A voiceless alveolar fricative is a type of fricative consonant pronounced with the tip or blade of the tongue against the alveolar ridge (gum line) just behind the teeth. This refers to a class of sounds, not a single sound. There are at least six types with significant perceptual differences:
The voiceless alveolar sibilant [s] has a strong hissing sound, as the s in English sin. It is one of the most common sounds in the world. The voiceless denti-alveolar sibilant [s̄] (an ad hoc notation), also called apico-dental, has a weaker lisping sound like English th in thin. It occurs in Spanish dialects in southern Spain (eastern Andalusia). The voiceless alveolar retracted sibilant [s̠], and the subform apico-alveolar [s̺], or called grave, has a weak hushing sound reminiscent of retroflex fricatives. It is used in the languages of northern Iberia, like Astur-Leonese, Basque, Castilian Spanish (excluding parts of Andalusia), Catalan, Galician and Northern Portuguese. A similar retracted sibilant form is also used in Dutch, Icelandic, some Southern dialects of Swedish, Finnish and Greek. Its sound is between [s] and [ʃ]. The voiceless alveolar non-sibilant fricative [θ̱] or [θ͇], using the alveolar diacritic from the Extended IPA,[1] is similar to the th in English thin. It occurs in Icelandic. The voiceless alveolar lateral fricative [ɬ] sounds like a voiceless, strongly articulated version of English l (somewhat like what the English cluster hl would sound like) and is written as ll in Welsh.
Outside this area, it also occurs in a few dialects of Latin American Spanish (e.g. Antioqueño, in Colombia).
I'm pretty stunned too by Jaleel10 nailing the Portuguese mother-tongue tidbit - great ear!
The lady in the video is mostly using the alveolar retracted [s̠]. Occasionally she uses the apical one. "Apical" means "tip" so the other one is produced with the very tip of your tongue and it sounds like a kind of whistly s. Virtually all of my s sounds are apical because I self-corrected a lisp that I had for many years. It's normal for many people to produce the apical s.
The retracted one is produced with more the blade of your tongue, that is, your tongue is flatter and pulled back a little. It's likely not taught because it's just an allophone of /s/ - one of many different realizations that the same underlying sound can have. You'd probably have to consult a linguistics text specifically about peninsular Spanish to learn about all of its allophones.
She has an unmistakable Portuguese accent. I've met Portuguese people in Spain who speak just like her.
Which one does the lady in the video use? the alveolar retracted [s̠] or the apico-alveolar [s̺]?
How can I produce this sound? the phonetic description is not clear to me. Are they any video tutorials?
If it is so common in Spain and used in the standard form, why don't they talk about it in the textbooks? I have never seen any course referring to it.
She seems to me to use [s̺].
Some learner's textbooks do, and some textbooks don't. Any book on Spanish linguistics directed towards undergraduates will mention it.
Learners usually have their hands full with other aspects of Spanish phonology that are universal, such as the rhotics or lenition. It is a fairly fine distinction that is acoustically distinctive (i.e. Americans often point out that Europeans sound like they're saying shhhhh), but it's not at all phonologically relevant. There are no minimal pairs based on this, you're not going to confuse any words because of it.
The vast majority of Spanish speakers live in America, so if you're learning an American dialect of Spanish, how people in the north of Spain speak is simply irrelevant to you. It's not as if all people in Spain speak like this. The southern half of Spain doesn't.
This would be like expecting a textbook on English sold in Europe to mention that in Australian English, it is very common to palatalise or fricativise /tj/, /dj/, /sj/ and /zj/, in word initial positions. What does it matter to a Ukrainian that we pronounce the word dune like the word june?
Languages: Native: NL, EN Professional: ES, RU Speak well: DE, FR, RO, EO, SV Speak reasonably: IT, ZH, PT, NO, EL, CZ Need improvement: PO, IS, HE, JP, KO, HU, FI Passive: AF, DK, LAT Dabbled in: BRT, ZH (SH), BG, EUS, ZH (CAN), and a whole lot more.
Interestingly, there is a text to speech extension in my Vivaldi browser (Chrome extension) that uses exactly this unusual S-sound, which when I first heard it sounded like a speech defect to me.
Select and Speak - Text to Speech www.ispeech.org If they make this choice they must regard it as standard.
Languages: Native: NL, EN Professional: ES, RU Speak well: DE, FR, RO, EO, SV Speak reasonably: IT, ZH, PT, NO, EL, CZ Need improvement: PO, IS, HE, JP, KO, HU, FI Passive: AF, DK, LAT Dabbled in: BRT, ZH (SH), BG, EUS, ZH (CAN), and a whole lot more.
It is standard for the Castillian dialects of Spanish, which is what speech is usually based on. In Spain, that is. I won't speak for Mexican or Argentine Spanish or whatever. In Spain that thick, laminal-blade s is normal, except in the south and probably to a lesser extent in Catalunya.
Where I lived (in the North), it's common and all Basque, Asturian, Cantabrian people do it.
