About the "lisp" in castillian spanish

[EthanH]

Hello!

I never really thought of it as a lisp, I always thought of it as a way of pronouncing things differently from other dialects such as Chilean, Mexican etc, due to region lock. I don't know where it comes from, but I know that it never bothers me or impedes me from understanding movies or speakers.

[DavyBlack]

Ceceo isn't an impediment, it's a natural part of some Andalusian accents.

That's true, I've met some andalusian people in my life who had this feature in their speech. But it's also considered as an impediment when it is found in someone who didn't get in contact with this characteristic (Belonging to other regions in Spain, for instance). It can be a defect in the mouth.

[jeff_lindqvist]

There's a similar story about a French king who had a speech impediment, and then the uvular R got popular and spread throughout Europe...

[chove]

At first I was like "why does it all sound so eth-eth-eth?" but now I'm used to it and I prefer it to the Latin American pronunciation. I don't know why, it's got character, I suppose?

[tastyonions]

We speakers of English sometimes think of it as a lisp also because the sounds that we associate when seeing 'c' before front vowels or 'z' are never pronounced as 'th'.

That's exactly it. It's a transposition of non-Spanish orthographic conventions onto Spanish.

Compare (Spain Spanish) pronunciation of "civilización" to its obvious cognates in Italian, French, Portuguese, and English. To the unaccustomed ears of speakers of those languages, it will sound "lispy."

[dgc1970]

I once read about that myth, yes, and it's really funny to think about an entire country changing their pronunciation because of a king …

The idea that an entire people might adopt a speech habit of a sovereign (or that of a small but prestigious and influential class of social, economic, and political elites) is not just plausible, it is quite common throughout history; the process results in “received pronunciation.”

The reason why the myth of the origins of the Castilian lisp is so enduring is that, as for many foundational stories, it offers an entertaining explanation to something which might be otherwise inexplicable. Recent (serious) studies of the demonstrably-false information which pollutes the non-traditional media suggest that lies, half-truths, distortions, and “alternate facts” circulate more quickly and more widely than do provable facts or corrections simply because they are more engaging than the latter.

[tarvos]

It's not a lisp. It's awesome.

[Dagli]

Chung

wrote:

Bashkir, and Turkmen, in particular, are a little bit like Castillan Spanish in that their spelling conventions go against the widespread convention whereby the sounds /s/ and /z/ are linked to the symbols c/s and з/z; ҫ/s and ҙ/z are to be pronounced like 'th' in 'thin' and 'th' in 'these' respectively.

Pronouncing S and Z and “Dh” and “Th” only exists in the Teke dialect of Turkmen, it’s a bit of a generalization to group all the other dialects intro one,

[Dagli]

Bashkir, and Turkmen, in particular, are a little bit like Castillan Spanish in that their spelling conventions go against the widespread convention whereby the sounds /s/ and /z/ are linked to the symbols c/s and з/z; ҫ/s and ҙ/z are to be pronounced like 'th' in 'thin' and 'th' in 'these' respectively.

That is not true for Turkmen. Only the Teke tribe pronounces S and Z and “th” and “dh”. A bit of a generalization to lump every tribe into one.

[Lysander]

This thread just makes me want to find a YouTube video of a Spaniard who actually has a lisp speaking so we can hear the truest celebration of /Ө/ in the Indo-European lands.