Help talk:IPA/Spanish

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Orignal Source : es:Transcripción fonética del español con el IPA

Delete /tɬ/

/tɬ/ (from Nahuatl) doesn't exist in Spanish. Nahuatl words with this sound are adapted with /tl/ (tlapalería) and /te/ (coyote). In Mexico and many Latin American countries /tl/ merges with /t.l/ (Atlántico)[1][2]

/t.l/ (found in words with Classical roots) → [tl ~ dl] (emphatic) → [ðl] (relaxed) → [θl] (colloquial north-central Peninsular Spanish) → [lː] or [ˠl] (colloquial southern Peninsular Spanish).

/tl/ (found in words with Nahuatl roots, and other borrowings) → [tl]

POV / Rename

Based on the previous sources, I request to rename this page to IPA for Castilian Spanish — Jɑuмe ^(dis-me)
IMO it's not right to label this as a universal Spanish variety that represents all of us (I use Los Fruittis standard) and although Spanish is also synonym of Castilian, it clearly seems to go against the Spanish Constitution since it doesn't equalise Castilian and Spanish

I disagree with this proposal. The dialectal differences between Spanish varieties are not significant enough to warrant separate IPA guides. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 16:23, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

Neutral: In Spanish, terms español and castellano are, to the best of my knowledge, used more or less interchangeably - some prefer one term, some the other, perhaps some people don't even care. I'm not sure what's the situation in English, so I'll let other editors comment on that. Peter238 (talk) 18:18, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

I know Spanish and Castilian are synonyms, but it is also synonym with Murcian and other varieties. Also you don't just label languages, but also dialects, see Mandarin (Standard) and Cantonese Chinese. And in my opinion there are great/noticeable differences between varieties, I personally don't understand many Murcians and Southern Peninsulars when they speak fast, do you? Besides that, I think this guide (which is based only in one dialect [Castilian Spanish]) seems to exclude many speakers and also it seems it goes against the Spanish constitution and the reality of this language. — Jɑuмe ^(dis-me) 16:19, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

Chinese varieties are an extreme example of mutually unintelligible "dialects" considered the same language, so they're not a good example. This is intended to apply to most dialects of Spanish, particularly regional standards. There is some wiggle room in transcription, most prominently the dental fricative and palatal lateral, which are features of Castilian Spanish but not much of South American Spanish. I'm not familiar with Murcian Spanish, so I don't know how different it is. Our article on Murcian Spanish isn't clear enough to help me understand these differences. For example, it has a vowel chart of vowel phones, but no clarification on vowel phonemes. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 16:46, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

Can't our transcription system be mapped onto every existing dialect though? E.g. estar, our transcription [esˈtar], Buenos Aires [ehˈta(ɾ)] - both are broad transcriptions.

I'm not the best person to ask, I've already told you. First, I'd have to know Spanish better.

I think it's just that: it seems to exclude many speakers when, in reality, it probably excludes only some of them (as probably every guide of this kind). The best example that I can think of is the Andalusian vowel harmony, which, AFAIK, in itself is not a completely uniform phenomenon. Centralization of unstressed vowels can and should be ignored by not applying diacritics to unstressed vowels. Can you list anything more?

The Spanish constitution (and why just Spanish? There are 19 more countries with Spanish as their primary language...) is not relevant here (and it's even less relevant if it doesn't have an official English version - I don't know that). This is English Wikipedia, we're using terms that are most recognizable in English. Peter238 (talk) 16:55, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

Aeusoes, AFAIK, the palatal lateral is actually more of a regional South American pronunciation (Bolivia, Paraguay, northern Argentina). If you want to read about Murcian, see the JIPA article that I posted above. Peter238 (talk) 16:55, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

To Peter238:

With the Spanish constitution I just wanted to prove (as I said above) that in Spain; Spanish and Castilian are not legally equal terms (although both terms can be regarded as synonyms in other contexts). To be honest I don't know about the legislation of other Spanish-speaking countries, so I can't say how they view or call this language in those countries

I also mentioned the Spanish constitution because you named this article IPA for Spanish but you just use Castilian Spanish, and for many Spaniards the term Spanish could also include other varieties (like Murcian) which differ a lot from the variety you're using

Regarding the Murcian-Eastern Andalusian vowel harmony I don't think it's so variable as you think, especially compared to the Valencian vowel harmony (which varies from town to town, see the Valencian vowel harmony map, [3]), both types of vowel harmonies are very different

With concern to your last question: If you're using terms that are mostly used in English, why do you use Mandarin instead of Chinese? Chinese [Standard Chinese] is mostly synonym with Mandarin in English, the same than Castilian is synonym with Spanish, am I right? Why can't you do the same here?

To Aeusoes1:

Well, in my opinion there are intelligibility issues between certain varieties; I personally don't understand all the Spanish accents and dialects; I understand more Peninsular Spanish than Latin American. I particularly don't understand many Bolivians, Argentinians, Chileans, Caribbeans, etc. And sometimes I also struggle to understand some Southern Peninsulars. Do you understand them and think everybody speaks the same? I think some phonetic differences between dialects can be radical like Murcian/Andalusian (Southern Peninsular) vs Castilian (Northern Peninsular), perhaps they are more intelligible than Mandarin and Cantonese but still they're not fully intelligible

If you want to learn more about Murcian (which is also regarded as a separate language due those intelligibility issues I mention) you can have a look at the Murcian language website: www.llenguamaere.com

Further questions to you both:

1) why don' you use the name sources call the variety you're representing here and try to avoid conflicts?

2) if you don't want to use the name I propose (because you're probably biased), how would you combine all the Spanish varieties, or better what solution would you propose to the neutrality issue? — Jɑuмe ^(dis-me)

It's my understanding that Spanish dialects are largely mutually intelligible. As with any language, there are going to be some dialects that are less intelligible. Murcian may be one of these. But focusing on a national standard when there are regional variants is not unusual. This is what we do for German and Dutch, despite the vowel continuum that exist in these countries.

If you can find something that says there are serious or irreconcilable phonological differences between Spanish varieties or national standards, I'd like to see it.

On top of this, the IPA for Spanish page is not exactly "Castilian" since we allow for transcribing seseo and yeísmo pronunciations.

I think the Spanish constitution is a red herring here. The term for the language as a whole is typically "Spanish" and that is what we should be transcribing here. Rather than rename this guide to say that it's for one Spanish dialect, if it's too focused on one national standard over others, we may instead need to alter how we transcribe Spanish. If we were to do that, what changes would you like to see, Jaume? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 04:30, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

As far as I'm concerned, it wasn't till long ago when you proposed to add features like seseo and yeísmo and I think you did that because other users also complained :) To be honest, this guide still represents Castilian too much, and that's a bit boring and not very objective. I think we should allow to transcribe /x/ as /h/ in some local trancriptions (e.g. mojito [moˈhito], a Cuban drink), represent all the vocalic phones of Andalusian and Murcian (e.g. Las Torres de Cotillas [læˑ ˈtːɔˑrɛˑ (ð)e kɔˈtiˑʎæˑ]), add certain assimilations (Islas Canarias [iʱlːaʰ kːaˈnaːɾjaʰ]) and /s/ lenition (Caracas [kaˈɾaːkaʰ]) for certain dialects, use final obstruent devoicing with fricatives in Central and Northern Peninsular (e.g. Madrid [maˈðɾiθ]), indicate ð elision when required (as in Granada [gɾaˈna]), use ʒ/ʃ for places in (or people from) Argentina and Uruguay (Nueva Pompeya [ˈnweβa pomˈpeʃa]), etc. Btw, you didn't respond to my statement about the title (i.e. "Castilian Spanish") of the sources you're using here :) — Jɑuмe ^(dis-me) 02:41, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Originally, this was indeed a more strict rendering of Castilian Spanish, with the logic that other dialects are derivable from it. This is why the one source cited uses that term, though it's clear from that source and others that Castilian Spanish is a dialect of Spanish.

Personally, I see those as problematic. Transcribing, for example, the sound of ⟨j⟩ differently will simply appear inconsistent and might lead readers to believe that they are different phonemes. Transcribing a language differently in general can be highly confusing to readers. It should be motivated by something more than just whether it's "boring." Focusing on a standard variety or varieties can be a bit prescriptive, but an IPA pronunciation guide in an encyclopedic article is going to necessarily be oversimplistic in this regard. We do tend to allow "local" pronunciations, but those would be in addition to a standard pronunciation. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 14:52, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

It should be motivated by the reality and acceptance of Spanish as a pluricentric language and by allowing users to transcribe different standards and dialectal features like I'm trying to do in Catalan... I reaffirm what I said previously, and I think you live in different planet than me by the way you answer... For me this guide is very subjective as it is, it's tedious, lacks honesty (transparency), neutrality, comprehension, intelligence and many other things... And I don't think anybody cares whether /h/ is a different phoneme or not (I think a good explanation will always avoid confusions), they care about the real pronunciation (like certain user who said the most genuine pronunciation of mojito is with h)... And also aren't we transcribing allophonic variants, why not dialectal segments like in Greek? If you oppose to this, you can't oppose to rename this to Castilian Spanish and split Murcian/Andalusian and perhaps also Latin American Spanish — Jɑuмe ^(dis-me) 17:47, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Neutral with tendency to agree to the move: I don't have knowledge to contribute with these IPA helps, but since it's using brackets instead of slashes, used in English IPA help, this help is representing a phonetic transcriptions instead of a phonemic like the used in English transcriptions. As Jaume said, if we're giving a transcription of Uruguayan places in their own country, to use a different dialect for represent them would make it be not "a transcription of places in their own country".

On the other hand, there is also a problem with the term "Castilian" that apparently the meaning varies from place to place. At least in Portuguese, "castelhano" is the same of "espanhol", though "espanhol" is much more commonly used. I've also listened that Argentines call their language as "castellano", but I'm not sure if that's true, one of the places I've listened that is from this file, so I think this move could imply that "Rioplatense" is not "Castilian".--Luizdl ^Talk 02:06, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

That it's phonetic doesn't mean we should parse different guides for different Spanish dialects. Again, these dialects are largely mutually intelligible, so it doesn't make sense to have a guide for just one Spanish dialect. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 08:34, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for your opinion Luizdl and you're not wrong at all. I also noticed most Argentinians use castellano (IPA-Rioplatense Spanish (narrow transcription): [ka̠s̥t̪e̠ˈʒ̥a̠no̟], [ka̠ʰt̪(ː)e̠ˈʒ̥a̠no̟], I think vowel centralization is optional or depends on the speaker) like my childhood dentist and some former classmates. They probably prefer to enhance the real origin of their language, which I think is genuine from them and is totally acceptable. Their modern variant, however, is independent from Castilian Spanish; as it has absorbed other influences, especially from Italian and Southern Peninsular Spanish.

In my opinion all the Romance languages from Iberia are more or less mutually intelligible. As a Valencian, I understand most of them but I still struggle to understand every aspect of all the variants, including Catalan [Central Catalan] and Balearic (e.g. Majorcan) (from which I share a common origin). Also, on what level of intelligibility are you basing your statements Aeusoes1 (see Czeck and Slovak)? And also isn't Judaeo-Spanish or Ladino mutually intelligible with modern Spanish too? — Jɑuмe ^(dis-me) 00:00, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

• Wouldn't it be sufficient to say in the lead that this is based on Castilian Spanish? I don't see much utility for readers in actually moving the page to a different name. Especially since it's likely to inspire the creation of the bunch of variant pages for different dialects, which we don't need inserted into articles in series. We don't have have variant pages like this for "Help:IPA for American English", etc., so we don't need them for other languages. Mandarin vs. Cantonese isn't a comparable case; they're separate languages that share an ideographic writing system; referring to them as "dialects" of Chinese is a linguistic misnomer.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  04:16, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

I know very little about Spanish and its dialects, pretty much only what I've read on Wikipedia. But here's my outsider's opinion. I gather the reader is supposed to look at the Wikipedia-style standardized transcription of a Spanish word, do some sound-substitutions, and arrive at the actual pronunciation of the word in the relevant dialect. So, the [x] in [moˈxito] is supposed to be read as a [h]. That would sort of make sense if this was a phonemic transcription, /moˈxito/, but this is phonetic, enclosed in brackets. Even if this is a broad phonetic transcription, should a velar symbol really represent a glottal fricative? Seems a little bizarre. The velum and glottis are pretty far apart, and an English speaker can hear the difference because they have a glottal fricative and not a velar in their phonemic inventory.

So, either the Spanish transcriptions should be switched to phonemic (or more accurately, diaphonemic, like the Wikipedia English IPA system), or more dialectal differences should be represented, so that the transcriptions are plausibly phonetic. Diaphonemic transcription wouldn't work, because English speakers would be confused by having a single symbol for both voiced stops or affricates, and approximants or fricatives, so I think the only option is making the transcriptions more dialectally accurate.

I think the page doesn't need to be moved (yet), but it should clearly state that the transcription system is not accurate for all Spanish dialects (maybe even for most Spanish speakers, since various Latin American Spanishes have some features that are not represented here at all). — Eru·tuon 08:05, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

There are several things we could do to improve this language transcriptions. I don't think a broad transcription would help users to understand how Spanish works, and it seems to me this is not the most common practice (of transcriptions) here. And well, I started suggesting to rename this page also because many dubbed films distinguish between Castilian Spanish and Latin American Spanish, and because in my opinion this guide is not neutral and just favours more Castilian, as it shows Latin American as secondary. Additionally, we are also discussing how to add some divergent or radical variants, like Andalusian and Murcian (which are not fully intelligible with Castilian Spanish). The option Eru suggests about adding certain dialectal features sounds good to me. How would you do this, would you use separate guides/pages or an all inclusive guide? — Jɑuмe ^(dis-me) 00:32, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

Not sure about same or separate guides. Perhaps you could aim for one guide and split it if it becomes complex and unreadable, as with the earlier combined Galician/Portuguese, Swedish/Norwegian, and Dutch/Afrikaans guides. Or varieties that are more similar could be described together, and more divergent varieties could be described on separate pages. — Eru·tuon 01:40, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

Agree in concept. First of I don't understand how this is a "neutrality" issue and I feel the template should be removed. Now to the issue at hand, there is an International Phonetic Association and if they differentiate between Castilian and Latin American (or other) Spanish then Wikipedia should as well. If IPA doesn't differentiate then comments (with scholarly citations) should cite the differences and the regions they occur in. A new page could be created when the variations reached 10-15 % of the Castilian IPA. But it is simply a (slightly pedantic) pronunciation guide for vowel and consonant sounds and it doesn't normally restrict how the specific words are pronounced. For example British English and American English pronounce vitamin and macrame differently but they use the exact same IPA key to describe the pronunciation (/ˈvaɪ.tə.mɪn/ US, /ˈvɪt.ə.mɪn/ UK). English is an ever evolving language while French is regulated by the "immortal 40" of the Académie française. Icelandic is very strict with new words only being constructed from old ones. I don't know the situation with Spanish but certainly we have an editor that does. Mensch (talk) 22:34, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

r is also wrong

r

rumbo; carro; honra; amor; amor eterno

trilled r

It's only trilled when it's spelled rr, or at the beginning of a word. It's a /ɾ/ flap in both places in amor eterno; even our page Help:IPA gets this correct, with actual Spanish examples, no less. (It's sometimes trilled at the end of a word like amor), but this is only for special contextual emphasis, not part of normal word pronunciation.) So this should probably read something like:

r

rumbo; rio; carro; perro

trilled r

With the "amor eterno" example moved to the entry below that, if we need to retain it at all.

 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  04:04, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

The trill also appears after /n, s, l/ (source: this paper, page 258, and Fonetyka hiszpańska by Wiaczesław Nowikow (PWN 2012, page 37)), most probably because it is analyzed as starting the next syllable. The word-final /r/ does vary between a trill and a tap, depending on the circumstances and the speaker (Nowikow (2012:37)). Peter238 (talk) 14:06, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

There is some dialectal variance on this. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 16:12, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

I agree with SMcCandlish (although the trill is not wrong). I think it would be better/easier to transcribe final /r/ as [ɾ] in all instances (like in Catalan and EP), as [r] is too emphatic and it's not as common (and neutral) as [ɾ]. In my opinion [ɾ] (which is totally accepted in the standard) denotes more an intermediate pronunciation between those who use the trill and those who omit or merge final /r/. — Jɑuмe ^(dis-me) 16:41, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

@Aeusoes1: you're talking about "heavier" accents I suppose?

@JaumeR: I support switching final /r/ to /ɾ/. Peter238 (talk) 16:45, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

I think he means that as well, and he's entitle to support /r/ as it's standard; however I think [r] is not as engaging and conciliatory as [ɾ] : ) — Jɑuмe ^(dis-me) 22:47, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

My main point was that he seemed to ignore the occurrence of the trill after /n, s, l/ (AFAIK, pronouncing the tap there sounds foreign). Peter238 (talk) 19:11, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

That's correct. /ɾ/ can't occur after /n, l, s/ in the standard. A strange user tried to add those pronunciations in Catalan but I substituted them for [ɹ] ([ɹ̠]), which can occur as an allophone of coda ([ɾ]) and pre-vocalic /ɾ/ and /d/. From my own personal experience I have never heard [ɾ] in those cases, and I think this pronunciation (if exists) could be regarded as a farther fluctuation like [ʁ] (or [ɣ]). — Jɑuмe ^(dis-me) 02:26, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

The term you're looking for is probably rhotacism. Peter238 (talk) 02:51, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

Yes, which is similar to betacism (although betacism is regarded as standard in Spanish) — Jɑuмe ^(dis-me) 02:58, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

It's only similar as far as spelling is concerned. Mr KEBAB (talk) 13:39, 21 August 2016 (UTC)

Z

"Z" in Spanish is never pronounced as an "s". "Caza" can be never pronounced as "casa" as they would be confused: "Me voy de caza" (I'm going hunting) or "Me voy de casa" (I'm leaving home). A similar sound would be the ending of "tough" or the name "Ethan". "Quiz" is also invalid as it ends as an "s". About the Ñ, I would eliminate "Enyesar" as an example as the "n" word is fully pronounced and it doesn't happen with an Ñ, there is no N in Ñ. Maybe the "gn" sound would be more accurate, as for example in the italia word "Signorita" (but not the sound of "Magno" in Alexander Magnus) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 37.35.160.99 (talk) 09:26, 21 August 2016 (UTC)

You might want to rethink what you wrote, and read seseo and Spanish phonology. We don't pull this stuff out of imagination. Mr KEBAB (talk) 13:04, 21 August 2016 (UTC)

In the seseo-speaking areas, casa and caza are indeed pronounced the same. Languages are full of homophones and speakers are usually pretty capable of dealing with the ambiguity. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 15:48, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

I agree with these answers, however I'd like to add there are some speakers that might pronounce some instances of c (before e and i) and z with an intermediate sound between /s/ and /θ/, therefore I'd say there are different degrees and types of /s/-dentalisation in Spanish. Moreover the /s/ - /θ/ merger might not be fully featured by all the speakers in the seseo dialects and some of these might attempt to use some lisp, but I don't know much about this process.

I don't agree about what this user says about the /N/ archiphoneme. — Jɑuмe ^(dis-me) 00:47, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

Coming late to the conversation, but I spent years in Latin America, and "caza" and "casa" are pronounced identically there (at least in Mexico and Central America). Simon Burchell (talk) 08:46, 13 March 2017 (UTC)