Spanish consonant sounds

[Dragon27]

What happens here is that the s is not articulated with your tongue tip but with the blades of your tongue (the sides), creating a ridge which lets air through.

Yeah, that could also create the characteristic sound: more relaxed articulation in Castilian Spanish and lack of firm contact between the tongue and the place of articulation.

[tarvos]

What happens here is that the s is not articulated with your tongue tip but with the blades of your tongue (the sides), creating a ridge which lets air through.

Yeah, that could also create the characteristic sound: more relaxed articulation in Castilian Spanish and lack of firm contact between the tongue and the place of articulation.

I find that Spaniards generally slur somewhat more than speakers from other countries, except for people in the Caribbean (Cubans sound like they've permanently gone on dentist's appointments, the tongue is so relaxed at the back there). It occurs more the further south in Spain you go with the letter s dropping in many contexts, dropping r word-finally, intervocalic d dropping...

[tungemål]

How would the d normally be pronounced in words like these:
- calidad (the middle d)
- vencedor

The d is between vowels, however the speaker on https://www.spanishdict.com seems to pronounce the d hard.

[Dragon27]

Only when she speaks slowly (syllable by syllable).

Try listening for the difference (between slow and normal pronunciation) with this word:
https://www.spanishdict.com/translate/adelantado

[tarvos]

How would the d normally be pronounced in words like these:
- calidad (the middle d)
- vencedor

The d is between vowels, however the speaker on https://www.spanishdict.com seems to pronounce the d hard.

In Spain that would be pronounced very softly, comparable to a voiced English th. As a ð. There are accents that would turn this into a regular stop though, but they're all Latin American and I'm pretty sure it doesn't happen in Mexico, the Caribbean or El Cono Sur. Maybe in Colombia or somewhere?

[Querneus]

s - not sure about the s. I think I've heard Spanish speakers pronounce the s in a very peculiar way.

The important thing about this one is that different dialects differ quite a bit.
- Some, like in Mexico City, most people in Salamanca or Toledo or more northern parts than those in Spain, or parts of the Peruvian interior, pronounce it [s] in all contexts. And again, dialects differ, in Mexico City, you will often hear [z] (as in English "zeal, maze") in the middle of words (e.g. casa, desigualdad), and people already told you about the retracted s commonly heard in Spain (which you will also hear in much of northern Mexico).
- Some, like in Bogota or San José (the capital of Costa Rica), pronounce it [s] a lot or most of the time, but sometimes use [h] (the English h-sound) at the end of syllables or words, with an overall not-so-high frequency of [h]. English does not have the [h] sound in syllable-final position, so English-speakers tend to be uncomfortable with it, but that's the sound I'm talking about here.
- Some, like in Buenos Aires, Lima (the capital of Peru) or San Salvador, pronounce it with [h] a lot of the time at the end of syllables or words. The rules may of course differ: whereas in Buenos Aires the sound [h] is avoided before the stressed vowel of a vowel-initial word (as in Buenos Aires), in San Salvador that's the norm, but whereas in Buenos Aires it is the norm to use the [h] sound before a pause, in San Salvador that's not so acceptable. This means that "Buenos Aires" in isolation may effectively be [ˈbwe.nos ˈaiɾeh] in Buenos Aires but [ˈbwe.noh ˈaiɾes] in San Salvador.
- In most Caribbean dialects (a term that includes the Spanish of Panama and the Caribbean coasts of Honduras/Costa Rica/Colombia, and really most of Venezuela), and also the Canary Islands and southern Spain, it is acceptable to drop the /s/ sound entirely, leaving nothing consonantal. This may effectively make los toros fuertes sound like loh toro fuerte (with [loh]) or lo toro fuerte.

Trying to understand Spanish phonology.

The following refers to Spanish as spoken in El Salvador:

Hey man, if you're going to talk about Salvadoran Spanish, I'd say mentioning that the /s/ is sometimes or often the sound [h] is essential! Say, at the end of a word (tenés plátanos), or at the end of syllables (raspón, deslave), and for many people in the lower sorts of social classes, especially so in the departments of the country east of San Vicente, also the beginning of syllables in the more common kind of words (El Salvador, se lo di, saber, separa, eso).

By the way, I once wrote a couple forum posts about allophony in this dialect. If you're familiar with the International Phonetic Alphabet, I'd suggest reading it... Here it is in pastebin form:
https://pastebin.com/ezYfx0pB

The traditional pronunciation of "ll" as /ʎ/ is on its way out practically everywhere, imo, the majority of dialects don't use it (especially with younger generation), so I wouldn't bother with it. It's your choice though. The concrete realization of the /ʝ/ phoneme varies considerably and can have differing contextual realizations. In Neutral accents (Spanish or American), it is realized as [ʝ] (which is similar to [j] but more energetic, somewhere in between an approximant and a fricative), except before a pause, after a nasal or after /l/. In the latter cases it is realized as a palatal affricate [ɟʝ]. Many speakers use [dʒ] (which is similar to English affricate in "John") instead, some even use that sound in both phonetical contexts (Shakira, for example, uses it in her songs). In Argentina and neighboring countries /ʝ/ can be realized as [ʒ] (voiced palato-alveolar fricative) or even (more popular now) as [ʃ] (voiceless).

I'd say that using [j], like an English [j] as in "yam, yellow, foyer", is also perfectly prestigious too, even if other Spanish speakers disagree because it's mostly a Central American thing.

To your post, I would like to add that in some dialects, like that of Bogota, [ɟʝ] is used eveywhere including between two vowels. I know some families here from there and they say e.g. para llamar [paɾaɟʝaˈmaɾ], desmayarse [desmaˈɟʝaɾse].

The palatal lateral [ʎ] is mostly alive nowadays only in rural pockets of northern Spain, and Quechua- and Aymara-influenced Spanish. Although curiously I have an uncle-in-law from a rural village close to Concepción, Chile (you may have heard of it as the city where a huge earthquake happened a few years ago), and he does have [ʎ] too, even though that's a long way from the nearest Quechua-influenced dialect. There is also a phenomenon attested from much of northwestern Argentina to rural Uruguay of keeping /ʎ/ and /ʝ/ distinct as [j] vs. [ʒ ʃ].

In Spain that would be pronounced very softly, comparable to a voiced English th. As a ð. There are accents that would turn this into a regular stop though, but they're all Latin American and I'm pretty sure it doesn't happen in Mexico, the Caribbean or El Cono Sur. Maybe in Colombia or somewhere?

Most everyone uses a very soft sound for /d/ in the usual position (so, not after a pause or /m n/). I think the only people in Latin America who have a strong English-like [d] everywhere are people strongly influenced by some other language, like Mixtec-accented Spanish in Mexico, or Quechua-accented Spanish in the interior of Ecuador and Peru. I once heard some construction workers here who spoke the former (and this was hardly the most remarkable thing about their accent!), and then there's an American guy I know who married a woman from Iquitos, Peru, who also has strong [b d ɟʝ g] everywhere.

[tarvos]

Yeah Ecuador and Bolivia sounded like places where that could happen.

I like it when people pronounce the ll/y as /j/, easier for me to understand, though I go with the Spain standard. Because I'm Iberian in my soul.

[tractor]

Regarding the "retracted" s, former prime minister Mariano Rajoy has a rather extreme variant.

[tungemål]

What about the "x"?

Is it normally pronounced like an "s" before a consonant? Like here in exposición:
https://youtu.be/uRPS0y6dY5M?t=24

[Querneus]

What about the "x"?

Is it normally pronounced like an "s" before a consonant? Like here in exposición:
https://youtu.be/uRPS0y6dY5M?t=24

Some people do that, but it's more prestigious to use [ks]. All instances of x before a consonant are borrowings from Latin, and as in modern Italian, in late Old Spanish and early modern Spanish it was perfectly prestigious to write and say s, but things have changed. For what it's worth, I always use [ks].

Note that -xc{e,i}- as in "excelente, excitar" is a special case. In Spain, it's generally prestigious to use either [sθ] (no k sound) or [ksθ], but in Latin America you have to say [ks]. So you may contrast Spain's [es̠θeˈlente] vs. Latin America's [ekseˈlente] (or [eɣ̞s̪eˈlente] to be more precise).