# Why do Spaniards pronounce "c" like "th?" **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 25, 2003, 6:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-spaniards-pronounce-c-like-th/184246 "2003-06-25T06:49:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Dr.Fumbles](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ba9def/32.png) [@Dr.Fumbles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Fumbles)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2010, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-spaniards-pronounce-c-like-th/184246/21 "2010-06-19T02:03:52Z")
> [@bayonet1976](#): > > Do you have any samples of this “d” sound in Spanish, I can’t think of any instance. Intervocallically, d is pronounced like a slightly softer version of th in the, but still voiced. Basically, at the beggining of a sentence, after an l or n, it’s like english d but with your tongue touching the back of your upper front teeth. Anywere else it’s like the softer th in the as I just described. However, some may drop the sound all together, especially in -ado endings which can end up sounding like ao or au. At the end of a word, it can sound like th in thing, or be completely silent, or even a dental t in a small northwestern part of spain. Hope that helps. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Fumbles](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ba9def/32.png) [@Dr.Fumbles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Fumbles)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2010, 2:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-spaniards-pronounce-c-like-th/184246/22 "2010-06-19T02:04:52Z")
> [@JRDelirious](#): > > **bayonet1976** , intervocalic and sylabbic-final “d” (“oid” = hear ye) gets the “soft d” sound in many regional accents of Spanish. It’s such a subtle variation that schoolkids are not formally taught about it when learning to read. > > Then there’s the case of v = b. Indeed, the Standard rule is that you do not differentiate pronunciation. However, by that same “standard”, our “b” is a subtly softer sound than in English – your lips never quite shut the airflow. In much of Mexico/Central Am/Caribbean , dialect actually goes the other way and both get pronounced with the upper teeth/lower lip, like English “v” . For a more modern equivalent, oíd should be translated as hear (y’all). what do you think? ---
**Author:** ![KarlGrenze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/dbc845/32.png) [@KarlGrenze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGrenze)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2010, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-spaniards-pronounce-c-like-th/184246/23 "2010-06-19T02:09:23Z")
> [@WeRSauron](#): > > I learned Castellano - el espanol de Espana - by virtue of the fact that both of my Spanish teachers spoke Castellano, even though the books, tapes, etc., we used were in American Spanish\*. My first teacher was Spanish - she was born and raised in Barcelona, which she pronounced as “bar-theh-LO-nah” - and my second teacher learned Spanish in England and lived in Spain for a number of years. > > “C” is not the only letter affected. “Z” and “d” are affected too. “Z” is pronounced as “th” (as in “_th_ing”), and in certain cases “d” is pronounced as “dh” (like the “th” in “_th_e”). > > Plus, “v” is always pronounced as “b.” > > Personally, I prefer Castellano to American Spanish. I can speak and understand it better. Personalmente, prefiero Castellano a causa de que puedo hablarlo y entenderlo major que espanol americano. (Perdoneme si mi espanol no es correcto. Habia mucho tiempo que lo usaba.) > > \*American in reference to the American continent(s), not the United States of America. May be called Mexican Spanish. > > WRS They were not Mexican Spanish unless they were from Mexico. Castilian accent is as much of a dialect as all the others in Spanish. If it was not from there (or from other specific country), what you probably got was an effort to make as much standarized, bland, nonaccented study materials as possible. **Nava** and others may come and remind you that not all regions of Spain speak what you’re calling castellano and that accents can vary. Barcelona, as others have said, is not Castilian, and their Spanish accent is influenced by Catalan, which is their native language. **Sinungaling** , what you posted exists, but the definition and examples used by the academies vary from what you give. I’ve never heard it done with dedo, but I’ve heard it done (and done it), with words ending in -ado and other verb endings. Those are the examples mentioned by the Academies. It’s really “vulgar speech”, and if you’re speaking formally (say, giving the news, doing an interview, giving a lecture) you’re NOT supposed to do it. PS. Oh, and there are way more dialects than Mexican Spanish in both North and South America. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Fumbles](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ba9def/32.png) [@Dr.Fumbles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Fumbles)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2010, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-spaniards-pronounce-c-like-th/184246/24 "2010-06-19T02:17:51Z")
> [@Polycarp](#): > > Spanish dialects vary even more than English ones do. (Plus, Gallego – spoken in the extreme northwest of Spain, north of Portugal – and Catalan – spoken along the northern Mediterranean coast and some ways inland – are regarded as distinct languages.) > > Ceismo (pronounced theismo, with the obvious homonymy with the Spanish for “theism”) is the conversion of the “s” sound expected to an unvoiced “th” in the Castilian dialect – which is “the King’s Spanish” in the same way that the speech of upper-class southwest England is “the King’s English.” It’s almost never heard in New World Spanish. The voiced “th” for intervocalic “D” is quite a bit more widespread, but by no means universal (see **bayonet1976** ’s post just above). There are other dialects in Spain and throughout Hispanic America. > > To cite another example, the “LL” combination varies as well. In Castilian and significant parts of Spanish-speaking America (Costa Rica, where one of my teachers was from, comes to mind) it is sounded as “LY” – a palatalized L, carrying a consonantal “Y” > to affect the following vowel. (Compare the standard English pronounciations of “lieu” and “loo” for the difference.) In much of Hispanic America (and I believe Andalucia) the “L” is elided, and it sounds like a “Y,” sometimes with the slightest hint of a “L” in front, as in the Northeast U.S. sounding of “milk” as /me[sup]L[/sup]k/ --the E technically being a 3-like symbol representing an “eh” sound. And in the Cono Sur – Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay – it’s changed again to a sound closely resembling a hard “J” – the Spanish for 1,000,000, “millon” would in these usages be /meal-YOAN/, /mee-YOAN/, and /mee-JOAN/ respectively. Ok, sorry, but I gots to say it: Galician, Basque, Catalán, Asturian, etc. are all distinct languages, Galician may still be a dialect of Portuguese, hard to say, here’s some examples: Castilian: Todos los seres humanos nacen libres e iguales en dignidad y derechos y, dotados como están de razón y conciencia, deben comportarse fraternalmente los unos con los otros. Galician: Tódolos seres humanos nacen libres e iguais en dignidade e dereitos e, dotados como están de razón e conciencia, díbense comportar fraternalmente uns cos outros. (Quick note, catalan is actually closer to french than it is castilian.) Catalan: Tots els éssers humans neixen lliures i iguals en dignitat i en drets. Són dotats de raó i de consciència, i han de comportar-se fraternalment els uns amb els altres. Basque: Gizon-emakume guztiak aske jaiotzen dira, duintasun eta eskubide berberak dituztela; eta ezaguera eta kontzientzia dutenez gero, elkarren artean senide legez jokatu beharra dute. (basque ain’t even related to any indo-european language, at least, they haven’t found any proof.) Ok so those are the 4 official spanish languages. Now quick question look at the universal declaration of human rights, and see if they look like dialects or distinct languages, heres different castilian dialects: ¿Cómo estáis vosotros/as? ¿Qué os molaría/gustaría? ¿Cómo están ustedes? ¿Qué les gustaría? Yo me yamo, Yo me lyamo, zho me zhamo, sho me shamo, these are dialectal pronunciations for yo me llamo Compare: Coumo estades vos? (galician) Com esteu vosaltres? (catalán) Ok next ceísmo isn’t a word, what you’re thinking of is distinción or ceseo, where there is a distinction between s and c before e or i and z. S never got converted into the theta sound or else S wouldn’t represent s. Now in ceceo dialects (thetheo), apparently they tried to imitate and overdid it. And it spread, how true that is I don’t remember. But it is true that the S is well, lisped in those dialects but it’s not that wide spread. And seseo dialects have all s’s hope I helped hope you learnd a little something new about castilian, don’t get mad jsut read(hear) me out. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Fumbles](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ba9def/32.png) [@Dr.Fumbles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Fumbles)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2010, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-spaniards-pronounce-c-like-th/184246/25 "2010-06-19T02:21:05Z")
> [@KarlGrenze](#): > > They were not Mexican Spanish unless they were from Mexico. Castilian accent is as much of a dialect as all the others in Spanish. If it was not from there (or from other specific country), what you probably got was an effort to make as much standarized, bland, nonaccented study materials as possible. > > **Nava** and others may come and remind you that not all regions of Spain speak what you’re calling castellano and that accents can vary. Barcelona, as others have said, is not Castilian, and their Spanish accent is influenced by Catalan, which is their native language. > > **Sinungaling** , what you posted exists, but the definition and examples used by the academies vary from what you give. I’ve never heard it done with dedo, but I’ve heard it done (and done it), with words ending in -ado and other verb endings. Those are the examples mentioned by the Academies. It’s really “vulgar speech”, and if you’re speaking formally (say, giving the news, doing an interview, giving a lecture) you’re NOT supposed to do it. > > PS. Oh, and there are way more dialects than Mexican Spanish in both North and South America. Other regions of spain do not speak what wersauron is calling castellano, but the language is still castellano, and from what I can tell most of us call it castellano, but the dialect, my dialect, that he’s describing is castellano septentrional. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Fumbles](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ba9def/32.png) [@Dr.Fumbles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Fumbles)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2010, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-spaniards-pronounce-c-like-th/184246/26 "2010-06-19T02:22:36Z")
> [@runner pat](#): > > Zombieths. sorry but que coños is zombieths? ---
**Author:** ![KarlGrenze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/dbc845/32.png) [@KarlGrenze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGrenze)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2010, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-spaniards-pronounce-c-like-th/184246/27 "2010-06-19T02:48:58Z")
When you post in a thread where the OP is several years old. The OP is one week short of 7 years old, lost in the database, until it was brought back to “life”. ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2010, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-spaniards-pronounce-c-like-th/184246/28 "2010-06-19T03:17:58Z")
As others have said, bringing back very old threads is not what we do. Start a new thread, link to the old one. Closed. **samclem** , Moderator, General Questions [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-spaniards-pronounce-c-like-th/184246.md?page=1)