Help:IPA/Spanish
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The charts below show the way in which the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) represents Spanish language pronunciations in Wikipedia articles.
In general, standard Castilian Spanish is used in IPA transcriptions. Deviations from this may occur in words with /θ/, /ʎ/ and /x/:
- For terms that are more relevant to regions that have undergone yeísmo (so that, for example, hoya and holla are pronounced the same), words spelled with ⟨ll⟩ can be transcribed with [ʝ]
- For terms that are more relevant to regions with seseo, (so that, for example, caza and casa are pronounced the same), words spelled with ⟨z⟩ and with soft ⟨c⟩ (i.e. where ⟨c⟩ occurs before ⟨i⟩ or ⟨e⟩) can be transcribed with [s].
- Outside of Spain, the Spanish phoneme [x] (⟨j⟩, soft ⟨g⟩) is often realized as [h].
Other than in loanwords or proper nouns from other languages (e.g. hámster, hawaiano, Hitler), the letter ⟨h⟩ is always silent in Spanish except in a few scattered dialects that retain it as [h] or [x] (halar or jalar, Sáhara).[1]
See Spanish phonology for a more thorough look at the sounds of Spanish.
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Notes
- ^ "Grapheme h". Diccionario panhispánico de dudas. Real Academia Española.
- ^ a b c d /b/, /d/, /ɡ/ and /ʝ/ are fricatives or approximants ([β̞, ð̞, ɣ̞, ʝ̞]; represented here without the undertacks) in all places except after a pausa, after an /n/ or /m/, or—in the case of /d/ and /ʝ/—after an /l/, in which contexts they are stops [b, d, ɡ, ɟʝ], not dissimilar from English b, d, g, j, except that they are fully voiced in all positions, unlike their English counterparts (Martínez-Celdrán, Fernández-Planas & Carrera-Sabaté 2003:257-8) harvcol error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFMartínez-CeldránFernández-PlanasCarrera-Sabaté2003 (help).
- ^ [h] is pronounced [x], which has no direct English-language equivalent, in most parts of Spain.
- ^ a b Most if not all Spanish speakers no longer distinguish /ʎ/ from /ʝ/; the actual realization depends on dialect, however. In Rioplatense Spanish (roughly southern South America), the ll is typically [ʃ], a sound which has no perfect English equivalent but is close to measure. See yeísmo and Martínez-Celdrán, Fernández-Planas & Carrera-Sabaté (2003:258) harvcoltxt error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFMartínez-CeldránFernández-PlanasCarrera-Sabaté2003 (help) for more information.
- ^ a b c d The nasal consonants /n, m, ɲ/ only contrast before vowels. Before consonants, they assimilate to the consonant's place of articulation. This is partially reflected in the orthography. Except in loanwords and proper nouns, only /n/ (that may also be produced as [ŋ] or nasalization of the preceding vowel, depending on dialect) occurs at the end of a word.
- ^ a b The rhotic consonants /ɾ/ ‹r› and /r/ ‹rr› only contrast between vowels. Otherwise, they are in complementary distribution as ‹r›, with [r] occurring word-initially, after /l/, /n/, and /s/, and also represented here as before consonants, and word-finally (positions in which they vary); only [ɾ] is found elsewhere.
- ^ Northern and central Spain still distinguish between "s" (/s/) and "soft c"/"z" (/θ/). Almost all other dialects treat the two as identical (which is called seseo) and pronounce them as /s/. There is a small number of speakers, mostly in southern Spain, who pronounce the soft "c", "z" and even "s" as /θ/, a phenomenon called ceceo. See seseo and Martínez-Celdrán, Fernández-Planas & Carrera-Sabaté (2003:258) harvcoltxt error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFMartínez-CeldránFernández-PlanasCarrera-Sabaté2003 (help) for more information.
- ^ /θ/ has merged into /s/ in virtually all dialects outside of northern and central Spain. The only other exception is found in some southern communities where ceceo occurs and /s/ has actually merged into /θ/. See seseo and Martínez-Celdrán, Fernández-Planas & Carrera-Sabaté (2003:258) harvcoltxt error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFMartínez-CeldránFernández-PlanasCarrera-Sabaté2003 (help) for more information.
- ^ [x] is generally pronounced [h], as in the English word ham, outside of Spain.
- ^ Allophone of /s/ before voiced consonants.
- ^ Only used in loanwords and certain proper nouns. In many dialects, /ʃ/ is replaced by [tʃ] or [s]; e.g. show [tʃou]~[sou].
- ^ Only used in loanwords and proper nouns from pre-Columbian indigenous languages
- ^ The only time that the letter y ever indicates this sound alone is when it is used by itself as a word, meaning "and".
- ^ In Spanish, the semivowels [w] and [j] can be combined with vowels to form rising diphthongs (e.g. cielo, cuadro). Falling diphthongs (e.g. aire, rey, auto) are transcribed with /i/ and /u/.
- ^ Some speakers may pronounce word initial [w] with an epenthetic /ɡ/; e.g. Huila [ˈɡwila]~[ˈwila].
References
- Martínez-Celdrán, Eugenio; Fernández-Planas, Ana Ma.; Carrera-Sabaté, Josefina (2003), "Castilian Spanish", Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 33 (2): 255–259
Notes
References
- Martínez-Celdrán, Eugenio; Fernández-Planas, Ana Ma.; Carrera-Sabaté, Josefina (2003), "Castilian Spanish", Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 33 (2): 255–259
External links
- Animations and video demonstrations of the IPA for Spanish by The Departments of Spanish and Portuguese, German, Speech Pathology and Audiology, and Academic Technologies at the University of Iowa.
- Spanish Phonetic Transcription Converter—Free Online Tool to convert Spanish Text to IPA Phonetic Transcription