# "d" in Castillan
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/d-in-castillan/782668
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [March 21, 2017, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/d-in-castillan/782668 "2017-03-21T01:46:40Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@No\_Wikipedia\_Cites](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/No_Wikipedia_Cites)
#### Post date: [March 21, 2017, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/d-in-castillan/782668/1 "2017-03-21T01:46:40Z")
How is the the letter “d” pronunced in the words “mirado”, “mitad”? Is the first like a voiced “th” and the second not?
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### Author:  [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)
#### Post date: [March 21, 2017, 3:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/d-in-castillan/782668/2 "2017-03-21T03:10:18Z")
My understanding is that D is generally pronounced like a voiced TH when it comes between vowels.
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### Author:  [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)
#### Post date: [March 21, 2017, 7:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/d-in-castillan/782668/3 "2017-03-21T07:24:42Z")
D in Spanish is pronounced always the same (except when it’s not pronounced, see below), there’s no difference in how it’s pronounced depending on what accompanies it; it sounds like the d in difference. IPA symbol, d.
When speaking quickly and loosely, ds tend to get lost. For example, mirado pronounced when speaking “correctly” is pronounced /mi.'ra.do/, but speaking quickly it becomes /mi.'rao/ or /mi.'rau/; /mi.'tad/ becomes /mi.'ta/. The pronunciation of the d doesn’t change, the whole phoneme goes “pouf”.
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### Author:  [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)
#### Post date: [March 21, 2017, 8:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/d-in-castillan/782668/4 "2017-03-21T08:18:28Z")
OK, now that I’m not in a hurry… I cheated, the r in those phonetic transcriptions should have been /ɾ/. And if I’m understanding the IPA correctly, the main symbol for the d sound should also be /D/ not /d/.
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### Author:  [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)
#### Post date: [March 21, 2017, 11:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/d-in-castillan/782668/5 "2017-03-21T11:12:13Z")
[Wikipedia disagrees:](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_phonology#Consonants)
> [@](#):
>
> The phonemes /b/, /d/, and /ɡ/ are realized as approximants (namely [β̞, ð̞, ɣ˕], hereafter represented without the undertack) or fricatives[6] in all places except after a pause, after a nasal consonant, or—in the case of /d/—after a lateral consonant; in such contexts they are realized as voiced stops.[7]
Which is the way I was taught to pronounce “d” in Spanish classes I took in several different states.
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### Author:  [@BwanaBob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BwanaBob)
#### Post date: [March 21, 2017, 12:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/d-in-castillan/782668/6 "2017-03-21T12:25:37Z")
So El Cid is El Sith? Scary.
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### Author:  [@zimaane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zimaane)
#### Post date: [March 21, 2017, 12:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/d-in-castillan/782668/7 "2017-03-21T12:41:42Z")
I’ll take Nava’s word over Wikipedia.
I am not a native speaker, but have studied Spanish for many years and speak it often. I hear the ‘d’ in words like mirado more or less like an English ‘d’.
Here is a news report:
How do the 'd's in lendadores at 1:45 sound?
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### Author:  [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)
#### Post date: [March 21, 2017, 12:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/d-in-castillan/782668/8 "2017-03-21T12:42:27Z")
More like El Thið
And remember there are pronunciation variants across the Hispanosphere that don’t make it righter or wronger. Some prefer all Ds to be hard palatal (a-la-English), others soft alveolar, others change according to syllable placement.
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### Author:  [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)
#### Post date: [March 21, 2017, 12:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/d-in-castillan/782668/9 "2017-03-21T12:47:03Z")
In that video, I don’t hear an English “th” sound. I hear a dental d, which is slightly different from the English “d” but not as different as English “th.”
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### Author:  [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)
#### Post date: [March 21, 2017, 1:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/d-in-castillan/782668/10 "2017-03-21T13:05:56Z")
[_Escucha esto_.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmKCFlPQiXo)
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### Author:  [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)
#### Post date: [March 21, 2017, 1:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/d-in-castillan/782668/11 "2017-03-21T13:06:37Z")
> [@BwanaBob](#):
>
> So El Cid is El Sith? Scary.
In seseo accents it’s “el Sid”, but not in the kind of pronunciation from which the spelling derives. The Arabic word from which it does derive is usually transcribed _Sidí_.
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### Author:  [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)
#### Post date: [March 21, 2017, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/d-in-castillan/782668/12 "2017-03-21T13:44:50Z")
> [@zimaane](#):
>
> I’ll take Nava’s word over Wikipedia.
>
> I am not a native speaker, but have studied Spanish for many years and speak it often. I hear the ‘d’ in words like mirado more or less like an English ‘d’.
>
> Here is a news report:
>
> How do the 'd's in lendadores at 1:45 sound?
I’m going to take Wikipedia over Nava here, for several reasons:
1. Wikipedia backs up what the pronunciation guide in my Spanish-English dictionary says (that thre are three pronunciations of D depending on contrext),
2. From hearing native Spanish speakers (granted, all the ones I know are Lat-Am, not Spanish) it doesn’t sound like an English D to me,
3. For the languages that I do speak, I think the Wikipedia is more or less accurate though not always complete,
and
1. Sometimes native speakers don’t notice details of their native language as easy as outsiders do. In English, C/K has an entirely different pronunciation depending on whether it’s at the beginning of the word or not (aspirate C vs non-aspirate, e.g. “cat” vs “picking”), and in northern Indian languages these would be considered entirely different sounds, but if you asked most native English speakers they probably wouldn’t notice the difference.
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### Author:  [@bordelond](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bordelond)
#### Post date: [March 21, 2017, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/d-in-castillan/782668/13 "2017-03-21T14:01:30Z")
> [@Nava](#):
>
> OK, now that I’m not in a hurry… I cheated, the r in those phonetic transcriptions should have been /ɾ/. And if I’m understanding the IPA correctly, the main symbol for the d sound should also be /D/ not /d/.
/D/ is a symbol in [SAMPA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_Assessment_Methods_Phonetic_Alphabet_chart), but not in [IPA](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e4/The_International_Phonetic_Alphabet_%28revised_to_2015%29.pdf).
/D/ in SAMPA = /ð/ in IPA, as shown in **John Mace’s** post above.
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### Author:  [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)
#### Post date: [March 21, 2017, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/d-in-castillan/782668/14 "2017-03-21T14:41:40Z")
English palatal “d” [d]
Dental “d” [d̯] — which is what I hear in that Spanish news report
English voiced “th” (as in "this) — [ð]
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### Author:  [@No\_Wikipedia\_Cites](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/No_Wikipedia_Cites)
#### Post date: [March 21, 2017, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/d-in-castillan/782668/15 "2017-03-21T14:54:09Z")
Ok, because the official guide I have has ‘d’ as a voiced “th” when between vowels; but trying to say, “_¿Lo ha mirado, V.?_”, is a tongue twister with the final ´do´-- it sounds almost like “mira’o” (as someone stated above) or “miratho”, not quite right sounding to me.
And saying “nada” as instructed is harder to pronounce, the tongue must travel farther and makes less of a noise, making it harder to be heard, but the alternative seems to be a bad Gringo accent with English phenomes pushed onto another language.
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### Author:  [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)
#### Post date: [March 21, 2017, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/d-in-castillan/782668/16 "2017-03-21T15:20:08Z")
Well, for starters, nobody would pronounce _lo ha mirado uve…_ 😉 That’s not even any of the usual abbreviations for the formal modes of address, I figure whomever wrote it was aiming for _usted_ but that’s my crystal ball talking, maybe he’s a 16th-century escapee trying to get you to say _vuecencia_. But if you’re at the point of worrying if your d’s are a tad foreign you’re miles above 99% of foreign speakers of Spanish. Don’t go too crazy over it, there are a lot of sounds which are much more problematic for someone with English as first language.
Oh, and speaking of using güiki as a cite, maybe some of you should speak with the people who maintain the entry for AFI del español:
> [@güikipiya](#):
>
> Alófonos universales[editar]
> En la tabla anterior algunos sonidos se dan en todas las variedades de español sin excepción. Algunos de estos alófonos pueden aparecer en cualquier posición (distribución no restringida) mientras que algunos son variantes posicionales que sólo aparecen en ciertas posiciones de las palabras (distribución restringida). La siguiente tabla recoge los fonemas universales del español así como sus variantes posicionales:
>
> Grafía común p b, v t d c, k, qu- g, gu(e/i) ch f s j, g gui-, hi-, y- hu-, w-, gu(a/o/u), gü(e/i) l rr r m n ñ
> Fonema /p/ /B/ /t/ /D/ /k/ /G/ /ʧ/ /f/ /s/ /x/ /Y/ /w/ /l/ /r/ /ɾ/ /m/ /n/ /ɲ/
> Alófonos p b β̞ t d ð̞ k g ɣ̞ ʧ f v~f̬ s z~s̬ x ʝ̞ ɟ͡ʝ̞ w l l̪ lʲ r ɾ m n m ɱ n̪ nʲ ŋ ɲ
> Los contextos de aparición son:
>
> Los fonemas /B, D, G, Y/ tienen varios alófonos:
> El contexto más frecuente de estos fonemas es entre sonidos continuantes donde suenan como aproximantes [β̞, ð̞, ɣ̞, ʝ̞].
> Los alófonos [b, d, g] como realización tras nasal o en pausa absoluta
> /B, D, G/, en final de palabra o sílaba seguida de sorda (sólo en cultismos como subsistir, adscrito, examen y préstamos) en algunos dialectos se eliden o geminan la consonante adyacente (como en [sus:isˈtiɾ], [asːˈkɾito], [eˈsːamen]) en otros suenan como [p, t, k].
(with my apologies for the loss of a bunch of bars)
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### Author:  [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)
#### Post date: [March 21, 2017, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/d-in-castillan/782668/17 "2017-03-21T15:26:33Z")
> [@güikipiya](#):
>
> Alófonos universales[editar]
> En la tabla anterior algunos sonidos se dan en todas las variedades de español sin excepción. Algunos de estos alófonos pueden aparecer en cualquier posición (distribución no restringida) mientras que algunos son variantes posicionales que sólo aparecen en ciertas posiciones de las palabras (distribución restringida). La siguiente tabla recoge los fonemas universales del español así como sus variantes posicionales:
>
> Grafía común p b, v ----t ------d
> Fonema /p/ ------/B/ ----/t/ /D/
> Alófonos p -----b β̞ —t---- d, ð̞
> Los contextos de aparición son:
>
> Los fonemas /B, D, G, Y/ tienen varios alófonos:
> El contexto más frecuente de estos fonemas es entre sonidos continuantes donde suenan como aproximantes [β̞, ð̞, ɣ̞, ʝ̞].
> Los alófonos [b, d, g] como realización tras nasal o en pausa absoluta
> /B, D, G/, en final de palabra o sílaba seguida de sorda (sólo en cultismos como subsistir, adscrito, examen y préstamos) en algunos dialectos se eliden o geminan la consonante adyacente (como en [sus:isˈtiɾ], [asːˈkɾito], [eˈsːamen]) en otros suenan como [p, t, k].
(added the dashes to realign stuff somewhat and removed everything after the information for the letter “d”)
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### Author:  [@bordelond](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bordelond)
#### Post date: [March 21, 2017, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/d-in-castillan/782668/18 "2017-03-21T16:01:43Z")
> [@Nava](#):
>
> Oh, and speaking of using güiki as a cite, maybe some of you should speak with the people who maintain the entry for AFI del español:
>
> > [@](#):
> >
> > \*\*Originally Posted by güikipiya \*\*
> > Alófonos universales[editar]
> > En la tabla anterior algunos sonidos se dan en todas las variedades de español sin excepción. Algunos de estos alófonos pueden aparecer en cualquier posición (distribución no restringida) mientras que algunos son variantes posicionales que sólo aparecen en ciertas posiciones de las palabras (distribución restringida). La siguiente tabla recoge los fonemas universales del español así como sus variantes posicionales:
> >
> > Grafía común p b, v ----t ------d
> > Fonema \*\*/p/ ------/B/ ----/t/ /D/ \*\*
> > Alófonos **p -----b β̞ —t---- d, ð** ̞
> > Los contextos de aparición son:
> >
> > Los fonemas **/B, D, G, Y/** tienen varios alófonos:
> > El contexto más frecuente de estos fonemas es entre sonidos continuantes donde suenan como aproximantes **[β̞, ð̞, ɣ̞, ʝ̞]**.
> > Los alófonos **[b, d, g]** como realización tras nasal o en pausa absoluta
> > **/B, D, G/** , en final de palabra o sílaba seguida de sorda (sólo en cultismos como subsistir, adscrito, examen y préstamos) en algunos dialectos se eliden o geminan la consonante adyacente (como en **[sus:isˈtiɾ], [asːˈkɾito], [eˈsːamen]**) en otros suenan como **[p, t, k]**.
The author(s) has mixed SAMPA and IPA symbols in the same article. Specifically, they’re using SAMPA symbols for phonemes, and IPA symbols for allophones\*\*. Given that, the _güikipiya_ article essentially squares with the Wikipedia information that **John Mace** first posted in this thread.
\*\*_Cliff’s Notes_: allophones are more detailed than phonemes. In English, **pin** and **spin** would be written with the same phoneme /p/ for both “p” sounds, but different allophones: /pɩn/, /spɩn/ versus [p[sup]h[/sup]ɩn], [spɩn]. And yes, even use of slashes versus brackets is a meaningful distinction in phonetic transcription – slashes indicated phonemic transcription or “broad transcription” while brackets indicate allophonic transcription or “narrow transcription”.
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### Author:  [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)
#### Post date: [March 21, 2017, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/d-in-castillan/782668/19 "2017-03-21T17:54:17Z")
[Ciudad Real.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Province_of_Ciudad_Real). Note pronunciation guide.
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### Author:  [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)
#### Post date: [March 21, 2017, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/d-in-castillan/782668/20 "2017-03-21T18:01:39Z")
Unlike English, Spanish (well the European variety at least) has an actual authority that decides these issues, right?
Someone should look up what the Royal Academy has to say.
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