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Quote:I speak spanish and I pronouce "ll" as "sh", you may guest where i am from?
Chile!
Hey, I heard an interesting story about the spanish lisp, maybe you guys can tell me if it's true.
(background here for non-spanish speakers: in spain 'ci' and 'ce' are pronounced 'thi' and 'theh', whereas in S Am. it's 'si' 'se')
There was this spanish king who used to have a lisp. So he didn't feel bad and self-concious, the people in his court started to speak like that too, and eventually it spread as more and more people started to speak like the king. And it still remains in the language today.
fact or fiction? it's always been an interesting anecdote 
In a world without walls and doors, who needs Windows and Gates?
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I dunno about that king :???:
All I know is about Felipe II, who has a very famous quote "The person I trust more is my barber, 'cause he has a blade in my throat every morning and uses it properly", intelligently ranting about all the in-palace conspirations... But this tale doesn't have to do anything with the topic.
And xhantt, you are from Argentina. ¿No sos vos de Argentina?
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Well, there was Pepin the Self-help Guru, but I think he died before he took the throne.
I typed in "spain king lisp" into google and clicked "i'm feeling lucky", and lo and behold, this page came up. I guess it's an urban legend...
i]"I know what you're thinking. Did he fire six shots or only five? Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement, I've kinda lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 Magnum ... you've got to ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel lucky?' Well, do ya punk?"[/i] - Dirty Harry
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Yes i'm from Argentina (Che te diste cuenta!!).
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for those that are not familiar w/ricans from the nyc area, we make up our own spanish by using the english & giving it a spanish twist. examples: roof = roofo (rather than setano..think i spelled it right), lunch = lonche (rather than almuerzo), etc. we also make up our own words. . .if i were to use the maones i dont think anybody would know i was referring to jeans.
here are 10 types of people, those that understand binary & those that dont. . .
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The story about the king with a lisp is a legend outside of Spain. You will not hear that story in Spain.
The truth about the "ce", "ci" and "za" sounds as pronouced in most of Spain, is purely for phonetics. Spanish is the second most phonetic language in the world, after Italian. If you pronouce Spanish correctly you will spell it correctly. The "th" sound used in "ce", "ci", and "za" is part of the language. In Latin America, they have chosen to use an "s" sound for these syllables. Conscuently they often misspell these words because they don't pronounce them correctly. There must have been a strong influence in the Spanish brought to America by Spaniards from regions in Spain which did not use the proper pronunciation. Another factor might be the influence if the local Indian languages, where perhaps the "th" sound was not easily adapted.
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jst n nncnt qstn, r vwls nt mprtnt n spnsh s wll?
(as opposed to)
u a ioe ueio, ae, oe o ioa i ai a e?
I just know, that in English, vowels carry little information except pronunciation, and you can usually interpret a message without them, and I was wondering if the same applied for other languages.
i]"I know what you're thinking. Did he fire six shots or only five? Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement, I've kinda lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 Magnum ... you've got to ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel lucky?' Well, do ya punk?"[/i] - Dirty Harry
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Arabic languages. In fact, in writen arabic, you don't write vowels (except a symbol that specifies a long vocalic sound here and there).
Vowels are very important in Spanish. As Moneo said, Spanish is very fonetic so what you pronounce is what you write. There are some non-fonetic stuff like our "h" which is not pronounced outside AndalucÃa, "v" and "b" that are pronounced the same by everyone, no matter if the Academy says that they are different (the aren't!) and most people in AndalucÃa pronounce "ll" and "y" the same (but people outside our Country do pronounce them differently).
Vowels are important: La casa está rota ... La cosa es tu rata (the house is broken - this thing is your rat !!!  ).
About the seseo in latin america, I think this comes from the time it was populated by Spanish people, and the mixture with indians and aborigines from America. The big colonization happened in s.XVI, s.XVII when Spanish was not still completely evoluted. In Argentina there are also important verb conjugation differences. For example, they say "Te sentÃs vivo en la plaza" instead of "Te sientes vivo en la plaza" or "Sos inmortal" instead of "Eres inmortal". That comes from the time that Argentina was colonizated, that time those forms were used in Spain as well, but soon after the beginning of the collonization, in s. XVIII, the Spainsh Language Academy decided to unify some rules and adptoed "sientes" form instead of "sentÃs" form. That rule was not taught in Argentina, where they kept using the former.
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One important note about the Spanish vowels is that all 5 of them are *clear* unique sounds. In English, the 5 vowels can almost be classsified as being dipthongs, that is, more than one sound. Example: the English "a" sounds like "a..e". Even the "e", is an elongated "e..e" sound. The *unclear* sounds of the vowels produces many sound variations of the vowels depending on in which word they are used. In Spanish, no matter in what word the vowel is used, the sound is always the same.
Nathan mentioned that in Argentina they still use the form "vos". To understand this you might compare it using the archaic "thee" and "thou" in English. If some country would still be using this form, they would say "thou art" instead of "you are"., and "I love thee" instead of "I love you". A similar archaic form is still used in Argentina as well as Chile, Uruguay and Honduras. Actually, this form is very pleasant sounding, almost cute, to most Spanish speaking people.
Nathan also used the word "seseo". Seseo is how Spanish speaking people describe the manner of speaking of those who do not use the "th" sound but use the "s" sound instead. This applies to the majority of Latin Americans. On the other hand, "ceceo" is the term used for the manner in which most Spaniards speak, that is, with the "th" sound.
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Hm... I thought arabic used written variations of consonants to infer vowels, though I always thought english to be german based rather than semitic.
Unless that was an example. In which case: duly noted
i]"I know what you're thinking. Did he fire six shots or only five? Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement, I've kinda lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 Magnum ... you've got to ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel lucky?' Well, do ya punk?"[/i] - Dirty Harry
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