I’ve seen a couple of videos from these areas in which the narrator seems to pronounce the “cia” in Murcia and Galicia with a th sound instead of a cee sound, like Murthia and Galithia, phonetically. Can someone who has visited these regions clarify, based on hearing those from the regions speak?
Whereas most of Latin America employs ‘seseo’ - use of the s sound for both c and s - most Spanish employ ‘distinción’, with the c sound being somewhat close to the th you describe.
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As a schoolboy, I learned Spanish pronunciation. Whenever I travel to Mexico, it is a challenge to unlearn it.
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I wouldn’t dream of changing my Portuguese around Brazilians! I might just speak a little slower.
They pronounce it that way because it’s pronounced that way. For example Barcelona is pronounced as “barthelona”.
In Spanish, “c” and “z” are pronounced with a th, “s” is pronounced with that cee sound.
Latin American Spanish is a completely different thing.
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FIFY
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As the others have said, it’s the way they say it there. The people I know from Galicia and also from Madrid, say it with the “th” sound.
But remember, Spain was, and to some extent still is, a collection of kingdoms. Try talking to a Catalan who “pretends” he doesn’t speak Spanish. It’s like a Cajun from Louisiana talking to a Cockney from London.
The Catalans who pretend not to speak Spanish, that happened to me in… Nepal. But they would speak English. It was really strange, sitting on the back of an elephants and trying to figure out what they were saying when we could have just spoken Spanish.
No, I’m not high, it’s a true story.
Italy, too, is a collection of former kingdoms, or principalities. And there are still a lot of dialects.
And in Nicaragua, you still hear the “th” sound, and sometimes the s at the end of a word just disappears, or it did in the late 80s. Had to unlearn it when I came back to SF, where most Spanish speakers are not from Nicaragua or Spain.
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I took high school Spanish in New York as a kid. My teacher, Señor Marillán, taught Castilian Spanish so I learned the ‘th’ pronunciation. After high school we moved to California and I had to unlearn it.
Immediately my mind went to Vince Vaughn’s pronunciation of Barcelona in the Internship.
This post made me laugh out loud.
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The whole trip was like, well, a trip, except the kids were with us. Wes Anderson wouldn’t have put half of it in a film, it was so outlandish.
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Grathias amigo
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I think it’s specific region(s) that use th, but I totally forget which. About half a century since I was there.
I also wasn’t sure if the “th” was specific to regions, though I’ve always said Barthelona. The “ll” as the “j” sound is another old world/new world difference. Just adding to the confusion, as is my wont (perhaps a propos that my current avatar is the Aqueduct at Segovia)
The “th” for c sound is predominately only in Castilian speaking areas. Mainly around Madrid. Castilla y Leon. etc. There are many exceptions however. Barcelona is one. Galicia is also one although it has a separate language there too like the Catalans do. (If I am correct here) It is a dialect that has many variations in Spain so it might be a little different in the South and far North. It was decreed in 1492 by Ferdinand and Isabella to be the national dialect since it was the easiest spoken Spanish at that time. Now it is considered a sign of culture. FWIW.
Piling on, it isn’t even really English th in Castilian Spanish for soft c. That’s more of a short cut way to describe the pronunciation. One’s tongue is not in the same place to make the sounds.
I’m far from the expert on those things but I believe you’re right. And yesterday I was looking at a sherry in a store and decided not to get it after all. The owner, who was quite knowledgeable, asked me which one I had picked up.
The guy who introduced me to that sherry spoke with an Argentine accent. So he called it Bar-ba-dee-jo. The guy asked me to repeat it and I realized that’s what I had said. It’s Barbadillo.
Next time I’m in Nepal I’ll look for an elephant that speaks Argentine!
Greg - I once heard our (Madrileño) friend Helio claim not to understand the label on the back of a wine in Catalan. I don’t speak any Spanish or Catalan, but I know some French and Italian, and I could easily decipher the label!
In recent decades, Italians have worked to preserve regional dialects. That’s true in France, too. But neither the Italians nor the French pretend not to speak the standard versions of their countries’ languages, even though many of their “dialects” are as distinct from standard Italian or Parisian French as Catalan is from Castilian Spanish.
(Footnote: Piemontese is closely related to Provencal and Catalan, and are grouped together as a subgroup of the Romance languages along with, I believe, the Lombardian dialect. I made the mistake once of suggesting to Mauro Mascarello of Giuseppe Mascarello in Barolo that we speak French because the friend I was traveling with didn’t speak any Italian. Mauro’s French was bizarre and only partly comprehensible. I eventually realized that his idea of French was probably Provencal.)
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I guess the keywords here are French and Italian.
Although spoken Catalan sounds relatively similar to spoken Spanish, many Catalan words are often more similar to their French and Italian than Spanish counterparts, so knowing Italian and French might help you to decipher the back label better than a person that might speak only Spanish.
I, too, know French and Italian but not any Spanish or Catalan. I’ve occasionally noticed that knowing some wine terminology, Catalan back labels can be easier to read than Spanish back labels. However, when it comes to text that is not about wine, Catalan soon becomes quite incomprehensible whereas Spanish is often more legible - I think this is because I know quite a bit of Spanish words from TV shows and movies, which help to decipher the text better, whereas Catalan grammar is all Greek to me.
A propos, the funniest thing is that I don’t understand a single word of spoken Portugal Portuguese, but often I have very little trouble reading it, all thanks to my understanding of French and Italian.
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