# "d" in Castillan **URL:** \ **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:** 7\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![bordelond](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bordelond/32/150_2.png) [@bordelond](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bordelond)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2017, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/d-in-castillan/782668/21 "2017-03-21T18:43:00Z")
> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#): > > 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. [La Real Academia Española](http://www.rae.es/diccionario-panhispanico-de-dudas/representacion-de-sonidos) doesn’t set the pronunciations of Spanish words in the terms of an international phonetic standard like IPA or SAMPA. ---
**Author:** ![Rick\_Kitchen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rick_kitchen/32/522_2.png) [@Rick\_Kitchen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick_Kitchen)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2017, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/d-in-castillan/782668/22 "2017-03-21T19:24:59Z")
> [@JRDelirious](#): > > 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. Theeð, actually. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2017, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/d-in-castillan/782668/23 "2017-03-21T20:50:55Z")
Everyone has covered everything on the subject I would have said. Just adding a sidenote that Arabic has both sounds: د dāl (voiced dental stop) and ذ dhāl (voiced dental fricative). Although, as **Nava** observed, the Arabic etymon for Cid is سيدي _sīdī_ ‘my seigneur’ or just ‘sir’\* with dāl, not dhāl. \*from Classical Arabic سيّدي _sayyidī_ ‘my drighten’. The feminine equivalent is سيّدتي sayyidatī ‘my lady’, because -t- makes the feminine gender in Afro-Asiatic languages. Same difference as between Greek δ (dhelta) and ντ (ni-taf, pronounced /d/). Icelandic has /ð/ (written \<ð\>), but it doesn’t have /d/. Hebrew and Finnish used to have both /ð/ and /d/, but now they have only /d/. Although Spanish uses the same letter to write both sounds, it’s no problem, because they are differentiated positionally. English on the other hand, writes both phonemes /ð/ and /θ/ with the same “th” :smack:. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2017, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/d-in-castillan/782668/24 "2017-03-21T21:01:27Z")
Most of the Saami languages have both /ð/ and /d/, written \<đ\> and \ respectively. So you can tell them apart! ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2017, 6:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/d-in-castillan/782668/25 "2017-03-22T06:25:22Z")
> [@bordelond](#): > > 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. And what I’m saying is, first, using Wiki as the source has the problem of things like that happening. The same source has also suffered from things such as someone going to the entry for every king he could think of and adding “possibly gay”, from people being granted titles that never existed, or of names being mistreated six ways to Thursday. And it also matches with what I said: the phoneme is always the same. ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2017, 11:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/d-in-castillan/782668/26 "2017-03-22T11:25:56Z")
> [@JRDelirious](#): > > 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. This. ETA: No, I’m not dissing anyone! 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2017, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/d-in-castillan/782668/27 "2017-03-22T14:23:13Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > And what I’m saying is, first, using Wiki as the source has the problem of things like that happening. The same source has also suffered from things such as someone going to the entry for every king he could think of and adding “possibly gay”, from people being granted titles that never existed, or of names being mistreated six ways to Thursday. > > And it also matches with what I said: the phoneme is always the same. The phoneme may always be the same, but there are at least three different allophones. So no, it’s not pronounced always the same any more than a P or a T in English is always pronounced the same. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/d-in-castillan/782668.md?page=1)