Ceceo is a phenomenon in the Spanish language whereby the voiceless interdental fricative (International Phonetic Alphabet /θ/, the "th" in think) is used in place of the voiceless dental fricative /s/. In that respect, it is not unlike a lisp. This article is about the international language known as Spanish. ... The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is a system of phonetic notation devised by linguists to accurately and uniquely represent each of the wide variety of sounds (phones or phonemes) used in spoken human language. ... A lisp is a speech impediment, historically also known as sigmatism. ...

In standard Castilian Spanish, the letter s is always pronounced /s/, whereas the letter c (before the vowels e and i) and the letter z are pronounced /θ/. In all other dialects of Spanish this distinction has been long lost and /θ/ does not exist, being replaced by /s/ in all cases.

For speakers who exhibit ceceo, however, /s/ is replaced by /θ/.

For example, in standard Castilian Spanish, la casa ("the house") is pronounced as /la 'kasa/, whereas la caza ("the hunt") is pronounced as /la 'kaθa/. A person with seseo, e.g. from Latin America, pronounces both of these as /la 'kasa/ and a person with ceceo pronounces both of these /la 'kaθa/.

Ceceo most commonly occurs in Andalusian Spanish, but the term is also used to refer to a lisp in other dialects. Rather ironically, ceceo is regularly pronounced /se'seo/ in Latin American Spanish. The Andalusian dialects (also called Andaluz) of European Spanish are spoken in Andalusia. ... A lisp is a speech impediment. ...

The "Castilian lisp"

As stated, true ceceo is simply a dialectal feature, produced by a linguistic development that diverged from that of other dialects. However, urban legend attributes it to a speech defect. According to it, ceceo became common in Castilian because one of the Spanish kings (generally identified as Felipe V or Carlos V) spoke with a lisp, and his courtiers did not want to embarrass him by speaking otherwise. Urban legends are a kind of folklore consisting of stories often thought to be factual by those circulating them (see rumor). ... King Philip V of Spain (December 19, 1683 – July 9, 1746) or Philippe of Anjou was king of Spain from 1700 to 1746, the first of the Bourbon dynasty in Spain. ... Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain. ...

That the legend is wrong can be seen readily: if speakers of Castilian Spanish spoke with a lisp, they would be unable to pronounce phonemic /s/ as [s] and would substitute [θ] for it, but those two phonemes are pronounced and distinguished consistently.

Origins

Fifteenth-century Spanish had six sibilant phonemes, more than any current variety of Spanish, and those six phonemes merged differently as they evolved into the pronunciation of the modern dialects. There were three pairs of voiceless versus voiced sibilants: dentoalveolar affricates (spelled c/ç vs. z), apicoalveolar fricatives (-ss-/s-/-s vs. -s-), and prepalatal fricatives (x vs. j/g). The first step away from that system was to fricativize the dentoalveolar affricates. (14th century - 15th century - 16th century - other centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 15th century was that century which lasted from 1401 to 1500. ... A sibilant is a type of fricative, made by speeding up air through a narrow channel and directing it over the sharp edge of the teeth. ... In human language, a phoneme is a set of phones (speech sounds or sign elements) that are cognitively equivalent. ... Phoneticians define phonation as use of the laryngeal system to generate an audible source of acoustic energy, i. ... Phoneticians define phonation as use of the laryngeal system to generate an audible source of acoustic energy, i. ... Dentals are consonants such as t, d, n, and l articulated with either the lower or the upper teeth, or both, rather than with the gum ridge as in English. ... An affricate is a consonant that begins like a stop (most often an alveovelar, such as [t] or [d]) and that doesnt have a release of its own, but opens directly into a fricative (or, in one language, into a trill). ... An apical consonant is a phone produced by obstructing the air passage with the apex of the tongue (i. ... Note: This page contains phonetic information presented in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) using Unicode. ...

Then, in Castilian Spanish the second step was to lose the voiceless/voiced distinction in favour of the voiceless member, and the final step was to alter the pronunciation of the three resulting phonemes so as to boost their acoustic distinction (because they were used to distinguish many minimal pairs, but phonetically they were too similar and thus prone to cause confusion). The dentoalveolar was moved "forward" to interdental (the sound of th) and the prepalatal was moved "backwards" to velar (the sound of ch in Scottish loch), resulting in the three-way distinction used in modern Castilian: interdental /θ/ (spelled c/z), apicoalveolar /s/ (s, note that this sound of Castilian is different from an English s, because it is pronounced with the tip of the tongue instead of with its blade), and velar /x/ (j/g). In phonology, minimal pairs are pairs of words or phrases in a particular language, which differ in only one phoneme, toneme or chroneme and have a distinct meaning. ... Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue (the dorsum) against the soft palate (the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum). ...

In Andalusian, however, the phonological evolution since the fricativization of the affricates differed from that of Castilian. The second step in Andalusian was to merge the members of the dentoalveolar and apicoalveolar pairs according to voicing, before voicing was lost (the voiceless c/ç and -ss-/s-/-s merged together, and the voiced z and -s- merged together), which resulted in only one merger phoneme /s/ (instead of the two, /θ/ and /s/, that resulted in Castilian) for all of the four original sibilants once the third step (losing voicing) took place. The single phoneme /s/ that resulted from all this merging was pronounced differently in different parts of Andalusia; in some places (areas of seseo), it sounds just like an English s, and this was the pronunciation that reached Latin America; while in others (areas of ceceo), it is a sound that resembles an English th (or Castilian c/z) more than an English s (or Latin American s), but that is coronal instead of interdental (in an English th or a Castilian c/z there is no sibilance, while the sound in "ceceante" Andalusian is a sibilant, that is, it is actually an unusual kind of s rather than a true th). Another widespread misconception is to confuse the use of this particular kind of th-like sibilant in those varieties of Andalusian with lisping. The term voicing may refer to: In phonetics, a type of phonation. ... There are a series of significant differences in the way the Spanish language is spoken in the 20 or so countries and territories where it is an official language. ... Coronal consonants are articulated with the flexible front part of the tongue. ...

Ladino has conserved most of the old phonemes and its study has cast light on the evolution of Spanish. Ladino is a Romance language, derived mainly from Old Castilian (Spanish) and Hebrew. ...

See also

• Contrast ceceo with seseo