrid.  The professors never aspirated the s-.  Many of the people I met and came into contact in daily life didn't aspire the s- ever, really never, and spoke with apicoalveolar s too.  But some did aspire the s-, of course.  I realized there was a certain type of person in Madrid who does it and especially before a velar or guttural sound.  It's common to hear them say:  Tienej que, Te daj cuenta.  But I did not find that even these people do it consistently.  A lot of people look down on those who aspire the s- as uncouth. That's what they mean when they say gente de barrio, barriobajero, Vallecas etc.
Compare that to Cáceres, another place I lived a long time ago.  There it IS generalized.  I only met 2 people who didn't aspire the s- (kind of Catalans), and normally it was every single time too,  like ¿A vohotros doh oh ha guhtao San Sebahtian? ¿Ande ehtubihteih?  At college teachers did it too, and there was no stigma at all associated with it.  That is the difference.


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## jmx

Circunflejo said:


> I don't notice it neither when I speak with my familiars there nor when I visit Madrid... so if you were right, I guess my second previous note should read: I'm abysmal at discriminating sound nuances. But I seriously doubt that you are right with this statement. Sorry.


Do you watch TV or listen to radio made in Madrid? In that case you could tell us one example of a program in which, while speaking in a coloquial, relaxed tone, they don't aspirate their -s's. That would help a lot in checking our different perceptions. Or, for that matter, any program where they say "mismo" instead of "mimmo".





merquiades said:


> ... But some did aspire the s-, of course.  I realized there was a certain type of person in Madrid who does it and especially before a velar or guttural sound.  It's common to hear them say:  Tienej que, Te daj cuenta.  But I did not find that even these people do it consistently.


Of course it's not consistent, because it's a sociolinguistic variable. But again, instead of comparing perceptions, help Circunflejo find that relaxed TV host who says "mismo", "doscientos" and "legislatura" instead of "mimmo", "docientos" and "legil-latura".


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## Circunflejo

jmx said:


> Do you watch TV or listen to radio made in Madrid? In that case you could tell us one example of a program in which, while speaking in a coloquial, relaxed tone, they don't aspirate their -s's. That would help a lot in checking our different perceptions.



I went to the web of Telemadrid (I can't see at home), went to the programs area, picked the first one that I saw (a Madrileños por el mundo one devoted to the city of Tampa), saw and heard a little bit (4 minutes) and, unless my hearing is abysmal (what might be an option), I'd say the woman that makes the meetings and the questions doesn't aspirate the -s's and the first person met doesn't make it either except I think that one time.


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## merquiades

I saw the Telemadrid report Desalojo en la Calle Alcalá 143.   A journalist interviews about 5 neighbors  who have to leave their home, a shopkeeper and a firefighter.  The journalists never misses an s, but you might say she is trained not too.... she does say desalojaos and Caye Alcalá.  One of the men, José-Luis, misses about a third of his s, and says typical things from Madrid like Pensamoj que,  tenéij que saber, qué quierej que.  But then he says Estamos very clearly.  Next man pronounces every s, but says las casas habitás and está tirao. All the women have clear s.  The second woman who ran out of La tienda del espía does say La verdaz ej que.. one time. The firefighter says sometimes lo* and la* with no s, but no aspiration and then keeps all the other s in place.  He said lo teznicos.
All in all I'd say some people sporadically drop or aspirate some times the s especially before the word que, but even the man who does it most, does it maybe 20% of the time.  What is more interesting is that most people seem to have problem with d.


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## Circunflejo

merquiades said:


> What is more interesting is that most people seem to have problem with d.



_Ao _instead of _ado_ and similar ones are spreading to many areas of Spain ((Old) Castile included).


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## merquiades

Circunflejo said:


> _Ao _instead of _ado_ and similar ones are spreading to many areas of Spain ((Old) Castile included).


That surprises me much less than the s- dropping or aspiring.  Are people saying Las cayes de Vayadolid in your town in Old Castile?


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## Circunflejo

merquiades said:


> Are people saying Las cayes de Vayadolid in your town in Old Castile?



In cities and bigger towns many people say it. In rural areas there's more people keeping the ll/y split. There's also more old people keeping the ll/y split than young people keeping it. Personally, I'm _yeísta_ by default because it's easier for me than to make the distinction and it's perfectly accepted even in remote rural areas where there's no _yeísta_ in sight.


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## jmx

merquiades said:


> ... All in all I'd say some people sporadically drop or aspirate some times the s especially before the word que, but even the man who does it most, does it maybe 20% of the time. What is more interesting is that most people seem to have problem with d.


I can see that sociolinguistics is not your strong suit. When someone uses sporadically a certain non-standard linguistic variant in a formal setting, for example in front of a TV camera, it's obvious that the same person uses the variant far more often in his everyday life.

It's also worth saying that a "facultad de filología" is about the worst place to check the local dialect in a city. The "facultad" is like a gathering point for those who share a "standard language ideology" (check Google, I didn't make up the expression), and in the case of Spain that means lots of people speaking with a hyper-orthographic pronunciation, among other traits.


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## TheCrociato91

Just chiming in on the topic.

When I went to college I had a Spanish teacher from Madrid that, as far as I can remember, almost never aspirated his -s's (_en posición posnuclear / implosiva_, not sure how to say this in English ). Which, however, was likely due to him trying to teach us _standard_ Spain Spanish in the most clear and comprehensible way.

According to (Castellano de Madrid - Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre)


> Quilis, Antonio (1993). «pag. 276». Tratado de fonología y fonética españolas. Gredos (Madrid). ISBN 8424916255. «Se produce aspiración en Andalucía, Extremadura, Canarias, Murcia, Toledo, en la Mancha, en ciertas partes de las provincias de Madrid (en la capital está muy extendida hasta en las clases cultas), Cuenca, Ávila, Salamanca, Rioja Baja.».


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## merquiades

jmx said:


> I can see that sociolinguistics is not your strong suit. When someone uses sporadically a certain non-standard linguistic variant in a formal setting, for example in front of a TV camera, it's obvious that the same person uses the variant far more often in his everyday life.


Actually it is my strong suit.  I see the two years I spent in Madrid I must have been on camera every day then. Or the people like my roommates were adept at constantly keeping the façade going at any hour of the day and in all circumstances.



TheCrociato91 said:


> Just chiming in on the topic.
> 
> When I went to college I had a Spanish teacher from Madrid that, as far as I can remember, almost never aspirated his -s's (_en posición posnuclear / implosiva_, not sure how to say this in English ). Which, however, was likely due to him trying to teach us _standard_ Spain Spanish in the most clear and comprehensible way.
> 
> According to (Castellano de Madrid - Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre)


  I do agree that aspiration is found in Madrid (it occurs more with certain people than others and a few people do it once and a while... as I have maintained)  but I don't agree it is generalized among the whole population or most of nor that anyone born in Madrid does it all of the time systematically.  Generalization does occur in Extremadura or Andalusia and you can easily hear the difference.


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