The spanish of andalusia

THE SPANISH OF ANDALUSIA 

Perhaps no other dialect zone of Spain has received as much attention--from scholars and 

in the popular press--as Andalusia. The pronunciation of Andalusian Spanish is so unmistakable 

as to constitute the most widely-employed dialect stereotype in literature and popular culture. 

Historical linguists debate the reasons for the drastic differences between Andalusian and 

Castilian varieties, variously attributing the dialect differentiation to Arab/Mozarab influence, 

repopulation from northwestern Spain, and linguistic drift. Nearly all theories of the formation 

of Latin American Spanish stress the heavy Andalusian contribution, most noticeable in the 

phonetics of Caribbean and coastal (northwestern) South American dialects, but found in more 

attenuated fashion throughout the Americas. The distinctive Andalusian subculture, at once 

joyful and mournful, but always proud of its heritage, has done much to promote the notion of 

andalucismo within Spain. The most extreme position is that andaluz is a regional Ibero- 

Romance language, similar to Leonese, Aragonese, Galician, or Catalan. Objectively, there is 

little to recommend this stance, since for all intents and purposes Andalusian is a phonetic accent 

superimposed on a pan-Castilian grammatical base, with only the expected amount of regional 

lexical differences. There is not a single grammatical feature (e.g. verb cojugation, use of 

preposition, syntactic pattern) which separates Andalusian from Castilian. At the vernacular 

level, Andalusian Spanish contains most of the features of castellano vulgar. The full reality of 

Andalusian Spanish is, inevitably, much greater than the sum of its parts, and regardless of the 

indisputable genealogical ties between andaluz and castellano, Andalusian speech deserves 

study as one of the most striking forms of Peninsular Spanish expression. 

The region which is now Andalusia was settled by Greeks as early as 600 B. C., and was 

conquered by Carthage around 300 B. C. Most of the Iberian Peninsula was conquered by Rome 

around 200 B. C., although effective Roman occupation did not come until nearly two centuries 

later. Southern Spain was first known as Hispania Ulterior, later changed to Baetica, 

corresponding to modern Andalusia. The name of Andalusia derives from the Arabic al- 

Andalus, bestowed on Moslem Spain by the Moorish conquerors, beginning around 716. Those 

parts of Spain remaining under Christian control were known as Ishbaniya, the Arabized version 

of Hispania. Christians were known as rumi or ayami; the latter term, meaning `foreigners,' was 

eventually applied to Ibero-Romance language written in the Arabic alphabet by reconquered 

Moslems, under the term aljamía and aljamiado. 

The first Moorish capital in Spain was the Caliphate of Córdoba, lasting roughly from 

756 to 1010. This marked the high point of Moorish domination and cultural presence in Spain; 

at its peak, Córdoba had some 500,000 inhabitants, being the largest city in western Europe. 

When Christians and rebellious Moors sacked Córdoba in 1010, Moorish power shifted to 

Sevilla, where Moorish control was centralized until 1248. Córdoba was finally defeated in 

1236., but its decline had begun much earlier. Between 1247-1248, the Christian armies laid 

seige to Sevilla, and the city finally fell. This time Moorish power shifted eastward to Granada, 

where the Kingdom of Granada remained as the last bastion of Arabic control until its final 

defeat by Fernando and Isabel in 1492. 

At first the Moorish presence in Andalusia was limited to the bare minimum needed for 

political, social, and military control. As more Arabs poured into Spain, a stratified and 

linguistic diglossic society emerged, in which official functions were carried out in Arabic, while 

Christians and an increasingly large number of Spanish-born Moors spoke the vernacular Ibero- 

Romance dialects known collectively as mozárabe. Since many of the Mozarabs were expelled

from Spain by late-arriving Moslem troops from North Africa, and since few complete Mozarab 

texts survive (and those which do are written in Arabic script, making it impossible to determine 

vowel quality and many consonantal features), the true nature of Mozarabic language in southern 

Spain cannot be determined. Given the striking differences between Andalusian Spanish, in 

which Arabic influence was most prolongued, and the dialects of northern Spain, it is tempting 

to propose a heavy Arabic contribution to Andalusian speech, but the principal phonetic features 

of Andalusian Spanish appear to derive from a combination of spontaneous evolution and traits 

evolving from rustic Castilian and Leonese dialects brought in by the reconquest: `... lo que 

sabemos de la fonética mozárabe tiene poco, o nada, que ver con las características más notables 

del español de Andalucía' (Narbona et al. 1998: 39). 

The nature and extent of Arabic-Romance bilingualism in Al-Andalus is the subject of 

much uncertainty, and has as a consequence resulted in controversial interpretations of available 

facts. The discovery of jarchas, poetic texts composed in the Arabic alphabet and which 

combined strophes in Arabic, Hebrew, and Ibero-Romance, suggest widespread bilingualism at 

least in the 11th and 12th centuries. By the 13th century, this literary genre had disappeared, 

although the existence of several Arabic texts with lists or translations of Romance words from 

the 13th century indicates that knowledge of Ibero-Romance was still common (Narbona et al. 

1998: 37). Many scholars believe, however, that by the end of the 13th century, Romance- 

Arabic bilingualism in Al-Andalus was rapidly receding. Christians expelled to North Africa 

required translations of the Gospels into Arabic. Since most Christians had been deported from 

southern Spain prior to the reconquest, the remaining population was uniformly Moslem, and 

any Romance dialect they may have used was quickly swept away by the conquering Castilian 

forces: `...ese hipotético romance más o menos residual acabaría sufriendo la misma suerte que 

sus poseedores a manos de los nuevos señores del territorio, la cual ... no fue otra que la 

deportación' (Narbona et al. 1998: 38). In Granada, the last holdout of Moslem Spain, intense 

commercial contact with nearby Castilian-speaking territories resulted in some knowledge of 

Spanish by the Granada Moors, but it is unlikely that any local Mozarabic dialect survived the 

reconquest. Galmés de Fuentes (1996) analyzes possible Arabic syntactic influences in medieval 

Spanish texts. 

The Christian reconquest of Andalusia brought with it the ghettoization of the Moslem 

population, reduced to specific barrios and exercising a minimal linguistic and cultural influence 

on the remaining population. By the time of the reconquest, many of the Moors themselves 

spoke Ibero-Romance, so direct Arabic influence on evolving Andalusian Spanish is unlikely 

under any circumstances: `...nuestros conocimientos actuales de la historia no nos permiten en 

absoluto, sino que lo desaconsejan, establecer vínculos directos entre el venerable romance 

mozárabe de Al-Andalus y las formas peculiares que acabó adquiriendo el castellano en 

Andalucía. No parece que hubiera base humana que sustentara la transmisión de rasgos 

lingüísticos de origen mozárabe al castellano de los conquistadores, y parece que hubo una 

verdadera solución de continuidad, un amplio lapso que separó los últimos momentos de vida del 

romance autóctono del sur de Al-Andalus y la implantación del idioma traído por los castellanos 

...' (Narbona et al. 1998: 38). 

Unlike what happened in, e.g. Toledo, reconquered in the 11th century, where Arabs, 

Jews, and Christians returned to a situation of mutual tolerance, Christian reconquest of 

Andalusia was accompanied by an intense campaign of deportation and concentration, a form of 

ethnic cleansing. Focusing first on the cities, the Christian forces required Moslems to abandon 

their homes and lands, and resettle in the remaining Moorish areas of Spain (ultimately reduced

to just the kingdom of Granada). Following these mass deportations, the conquering Spaniards 

frequently brought in Moorish slaves from other provinces, to work as artesans and skilled 

laborers. The Moslems lived in ghettoes known as morerías or aljamas. The Moors remaining 

in Christian Spain were known as mudéjares, and became increasingly marginalized members of 

an overwhelmingly Christian and Castilian society. In rural regions a considerable Moslem 

population remained, but many were forced to work the lands of Christian conquerors as serfs. 

This resulted in several uprising of Moorish peasants, and in several regions of Murcia and 

Andalusia rural Moslems were later expelled to Granada. 

Narbona et al. (1998: 41) suggest that the linguistic pecularities of Andalusian Spanish 

arose precisely in the late Middle Ages, when the Moslem population of Andalusia had been 

reduced to utter marginality: `hemos de rechazar, pues, con torundidad, cualquier tentación de 

vincular los procesos lingüísticos andaluces a la contaminacióncon el árabe vulgar andalusí, o a 

la deturpación del castellano en boca de hablantes arábigos ... esa falta de prestigio se manifiesta 

en la drástica dismunición' del número de arabismos léxicos que penetran en los siglos XIV y 

XV en castellano, y continuará en las caricaturas del habla de moriscos en la literatura del Siglo 

de Oro ...' Moreover, remaining fragments of Mozarabic speech in reconquered Andalusia, for 

example as appearing in aljamiado and morisco literature of the 15th and 16th centuries, shows 

tendencies far removed from those prevalent in Andalusia. Only in Granada, where Moors 

continued speaking Arabic for at least a century following the reconquest, could significant 

bilingual interaction take place. However, the marginalized status of the Moslem population 

precluded any significant transference from Arabic to Spanish. 

By the 13th century, the Christian settlers in southern Spain began to use the term 

Andalucía to refer to the southern region, restricting a term which for the Arabs had referred to 

all of Spain. The majority of the reconquering population came from Castile and León, and the 

emerging Andalusian Spanish dialect amply reflects the Castilian influence. Tracing Leonese 

contributions is more difficult, although in Extremadura the Leonese reconquest is linguistically 

much more evident. Castilla la Vieja, in particular Viscaya, was responsible for the numerically 

greatest number of Castilian settlers in reconquered Andalusia. Eastern Andalusia, typified by 

Granada, was largely settled by established Andalusians in the reconquered western region 

(Narbona et al. 1998: 44-5). Settlers from Extremadura and the two Castiles were also present 

in large numbers. 

EMERGENCE OF THE ANDALUSIAN DIALECTS 

There is no single text or event which marks the beginnings of Andalusian Spanish, and 

the traits--mostly phonetic--which define contemporary Andalusian speech emerged at different 

times and in different regions. Two large categories of phonetic change, confusion of sibilants 

as seseo/ceceo and widespread neutralization and loss of syllable- and word-final consonants, are 

widely attested in Andalusia beginning just past the end of the late medieval period. Already by 

the end of the 15th century Andalusian speech was regarded as `different' by authors such as 

Antonio de Nebrija and Juan de Valdés, although few specifics appear in their writings. It 

appears that the confusion of sibilants was the first feature to become widely associated with 

Andalusia, although other traits, such as neutralization of syllable-final liquids, probably began 

to appear even earlier. Narbona et al. (1998: 47-50) summarize the many unsupported 

qualifications--most of them derogatory--of Andalusians and their speech which appeared 

towards the end of the 15th century.

In 1579 Damasio de Frías wrote of Andalusian Spanish: Èn la Andalucía, pues, no deja 

de haber sus pronunciaciones, en algunas partes extrañas y muy diversas de las castellanas, como 

en Jaén, Andújar, y, en general todos los andaluces lo son [diversos] mucho de nosotros, en el 

sibilo de la s.' (Mondéjar 1991: 40). 

Three hundred years later, in 1872 and later in 1900, Juan de Valera described 

Andalusian pronunciation, particularly that of Córdoba (Mondéjar 1991: 43-5): 

La cordobesa, por lo común (y entiéndase que hablo de la jornalera o de la criada, y no de 

la dama elegante e instruida) aspira la hache... 

En la pronunciación dejan un poco que desear las cordobesas. La zeda y la ese se 

confunden y unimisman en sus bocas, así como la ele, la erre, y la pe. ¿Quién sabe si 

sería alguna maestra de miga cordobesa la que dijo a sus discípulas: "Niñas, sordao se 

escribe con ele y precerto con pe. 

Mondéjar (1991: 169f.) analyzes a description of Andalusian Spanish offered by the French 

traveller le Baron Charles Davillier around 1862. Imitating the speech of a mozo crúo, Davillier 

offers: `Camará, nojotros no necesitamos jeso.' A more detailed imitation of a sevillano: 

Puez zeñó ... no crea uzté que la han traido de Pariz ni de Londrez, que tal cual uzte la ve, 

la hemoz hecho acá en Zeviya ... 

Zoy e Zeviya er mas terne; 

Gazto la plato rumboso ... 

Cojo con zal la naaja [navaja] ... 

Tengo una jembra ...¡uy qué jembra! 

Es la gloria de Zeviya ... 

Speaking of the Andalusian ceceo, Davillier says `le ceceo, espèce de zézeiement qui consiste à 

prononcer l's comme le c, et à siffler quelque peu en parlant, suffit por trahir dès les ppremières 

paroles les enfants de l'Andalousie.' Describing the loss of /d/ he remarks: 

On peut dire que la lettre D n'existe pas pour eux, car ils ont soin de la retrancher 

de tos les mots où elle se trouve: c'est ainsi qu'ils prononcent caliá por calidad ... 

enfaao pour enfadado ... elante e mi pour delante de mí ... 

He also notes frequent metathesis: `Les Andalous se plaisent à faire très-fréquemment des 

inversions dan l'ordre des lettres: c'est ainsi que la Virgen ... devient la Vinge; premitir se dit 

pour permitir ... et probe pour pobre ...' Finally, Davillier explicitly notes the widespread loss of 

word-final consonants: `La plupart des [consonnes] sont supprimées à la fin des mots, de sorte 

que muger ... se prononce mugé; Jerez, Jeré; Cádiz, Caï; licor, licó, et ainsi de suite.' 

Ramón de la Cruz also reflected western Andalusia ceceo in his plays, for example 

(Mondéjar 1991: 176-7): 

¡Milagro 

como ay zan! ¡Bendito zea, 

quien te jizo tan discreto

y a mi tan zalvaje! ... 

¡Juan, zi zupieras que miedo 

me da aqueya nubeciya! ... 

Interestingly, even at the end of the 19th century these writers did not see fit to mention what 

today is the most striking characteristic of Andalusian Spanish, the massive elimination of wordfinal 

consonants, and of word-internal preconsonantal /s/. Even 19th century costumbrista 

writers such as Alvarez Quintero (@) fail to include loss of final consonants in their eye-dialect 

imitations of Andalusian Spanish. Although consonantal erosion was already generalized in 

19th century Andalusia, it appears that higher sociolects still made a conscious effort at retaining 

these consonants (although in actual speech deletion rates were probably quite high), so that loss 

of final consonants was not attributed to educated Andalusians, even by writers from other 

dialect zones. Mondéjar (991: 71) observes that `Todos los sonidos observados por Machado y 

Alvarez son comunes y generales en la mayor parte de las comarcas andaluzas, pero no todos se 

dan en todos los estratos sociales. Machado y sus compañeros siempre los hacen--estos y 

muchos otros--patrimonio del pueblo, del vulgo, de la gente iletrada, inculta.' He theorizes (p. 

198) that aspiration of syllable-final /s/ began during the 18th century at the very earliest, since it 

is not explicitly documented in literary or folkloric texts until the middle of the 19th century 

Also writing in the latter part of the 19th century, Antonio Machado did make oblique 

reference to loss of /s/ in Andalusia (Mondéjar 1991: 66-7): 

Así observamos que el andaluz muestra predilección por unas consonantes y 

aversión decidida hacia otras: gusta mucho de la aspiración de la h y la 

pronunciación de la s como silbante le fastidia y enoja: transforma en r la l por 

antipática a su espíritu, y apenas si emplea la d cuando no puede echarla a 

hombros ajenos. 

At another point, Machado is more explicit in his imitation, saying that word-finally the 

pronunciation of /s/ `fluctúa entre el de la z debilitado y el de la h aspirada' (Mondéjar 1991: 

70); he also gives an imitation: 

Las lusesita'h que briyan 

De noche en er sementerio, 

Están disiendo à lo'h vivo's 

Que se acuerden de lo'h muerto'h. 

In 1847, Serafín Estébanez Calderón, from Málaga, referred to the loss of final consonants in his 

Escenas andaluzas (Mondéjar 1991: 186): 

Manolito Gázquez además del "socunamiento" o eliminación de las finales de 

todas las palabras y de la transformación continua de las eses en zetas y al 

contrario, pronunciabia de tal manera las sílabas en que se encuentra la de o la 

erre, que sustituía estas letras por cierto sonido semejante a la "de". 

Many other late 19th century authors described Andalusian language, particularly the lyrics of 

the cante flamenco (e.g. Schuchardt 1881).

In his Historias para niños sin corazón (1909-1912), Juan Ramón Jiménez offered 

another imitation of Andalusian speech, in the poem `La carbonerilla quemada' (Mondéjar 1991: 

146): 

Mare, me jeché arena zobre la quemaúra. Te yamé, te yamé dejde er camino ... 

¡Nunca ejtuvo ejto tan zolo! Laj yama me comían, mare, yo te yamaba, y tú 

nunca benía! 

In his Diálogo de la lengua, Juan de Valdés describes Andalusian seseo, although without 

explicitly attributing this regionally circumscribed trait to Andalusia: `... por hazer dizen haser, 

y por razón rasón, y por rezío resío.' For Nebrija, who had lived in Sevilla, seseo and ceceo 

were speech defects rather than regional traits. 

PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY 

Studies of Andalusian Spanish phonetics and phonology include Carbonero (1982b, 

1982c), Lamíquiz (1982), The following features are most commonly associated with 

Andalusian Spanish, although as will be seen, there is considerable variation within the 

Andalusian dialect complex. These features are most accurate for `western' Andalusia, that is the 

provinces of Sevilla, Cádiz, and Huelva, the heartland of the post-reconquest Andalusian 

Spanish. This is also the region of Andalusia which represented the highest rates of emigration 

to the Americas; hence the Àndalusian' aspects of Latin American Spanish in reality reflect 

these western provinces more than being common denominators of all of Andalusia. 

(1) Syllable-final /s/ is aspirated or more commonly elided. Word-final /s/ is routinely 

elided in all but the most formal or artificial speech. There are a few villages in the north of the 

provinces of Huelva, Córdoba, and Jaén, in which a final sibilant [s] is preserved with some 

frequency (Narbona et al. 1998: 164-5). 

(2) Traditionally western Andalusia does not distinguish /s/ and /θ/; in fact Spanish seseo 

(the neutralization of the four medieval sibilants /s/, /z/, /t s /, /d z / to /s/) appears to have 

originated in southwestern Spain. In reality, most of the rural areas have exhibited more ceceo 

(neutralization of /s/ and /θ/ to [θ]) although this is a socially stigmatized pronunciation. 

Currently the urban seseo of western Andalusia is spreading into small towns and rural areas, but 

there remains considerable variation and sociolinguistic stratification of this pronunciation. 

Since /s/ and /θ/ are not systematically distinguished, most Andalusians pronounce at least some 

words with [θ], not always in accordance with Spanish etymology. It is not uncommon for an 

individual speaker to pronounce a particular word sometimes with [s] and sometimes with [θ]. 

(3) Word- and phrase-final /n/ is velarized throughout Andalusia. In more advanced 

pronunciation the velar nasal disappears, leaving only a lightly nasalized vowel. This nasality 

sometimes disappears, particularly in final unstressed vowels, with the result that verb paradigms 

can be drastically simplified in vernacular speech (cf. Mondéjar 1970): 

hablo hablamo 

habla(s) 

habla habla(n) 

(4) The posterior fricative /x/ is a weak aspiration [h] in much of western Andalusia, and 

alternates with velar and uvular fricatives in the remainder of the region. In Jaén, for example,

x/ tends to receive a strong guttural pronunciation, and the province is jokingly referred to as `la 

tierra del ronquío' (Carrasco Cantos 1981: 89; Moya Corral 1979: 77-79). Much of eastern 

Andalusia has a velar fricative [x] (Narbona et al. 1998: 168-9). 

(5) Traditional Andalusian Spanish retained many instances of Latin initial /f-/ as [h]: 

hembra [hembra], harto [harto], etc. Currently this pronunciation is confined to uneducated 

rustic speech, as well as to the formulaic language of Flamenco culture (e.g. cante jondo). 

(6) Word-final and intervocalic /d/ routinely disappears, not only in the participal ending 

-ado (as occurs throughout most of Spain) but in other combinations as well (Narbona et al. 

1998: 177-181). In Flamenco nomenclature, pronunciation without /d/ has become fixed: 

cantaó(r) `Flamenco singer,' tocaó(r) `Flamenco musician,' tablao `Flamenco dance club.' 

(7) Word-internal preconsonantal /l/ and /r/ are frequently neutralized, except in formal 

speech. Proportionally, [r] tends to predominate as the result (alma > arma, espalda > ehparda). 

Aspiration of the syllable-final liquid sometimes occurs (carta > [kahta], as does occasional 

gemination of the following consonant (algo > aggo, puerta > puetta) (Mondéjar 1979: 398- 

402; 1991: chap. IX). 

(8) In word-final position, /l/ and /r/ are frequently lost, except in the most formal 

speech. This is most noteworthy in verbal infinitives, but this pronunciation in principle affects 

all words. 

(9) It is frequently stated that Andalusians do not possess the phoneme /ʎ/, and indeed 

the loss of this phoneme (yeísmo) in Spain is first attested for Andalusia. However, as in the rest 

of Spain, yeísmo in Andalusia has predominantly been an urban phenomenon, spreading 

gradually to rural areas. To this day there are small pockets of speakers (even in the 

overwhelmingly yeísta provinces of Sevilla and Huelva) who distinguish /y/ and /λ/. Mendoza 

Abreu (1985: 84-5) documents /ʎ/ for Lepe, Huelva, while Becerra Hiraldo and Vargas Labella 

(1986: 17-18) describe pockets of /ʎ/ in the province of Jaén. 

(10) Nasalization of vowels not in contact with an etymological nasal consonant 

sometimes occurs in rural Andalusian speech. For example mejor [mehõŋ]/[mehõ], pie [pjẽŋ]/ 

[pjẽ], perejil [perẽhí] (Mendoza Abreu 1985: 36). 

(11) In some regions, prevocalic voiceless stops are voiced, and are sometimes 

pronounced as fricatives: sagudir < sacudir, gabina < cabina, seba < sepa, porgue < porque, la 

pada < las patas (Becerro Hiraldo and Vargas Labella 1986: 18-19; Salvador 1969; Moya 

Corral 1979: 53-60). 

(12) In a few regions voiceless stops are aspirated, particularly in stressed syllables: 

pero [phéro], todo [thóðo] (Becerro Hiraldo and Vargas Labella 1986: 19; Moya Corral 1979: 

60-62; Narbona et al. 1998: 147-8). 

(13) The fricative pronunciation of /tʃ/ as [ʃ]is frequent in some parts of Andalusia, 

particularly in Sevilla and Jaén (Becerro Hiraldo and Vargas Labella 1986: 20; Narbona et al. 

1998: 148-9). 

(14) In some parts of the province of Jaén, the initial /l/ of definite articles is sometimes 

lost: a viga < las vigas, de o pobre < de los pobres, o que pasa < lo que pasa (Becerro Hiraldo 

and Vargas Labella 1986: 20; Moya Corral 1979: 42-3). 

(15) Although Andalusian Spanish is noted for the neutralization of preconsonantal /l/ 

and /r/ (usually favoring [r] as the output), there is some neutralization of intervocalic liquids, a 

phenomena not typical of other Spanish dialect zones, but once found in early Afro-Hispanic

language (Lipski 1986): suero < suelo, clavere < claveles, sare < sale, me fui roca < me fui loca 

(Becerro Hiraldo and Vargas Labella 1986: 20; Moya Corral 1979: 50-51). 

(16) Throughout Andalusia, there is some neutralization of /l/ and /r/ in OBSTRUENT + 

LIQUID onset clusters; [r] is more usually the result of the neutralization, but [l] occasionally 

occurs, much as in earlier Afro-Hispanic language: prátano < plátano, prazuela < plazuela, 

reflán < refrán (Becerro Hiraldo and Vargas Labella 1986: 21; F. Salvador 1978; Moya Corral 

1979: 127-8; Narbona et al. 1998: 175). Occasionally in rustic speech, the liquid is lost, much 

as in early Afro-Hispanic language: made < madre, ombe < hombre, karo < claro, otro < otro, 

ehtopeao < estropeados, puebo < pueblo, ejepo < ejemplo (Moya Corral 1979: 128). 

(17) Syllable-final preconsonantal /r/ undergoes additional modifications, for example in 

Ubeda, Jaén /r/ > [δ]: cadne < carne, modedno < moderno, gobiedno < gobierno (Becerro 

Hiraldo and Vargas Labella 1986: 20). Very occasionally, intervocalic /l/ > [ð]: sade~ < salen, 

cadi < Cáliz, lo dío < los líos, se de < se les (Moya Corral 1979: 51). 

(18) In vernacular Andalusian speech, /mb/ sometimes reduces fo [m], /nd/ to [n], and 

/ng/ to [ŋ] or [n] (Becerro Hiraldo and Vargas Labella 1986: 20; Moya Corral 1979: 88-93): 

tamié < también, estupeno < estupendo, teno < tengo. 

(19) Intervocalic /r/ falls in rustic speech throughout Andalusia: quieo < quiero, tíalo < 

tíralo, ubiea < hubiera, señoa < señora (Becerro Hiraldo and Vargas Labella 1986: 20; Moya 

Corral 1979: 48). Loss of intervocalic /l/ is considerably less common: sae < sale, dwe < duele, 

famía < familia, bae < vale, peota < pelota, piare < pilares, úsua < Ursula, árboe < árboles, etc. 

(Moya Corral 1979: 45-6). Given widespread loss of word-final /l/, this may lead to a new type 

of plural formation: arbo/árboe, perá < peral/perae, animá < animal/animae. 

(20) The palatal fricative /j/ often acquires a fricative pronunciation, known as y rehilada 

in Spanish (Moya Corral 1979: 81-84). 

(20) The combination /rl/ in INFINITIVE + CLITIC combinations sometimes emerges as [j] 

in rustic speech, much as in old Spanish: cantaye < cantarle (Becerro Hiraldo and Vargas 

Labella 1986: 27). 

(21) The initial /l/ of definite articles sometimes assimilates to a preceding nasal in rustic 

speech: enna [en la] mesa, conna [con la] mano (Narbona et al. 1998: 176). 

MORPHOLOGY 

(1) Western Andalusian Spanish does not use vosotros or the corresponding verb forms; 

ustedes subsumes all second-person plural functions. This is one of the principal linguistic links 

between Andalusia (and the Canary Islands) and Latin American Spanish. In rustic speech, the 

pronoun ustedes may combine with verb forms belonging to the vosotros paradigm (Mendoza 

Abreu 1985: 103; Narbona 1979: 271): hasta que ustedes no se váyais; ¿a qué hora se vais a 

ir? The third-person plural clitic pronouns les or se may be replaced by vos [bo] in rustic speech 

(Mendoza Abreu 1985: 104): os he dicho [boh e dicho], iros fuera [dibo pa fuera]. In the 

second person plural, the combination se os (often pronounced sos or sus) may be used with 

reflexive verbs: se os [sos] va a caer gives rise to ¿Cómo sos llamáis? (Rodríguez-Izquierdo 

1982a: 132; Becerro Hiraldo and Vargas Labella 1986: 41). In Jaén, where vosotros forms 

compete with ustedes, the verbal desinence often receives stress in normally unstressed endings 

such as the imperfect: traiáis < traíais, veniáis < veníais. Even first and third person forms are 

sometimes affected: habiá < había, traiámos < traíamos (Becerro Hiraldo and Vargas Labella 

1986: 27).

(2) Diminutives with intrusive consonants after final stressed vowels (José > Joselito, 

café > cafelito) are found throughout Andalusia. 

(3) There is considerable non-standard gender assignment to certain nouns, as in rustic 

Spanish worldwide: la calor, la alfiler, etc. 

(4) The possessive pronouns suyo, nuestro, etc. are frequently replaced by de él, de 

usted, de nosotros, etc. (Mendoza Abreu 1985: 105). 

(5) More so than in the rest of Spain, imperfect subjunctive usage overwhelmingly 

prefers -ra endings to the -se paradigms. 

(6) Enclitic pronouns are sometimes used with finite verbs in colloquial speech: diríase, 

trátanse, etc. (Becerro Hiraldo and Vargas Labella 1986: 41). 

(7) Analogical forms abound in vernacular Andalusian Spanish, as in rustic speech in the 

rest of the Spanish-speaking world: frega < friega, entriega < entrega, dijieron < dijeron, 

pidimos < pedimos, etc. 

(8) The widespread loss of word-final consonants often leads to phonological 

restructuring in vernacular speech, resulting in the loss of canonical plural endings: árbo < 

árbol, árboles; re < res, reses, etc. (Carrasco Cantos 1981: 99). Non-etymological consonants 

also appear: quinqué > quinquenes, alfile(r) > alfilele, relo(j) > relore. 

SYNTAX 

There are no unique syntactic characteristics of Andalusian Spanish. In compensation for 

the massive loss of word-final consonants, there is some increased use of overt subject pronouns 

which would be redundant in the presence of intact verbal endings (e.g. Mendoza Abreu 1985: 

33 for Lepe, Huelva; Alvar 1955: 311; Rodríguez-Izquierdo 1982a: 129), but this is not as 

noticeable as in Caribbean Spanish dialects. Negative expressions of the sort más nada are 

sometimes found in Andalusia (Mendoza Abreu 1985: 139; Narbona et al. 1998: 119; Mondéjar 

1970: 30; 1991: 163), but not as frequently as in the Canary Islands or the Caribbean. Narbona 

(1979, 1986) examines several syntactic combinations in Andalusian Spanish, none of which are 

unique or peculiar to this region. In questions, a second person pronoun may appear in 

colloquial speech without being attached as an argument of a verb: ¿Verdad TÚ? ¿No verdad 

USTED que no es así? (Narbona 1979: 264). Also found at times is the use of periphrastic 

auxiliary verbs with lack of part participle agreement: llevo andado muchos kilómetros; 

llevamos visto ya tres o cuatro casas (Narbona 1979: 266-7). Very occasionally, double 

negation is found: À mí eso no me ... no me gusta, no' (Rodríguez-Izquierdo 1982b: 155; 

1985b). Other syntactic studies include Rodríguez Izquierdo 1985a, 1985b; Carbonero 1985; 

Fuentes 1985; Agudo 1985). 

DETAILS OF THE BEHAVIOR OF SYLLABLE- AND WORD-FINAL /S/ 

Although the statement that syllable- and word-final /s/ in Andalusian Spanish is weak and tends 

to aspirate and disappear is accurate for the entire region, there are many nuances of this 

phenomenon, distributed regionally, socially, and idiosyncratically, which merit additional 

attention.

(1) In general, when word-final /s/ is aspirated, this aspiration remains (usually with 

resyllabification) in prevocalic environments: los amigos [lohamigo(h)], es esto [ehehto]. As in 

other Spanish dialect zones, the final /s/ of articles sometimes remains as [s] before word-initial 

stressed vowels: los otros [losotro(h)], las once [lasonse] (cf. Alvar et al. 1973; Guitart 1981, 

1982; Harris 1983: 46-7; Lafford 1982; Lipski 1984; Seklaoui 1989; Terrell 1977, 1979, 1981, 

1983 and the references contained therein). However, throughout Andalusia, and in many Latin 

American dialects which aspirate word-final /s/, word-final prevocalic aspiration is blocked 

when the following word contains [h] (as a representation of the posterior fricative /x/) in the 

onset of the immediately following syllable: los hijos [losího(h)], los ajos [losáho(h)], los ojos 

[losóho(h)]. Blockage of aspiration before a following [h] may even occur before word-initial 

UNSTRESSED vowels, a context in which aspiration of /s/ is otherwise categorical in the same 

dialects: mis hijitos [misihíto(h)], más ajenos [masahéno(h)]. The blockage of /s/-aspiration 

before [h] takes one of two forms. The most common is the failure of aspiration to apply, 

retaining word-final /s/ as [s]. The alternative is complete deletion of word-final /s/, which is 

otherwise a rare outcome of prevocalic /s/-reduction in these dialects. 

The blockage of aspiration only occurs when [h] is the immediately following consonant, 

with an intervening vowel. If one or more consonants intervenes between the word-final /s/ and 

[h], /s/-aspiration is not blocked: las orejas [lahoréha(h)], los ángeles [lohánhele(h)]. In the 

dialects under consideration, blockage of word-final prevocalic /s/-aspiration is general when the 

first consonant in the following word is onset-INITIAL [h], and occurs only sporadically when the 

immediately following consonant is syllable-FINAL [h] < /s/: los astros [loháhtro(h)]- 

[losáhtro(h)] (cf. Torreblanca Espinosa 1976: 58). 

The inhibition of final /s/-aspiration has been noticed by Spanish dialectologists, whose 

comments are instructive in demonstrating that more than an occasional coincidence is at stake. 

A perusal of some of the accounts provides insight into native speakers' intuitions concerning 

disharmonic processes. 

Carbonero (1982: 33), describing the speech of Seville, notes that `la s se pronuncia con 

regularidad cuando en la sílaba siguiente aparece el sonido j, para evitar la posible cacofonía que 

produciría la presencia de dos sonidos similares tan cercanos: no se dice "loh oho" sino los oho 

`los ojos'; ni "loh iho" sino los iho `los hijos'.' Similarly, Carbonero (1982c: 145) comments that 

aspiration of word-final prevocalic /s/ occurs except `los contextos en que está cerca otra 

aspiración procedente de la pronunciación de [x], donde por eufonía permanece la -s final de la 

palabra y ante vocal de la palabra siguiente. Así [los oho] y no [loh oho].' Vaz de Soto (1981: 

79), describing the same dialect, states `... no es raro que reaparezca la "s," sobre todo en 

pronunciación culta o cuidada ... y siempre, por razones de eufonía, si sigue una "j" en la sílaba 

siguiente: "los-ojo" ... "mis ijo" ... "dos-ajo".' Torreblanca Espinosa (1976: 58), studying a 

dialect of southeastern Spain, declares èn el habla de Villena, hay otra posición donde el 

alófono [s] se conserva al final de palabra: cuando, en la palabra siguiente, aparece una fricativa 

laríngea, al final de la primera sílaba, o una fricativa faríngea, inicial de la segunda sílaba. 

Ejemplos: [lasähpä:] "las aspas", [dosóho:] "dos ojos".' Rodríguez Castellano and Palacio 

(1948: 591-2), commenting on a central Andalusian dialect in which SA is nearly categorical, 

note that èntre personas campesinas de avanzada edad, no se aspira esta s en palabras que tienen 

otro sonido aspirado, de cualquier origen que sea ... y se comprende que sea así, pues aunque la 

tendencia a aspirarse la s es general, en este caso tenía que hacer excepción por un sencillo 

motivo de disimilación. El que no se diga *loh oho "los ohos" se debe a la misma razón que ha 

impedido el mantenimiento de la h en la forma etimológica hiho (

Cummins (1974: 72) gives numerous cases of alternation between [s] and [h] for wordfinal 

prevocalic /s/ in southwestern Spain; although [s] does occasionally occur when the first 

consonant following the word-initial vowel is other than [h], /s/-reduction is uniformly blocked 

by the presence of a following [h]: [seis ihu] seis hijos, etc. 

In the Canary Islands, where final /s/-aspiration is categorical in nearly all regional 

dialects, Catalán (1960) also notes blockage of final SA when two àspirations' would occur in 

close succession. 

La [s] surge, no sólo en el habla cuidada de la oratoria, sino conversacionalmente 

siempre que se entrecomilla o subraya una palabra; y desde luego, es aún 

obligada, en ciertos casos, cuando queda intervocálica por fonética sintáctica ... el 

progresivo desvinculamiento de la -[h] implosiva respecto al fonema /s/ se 

patentiza en la tendencia marcada del habla popular a preferir la -[h] ... en la 

mayor parte de las situaciones en que se convierte en explosiva por fonética 

sintáctica; sólo en las voces en que hay otra aspirada en la sílaba inmediata triunfa 

la -[s] por disimilación ... únos-óhoh, grándes-ohoh, ésos-ahnoh ... nos-ábreh la 

puérta, cómpras-óhah ...; en las voces esdrújulas la disimilación se produce 

aunque medie una sílaba átona entre las dos aspiraciones: fiéras-águilah, losútileh 

de trabáho ... y, en contra-partida, no ocurre la disimilación en las voces 

agudas, pese a la aparente proximidad de las dos aspiradas: máh atráh, báh atráh 

... noh iráh a desir ... 

Catalán's description suggests an even longer-range disharmonic effect, but the inhibiting effects 

which he ascribes to [h] in combinations like los útiles is in reality a manifestation of the wellattested 

inhibition of /s/-aspiration before stressed vowels in DETERMINER + NOUN combinations. 

The maps of the Atlas lingüístico y etnográfico de Andalucía (Alvar et al. 1973) provide 

limited confirmation of the blocking of /s/-reduction before [h], despite the fact that only citation 

forms were used, rather than examples from connected speech. The two relevant test items are 

los ojos (map 1631) and los árboles (map 1632). In both cases, the final /s/ of a determiner is 

followed by a stressed word-initial vowel, a context typically favorable to the retention of /s/ as 

[s] even in /s/-reducing dialects. Indeed the /s/ of los in los árboles emerges as a sibilant in many 

regions, but among more radical dialects of eastern Andalusia, aspiration to [h] is also frequent. 

In some eastern Andalusian zones, the final /s/ disappears altogether, laxing the preceding vowel. 

In the case of los ojos, the final /s/ of los is uniformly a sibilant (except for some cases of total 

loss in eastern Andalusia). Significantly, the sibilant pronunciation is found even in those areas 

where final /s/ is aspirated in los árboles. No cases of the contrary distribution are found, i.e. 

where the first /s/ in los ojos is pronounced as [h] or elided, while the first /s/ in los árboles is 

pronounced as a sibilant. Given the nature of the sample, these data are not conclusive in 

themselves, but they confirm the implicational relation described above. 

In Latin American Spanish, blocking of /s/-reduction is not widely documented, although 

careful observation of many dialects reveals configurations comparable to those found in 

Andalusia. In one of the few explicit descriptions, Castelli and Mosonyi (1986: 117) give data 

from Venezuelan Spanish: `Las palabras bisílabas que comienzan fonéticamente en vocal 

acentuada y cuya primera consonante es el fonema /h/, no permiten la aspiración de /s/ final de la 

palabra anterior.' As examples, the authors cite los ojos, buenos hijos and unos ajos. The 

restriction of SA blockage to disyllabic words appears to be coincidental; Spanish contains

elatively few proparoxytones of the form Vh..., but it is likely that a combination such as los 

ágiles would also impede final SA in the same dialect. 

Another environment not explicitly mentioned in the published literature, but in which 

blockage of SA is observable to a lesser degree, involves word-final /s/ when an instance of [h] 

PRECEDES: the final /s/ in cajas especiales, ojos abiertos, coges algo, etc. also resists weakening 

to [h] in dialects where final SA is generalized. In recorded field interviews by the present writer 

this trend has been observed in Seville, the Canary Islands, and in several Caribbean dialects, 

including Cuban, Panamanian, and Puerto Rican. 

No quantitative data will be presented here, since the text frequency of the sequence 

/...hVs#V.../ is too low to be statistically significant. Previous quantitative studies have not 

focused on this environment, since attention has been limited to the context immediately 

FOLLOWING word-final /s/ and its effects on SA. 

Instead of blocking SA, an alternative route of evolution is followed in some dialects in 

which /x/ is realized as [h]: word-final prevocalic /s/ simply disappears when /x/ is the 

immediately following consonant (e.g. Carrasco Cantos 1981: 82, García Martínez 1986, Moya 

Corral 1979, Zamora Vicente 1943). Equally significant is the behavior of word-final prevocalic 

/s/ before a following [h] in dialects where SA is categorical, but in which the phonetic 

realization of intervocalic /x/ is significantly different from that of word-final prevocalic reduced 

/s/ > [h]. For example, Salvador (1957: 225) finds it noteworthy that in the Andalusian dialect of 

Cúllar-Baza, reduction of word-final prevocalic /s/ is not blocked by the presence of /x/ in the 

following syllable `como ocurre en otros lugares.' In the Cúllar-Baza dialect, final /s/ is elided 

rather than aspirated in this context, so the sequence [...hVh...] is avoided. 

The data just surveyed give evidence of systematic, although not exceptionless, blockage 

of final SA before word-initial (usually stressed) vowels followed by [h], with the latter 

consonant preferably in intervocalic position. The inhibiting effect of initial stressed vowels on 

SA is combined with the avoidance of [...hVh...] to provide an especially propitious environment 

for the observation of consonantal disharmony. DETERMINER + NOUN combinations involving 

commonly-used nouns, e.g. mis hijos, dos ojos, provide frequently recurring syntagms in which 

avoidance of SA can be implemented. Speakers are likely to internalize such frequent 

combinations and to consistently realize the article with final [s]. Blockage of final SA in 

infrequent combinations such as niños ágiles, más ajeno, or tienes ajo is less apt to be noticed, 

since the first time such a combination is pronounced, a speaker is likely to apply final SA in the 

normal fashion. If the combination recurs frequently enough to provoke the cumulative malaise 

which ultimately triggers disharmony, only then might SA be consistent enough as to be noticed. 

This accounts for the fact that explicit mention of blockage of SA nearly always involves 

DETERMINER + NOUN pairs. 

There are additional circumstances in which the same disharmony phenomena may be 

observed. One case occurs in many regional dialects of El Salvador and Honduras, where word- 

INITIAL /s/ is subject to reduction when following a vowel-final word (Lipski 1983, 1985, 1986). 

This phenomenon is also found in the vernacular Spanish of northern New Mexico and southern 

Colorado, and sporadically in vernacular Andalusian Spanish, where it is sometimes referred to 

as heheo (Narbona et al. 1998: 170-1; Mondéjar 1979: 397-8; Moya Corral 1979: 80-81). 

Narbona et al. (1998: 170) observe that `... el heheo ofrece todas las características de un 

proceso de cambio lingüístico embrionario que no ha podido desarrollarse y permanece bajo la 

forma de variación, esto es, afectando sólo a la pronunciación de determinadas palabras o 

restringido, todo lo más, al habla de personas muy localizadas, generalmente pertenecientes a

estratos socioculturales muy bajos, y casi siempre en registros sumamento descuidados o 

familiares.' Lipski (1983, 1985a, 1986d, 1987) offers similar observations for the Central 

American Spanish dialects of El Salvador and Honduras. In practice, initial SA usually occurs in 

closely-knit syntactic configurations, such as DETERMINER + NOUN (la semana), ADVERB + 

CLITIC (no se puede), NOUN + ADJECTIVE or ADJECTIVE + NOUN (parque central, cincuenta 

centavos), etc. A scan of an extensive corpus of recorded material fails to reveal a single 

instance of initial SA when the syllable immediately following the /s/ contains [h]: la cejuda, lo 

sujetaron, una sajadura, etc. Due to the scarcity of configurations allowing this assertion to be 

tested, the conclusions are suggestive rather than definitive, but the general patterns of initial SA 

in these Central American dialects fall in line with the behavior of final SA in southern Spanish 

and Caribbean dialects. 

The phenomena described above all involve the presence of a word boundary, the 

extension of an originally syllable-final SA to intervocalic contexts through the juxtaposition of 

a vowel-initial word. In the case of word-initial SA in Central American dialects, the syntactic 

conditioning appears to result from a fleeting misanalysis of the position of the word boundary. 

If the avoidance of [...hVh...] combinations is the result of OCP-induced consonantal disharmony 

or similar constraints based on phonological adjacency on some appropriate tier, then there 

should be no necessary syntactic conditioning. In fact, the constraint in question does hold 

word-internally; its effects are obscured by the scarcity of opportunities for observation of the 

disharmony. There are two phenomena which provide corroborative data; one is the blockage of 

word-internal SA adjacent to [h], and the other is a global morphophonemic constraint against 

underlying /...hVh.../ combinations. 

In the same Central American dialects where word-initial /s/ is weakened, the change /s/ 

> [h] occasionally affects word-INTERNAL intervocalic /s/, particularly before unstressed vowels. 

In Honduran/Salvadoran Spanish, reduction of word-internal intervocalic /s/ is never as common 

as in contexts involving /s/ adjacent to a word boundary, but at the vernacular level it is common 

to hear words like casa, cosa, presidente, etc. pronounced with intervocalic [h]. A scan of the 

same corpus fails to produce a single case where aspiration of intervocalic /s/ would produce a 

[...hVh...] sequence: Josefina, pasajero, pajizo, anglosajón, agasajar, masajista, and the like 

never exhibit the change /s/ > [h]. The low text frequency of probative cases makes the evidence 

more circumstantial than conclusive, but there is consistency with previous results. 1 

Due to the phonotactic distribution of Spanish /s/ and /x/, when avoidance of [...hVh...] is 

manifested by blockage of SA, the /s/ in question occupies the first of the two relevant 

consonantal positions, while the following [h] is a realization of the posterior fricative /x/. For 

most Spanish dialects, the only way in which [...hVh...] could arise from TWO instances of 

underlying /s/ would be in the configuration /...s#VsC/, as in las hostias, los ostiones, estos 

asnos, etc. Torreblanca (1976)'s citation of SA blockage in los astros and las aspas, and Catalán 

(1960)'s observation of SA blockage in esos asnos both give avoidance of [...hVh...] as the 

motivating force. However, syllable-final [h] < /s/ does not routinely trigger SA blockage in any 

/s/-reducing dialect; otherwise, we would expect frequent retention of /s/ as [s] in hijastro, es 

esto, eres español, tienes asma, las cajas, tu gesto, etc. In fact, such combinations do not trigger 

SA blockage with anything approaching the regularity of combinations in which the second [h] 

is intervocalic, as in más ajo. In the phrases esos asnos and las aspas, the well-documented 

inhibition of final SA before stressed vowels in DETERMINER + NOUN groups is the decisive 

factor; the fact that a syllable-final /s/ is realized as [h] following [...hV] does not usually 

override an otherwise expected SA. In other words, the true sequence avoided by blockage of

SA is [...hVhV...]. The fact that not all instances of [h] are èqual' in blocking SA must be 

accounted for in any comprehensive analysis of these disharmonic phenomena. 

(2) In many Andalusian dialects, when word-final /s/ is lost before a following wordinitial 

vowel, sinalefa or the prosodic linking of the two vowels fails to occur. Thus, la hora 

[lao-ra] vs. las horas [la-o-ra]. Sometimes a brief glottal stop signals the presence of the deleted 

consonant (Uruburu Bidaurrázaga 1990: 17 and passim.; Rodríguez Castellano and Palacio 

1948: 592). Occasionally, [s] or [ ] is retained when word-final /s/ is followed in close syntactic 

juncture by a vowel; this is more common when the word-initial vowel is tonic, but also occurs 

occasionally with atonic initial vowels. Mendoza Abreu (1985: 60) documents los hilos [lo ílo], 

los alfileres [laharfilére]. 

(3) Compensatory lengthening of the preceding vowel is a frequent concomitant of loss 

of word-internal preconsonantal /s/, particularly when the preceding vowel carries the main 

stress (Hualde 1989a; Uruburu Bidaurrázaga 1990: 45). 

(4) In many parts of Andalusia, the combinations /sb/, /sd/, /sg/ emerge as [φ], [θ], and 

[x], respectively; in other words, the two sounds merge into a single voiceless fricative with the 

same point of articulation as the original syllable-initial voiced obstruent (Hualde 1989a; 

Uruburu Bidaurrázaga 1990: 49; Moya Corral 1979: 119; Mendoza Abreu 1985: 64-5). 

(5) Although in general word-final plural /s/ in noun phrases is freely lost in Andalusian 

Spanish, without any necessary compensatory traits either in phonetics or in morphology 

(Ranson 1992), the first plural /s/ of a noun phrase is sometimes retained as an aspiration [h]: las 

casas [lah kasa] Uruburu Bidaurrázaga 1990: 68-70 and passim.). 

(6) In general throughout Andalusia, women tend to retain more instances of syllablefinal 

/s/ as an aspirate (sometimes even as a sibilant) as opposed to men of the same region and 

socioeconomic class, who as a group prefer elision of /s/ (Uruburu Bidaurrázaga 1990: 70 and 

passim.; Salvador 1952; Alvar 1956, 1969; ). 

(7) In a small region of Córdoba province, the vowel /a/ in the final syllable of nouns 

and adjectives is realized as [e] when plural /s/ is lost: las pesetas [le pesete] (Ranson 1992; 

Alonso 1956; Alvar 1958; Becerro Hiraldo and Vargas Labella 1986: 30). The loss of other 

word-final consonants produces similar results: hospital [opité], cuántas [kwante], and even más 

mal [me me]. Ranson (1992) found the phenomenon to be rapidly disappearing, occuring only in 

the speech of the region's oldest residents. Alonso (1956) describes the geographical area of the 

Àndalucía de la E' as the triangle formed by the towns of Puente Genil (Córdoba), Estepa 

(Sevilla), and Alameda (Málaga) 

(8) By far the most widely-studied aspect of Andalusian phonology, both descriptively 

and in theoretical analyses, is the behavior of word-final vowels following the elision of final /s/, 

/l/ and /r/. In most dialects of Spanish, vowels in closed syllables (ending in consonants) are 

articulatorily more lax and/or slightly lower than the same vowels in open syllables. This 

difference is subphonemic and is rarely noticed. In western Andalusia (meaning the provinces of 

Sevilla, Huelva, Cádiz, and parts of the provinces of Málaga and Córdoba), loss of final 

consonants is accompanied by tensing of the now word-final vowel. In other words, the vowel 

quality does not reflect the fact that a final consonant was once present: las casas and más 

perros sound the same as la casa and más perro. In much of eastern Andalusia, including the 

provinces of Almería, Granada, most of Jaén (Becerra Hiraldo and Vargas Labella 1986: 13-15; 

Carrasco Cantos 1981: chap. 1; Moya Corral 1979: 23-30), and parts of Córdoba and Málaga, 

the vowel laxness remains after the consonant has been lost, and is converted into a phonemic 

distinction: la casa [la kasa] vs. las casas [lä kasä]; sabe [saße] vs. sabes [saßë].

Psycholinguistic research has shown that eastern Andalusian speakers are capable of distinguish 

these pairs even in isolated word-reading tasks where no surrounding context is present. Such 

speakers are sometimes confused by the speech of western Andalusians, who sometimes lax final 

vowels in a fashion not consistent with the loss of consonants. Similarly, western Andalusians 

are rarely able to distinguish singular and plural forms in eastern Andalusian Spanish by vowel 

quality alone. 

As an additional facet of Andalusian vowel laxing, in many varieties of eastern 

Andalusian Spanish, laxing of the final vowel produces vowel harmony, typically affecting 

vowels up to and including the stressed vowel: álamos [älämö], calabazas [kalabäsä]. The high 

vowels /i/ and /u/ are normally exempt from vowel laxing, in final syllables and through vowel 

harmony. In some Andalusian dialects, vowel laxing harmony extends sporadically and variably 

to pretonic vowels, and even to preceding clitics: me lo decías [mëlödësiä]. 

Early studies of this vowel laxing focused on its phonological implications, the possible 

creation of between three and five new vowel phonemes in these Spanish dialects (Alarcos 

Llorach 1958, 1983; Alonso, Zamora Vicente and Canellada 1950; Cerdà 1984; Contreras 1975- 

6; López Morales 1984; Llorente Maldonado 1962; Mondéjar 1970: chap. 3; Navarro Tomás 

1939; Salvador 1977). There followed a large number of descriptive studies of Andalusian 

Spanish in general and specific regional and local dialects in particular. At the same time, a 

search was conducted among other varieties of Spanish, in Spain and Latin America, which 

might exhibit similar phonological behavior. In Latin America, despite considerable attention by 

descriptive linguistics and phoneticians, and despite much anecdotal evidence of individual cases 

of vowel laxing, no convincing case has been made for systematic vowel laxing of the sort found 

in eastern Andalusia. Within Spain, there is some evidence of compensatory phonemicized 

vowel laxing in Extremadura (e.g. Salvador Plans 1987a: 26), as well as in neighboring dialects 

of Murcia and Alicante (e.g. Sempere Martínez 1995: 26; Torreblanca Espinosa 1976: chap. 8). 

On the other hand, López Morales (1984) finds that most instances of laxed vowels in eastern 

Andalusian Spanish are accompanied by redundant morphological marking, e.g. subject 

pronouns or clearly plural articles or adjectives, and calls into doubt the possibility of a true 

phonemic value for vowel laxing. 

Theoretical analysis of Andalusian vowel harmony within non-linear autosegmental or 

metrical models were commonplace in the late 1970's and early 1980's (e.g. Gómez Asencio 

1977; Zubizarreta 1979), and have reappeared in more recent theoretical models (@). Martínez 

Melgar (1986) offers an experimental phonetic variation of the phenomenon of vowel laxing. 

Narbona et al. (1998: 142-5) describe a number of distinct configurations of vowel laxing and 

vowel harmony in eastern and central Andalusia. The parameters are presence of final vowel 

laxing, presence of leftward laxing harmony, compensatory lengthening of vowels as the result 

of consonant deletion, and retention of some phonetic vestige of aspiration of /s/. As many as 

eleven different combinations have been attested, some with clear geographical boundaries, and 

others occuring only as limited idiolects. Some of the possibilities include: 

(1) Alternation of final vowel laxing and final vowel neutralization following loss of 

consonants, with preference for neutralization. This has been attested for parts of Córdoba 

province. 

(2) Alternation of final vowel laxing and final vowel neutralization following loss of 

consonants, with preference for laxing. This is attested for several points in Córdoba, Jaén, 

Granada, Almería, and Málaga provinces.

(3) Final vowel laxing, compensatory lengthening, and sporadic aspiration is found in 

the province of Jaén, including the capital. 

(4) The combination of final vowel laxing, compensatory lengthening, and systematic 

aspiration is found in the outskirts of the capital of Granada. 

(5) Final vowel laxing, with occasional aspiration and sporadic laxing harmony is found 

throughout most of Andalusia, except for the westernmost areas which do not present systematic 

vowel laxing. 

(6) In the center of Granada province final vowel laxing, laxing harmony, and vestigial 

aspiration occur predominantly. 

(7) Final vowel laxing and compensatory lengthening with no laxing harmony is found 

sporadically throughout eastern Andalusia. 

(8) Systematic final vowel laxing, laxing harmony, and compensatory lengthening is 

found in isolated areas of Córdoba, Granada, and Jaén provinces. 

(9) Final laxing with no laxing harmony predominates in Almería. 

(10) Final laxing with only sporadic laxing harmony is found in much of the center of 

Granada province, in parts of Córdoba province, and has even been attested for a few points in 

eastern Sevilla province and in Málaga. 

(11) Systematic final vowel laxing and laxing harmony is found in southern Córdoba 

province. 

SESEO, CECEO, DISTINCIÓN IN ANDALUSIA 

Stereotypical Andalusian Spanish does not distinguish /s/ and /θ/, typically preferring /s/ 

(seseo), but also, at the popular level, realizing all sibilants as [θ] (ceceo). Historical 

reconstruction suggests western Andalusia as the locus of the merger of /s/ and /θ/, while 

throughout Latin America, no contemporary dialect distinguishes two sibilants, and apparently 

such distinction, which may once have existed, was very marginal, largely limited to recent 

immigrants from regions of Spain where /s/ and /θ/ are distinguished, and was rapidly displaced 

by the pan-Latin American seseo. A closer look at the regional and social distribution of sibilant 

phonemes in Andalusian Spanish reveals a much more complex situation, in which true 

seseo/ceceo, i.e. use of a single sibilant phoneme, is predominantly confined to the western 

Andalusian provinces of Sevilla, Huelva, Cádiz, and much of Córdoba, while many, perhaps 

most, speakers in the remaining Andalusian provinces distinguish /s/ and /θ/, although not 

always with the consistency characteristic of more northern dialects. Mendoza Abreu (1985: 

60f.) documents extensive ceceo for a town in central Huelva. 

Sawoff (1980) gives anecdotal and some quantitative data on seseo in Sevilla. He 

gathered his materials from urban and suburban middle-class neighborhoods, a sample more 

heterogeneous than the Norma Culta and Norma Media samples taken in the same city. In 

addition to interviews, Sawoff employed a methodology first used by William Labov in New 

York City, that of approaching strangers in stores and markets and formulating a question that 

would elicit a particular word: cereza, ciruela, etc. The results of the informal surveys are 

surprising, in view of the assertions of categorial seseo in Sevilla: between one third and one 

half of all respondents used [θ] where [s] was expected (but where /θ/ was the etymological 

source). Ceceo (use of [θ] to instantiate etymological /s/) was also common except among the 

most educated speakers. Sawoff concludes that seseo is no longer an accurate cover term for 

sibilant realization in modern Sevilla, if in fact such homogeneity ever prevailed.

Carbonero (1985) also examines Norma Culta, Norma Media, and Norma Popular data 

for Sevilla. His comparative analysis reveals that whereas 95%-100% of all speakers realize /x/ 

as [h] and aspirate or eliminate syllable-final /s/, seseo ranges from a low of 74% among 

educated speakers to a high of 100% in the habla popular. Ceceo, an eminently rural trait, 

appears only in the habla popular, and only in 19% of the speakers. This relative homogeneity 

of pronunciation across sociolinguistic groups contrasts with loss of word-final /r/ (23% culta, 

41% media, 83% popular), loss of word-final /l/ (20% culta, 36% media, 85% popular), and 

neutralization of preconsonantal /l/ and /r/ (24% culta, 43% media, 77% popular), which 

demonstrate considerable variation across social strata. 

Uruburu Bidaurrázaga (1990: 125-145) gives variational data on the realization of /s/ 

and /θ/ among young speakers in the city of Córdoba, capital of the province of the same name. 

As a province, Córdoba typically does not distinguish the two sibilants, preferring [s] (seseo) 

except for a few ceceo ([θ]-pronouncing) areas such as Montalbán and Montemayor. The results 

are strikingly at odds with the long-reputed seseo of Córdoba. Uruburu Bidaurrázaga (1990: 

147-163) also conducted attitude surveys among secondary and university students in Córdoba. 

Some 20% found seseo to be undesirable, compared with 15% with positive opinions, and 45% 

who found no difference (the remainder of the respondents did not reply to this question). Ceceo 

on the other hand received only a 9% positive rating, a 30% negative rating, and a 40% 

indifference level. 

Most of the province of Jaén distinguishes /s/ and /θ/, although pockets of seseo and 

ceceo exist. Speaking of the southwestern part of the province, Becerra Hiraldo and Vargas 

Labella (1986: 17) note that Èl ceceo abunda en las capas populares y se considera más rústico 

y vulgar que el seseo; incluso en zonas de ceceo, las personas educadas tienden a eliminarlo, 

bien por el seseo bien por la distinción. El seseo de Andújar es una voluntaria adaptación de la 

fonética urbana de Sevilla; el de Baeza está en regresión en las capas cultas y jóvenes de la 

población ...' For Baeza, Carrasco Cantos (1981: 84) observes that Èl seseo baezano es un 

fenómeno sociocultural, se da en las capas sociales de menor cultura ... no obstante, en su 

comienzo, creemos que tuvo que ser general; si esto fue así, se puede pensar que es un fenómeno 

que se bate en retirada, aunque todavía tiene toda su vitalidad entre los hablantes que no están 

sometidos a ningún influjo de la lengua oficial ... el seseo, por tanto, está en relación inversa con 

el grado de cultura de los hablantes ...' In Baeza, seseo is regarded negatively, unlike in western 

Andalusia, and children of seseo speakers seek to avoid this pronunciation. 

In an early study, Dalbor (1980) provides anecdotal accounts of variation in sibilant 

pronunciation throughout Andalusia, providing a traveler's account of the considerable regional 

and idiolectal variation in southern Spain. Narbona et al. (1998: 133-138) offer as many as eight 

different configurations involving sibilants in Andalusia: 

(i) Distinction /s/-/θ/ with the Castilian (apicoalveolar) /ś/. Although such pronunciation 

is not indigenous to any part of modern Andalusia, it can be heard in the principal cities, due to 

inward immigration as well as to the effects of mass media and educational norms. 

(ii) Distinction /s/-/θ/ with Córdoba /s/ (alveolar, less apical than the Castilian /s/, not as 

dental as the Sevilla /s/). This pronunciation typifies the capital city of Jaén and is found in the 

vernacular of Almería province and elsewhere throughout central Andalusia. 

(iii) Distinction /s/-/θ/ with Sevilla (dental-alveolar) /s/. This is a transitional 

pronunciation, found in western Andalusia among groups of middle-class speakers who are 

acquiring the distinction /s/-/θ/ while maintaining the regional dental-alveolar pronunciation of 

/s/. This distinction is often heard among middle-class and professional speakers in the capital

cities of Huelva, Cádiz, Sevilla (where as many as 30% of the population may practice such 

distinction), and Málaga. 

(iv) Seseo with Córdoba (alveolar) /s/. This pronunciation is found in the capital city of 

Córdoba and through the southern regions of this province. 

(v) Seseo with Sevilla (dental-alveolar/predorsal) /s/. This pronunciation affects some 

two thirds of the residents of the capital Sevilla, and is found in urban centers in Huelva and 

Cádiz and to a lesser extent in Málaga. In the capital Granada, this pronunciation is gaining 

ground. 

(vi) Ceceo (neutralization /s/-/θ/ in favor of [θ]). As has been shown above, this 

pronunciation characterizes much of rural Andalusia, although being sociolinguistically 

stigmatized and possibly receding in contemporary Andalusia. Overall rates of ceceo are highest 

in western Andalusia, and are lower in Granada and Almería. 

(vii) Confusion of /s/-/θ/ with an intermediate variant. This unstable configuration is 

found among many speakers in Málaga and Granada provinces, and sporadically throughout all 

of Andalusia. 

(viii) Sporadic mixing and crossover (ceseo/seceo). By definition these are unstable and 

transitional phenomena, and are found in all social strata throughout Andalusia. 

SOCIOLINGUISTIC IDENTITY OF ANDALUSIA 

The issues of linguistic and cultural identity are nowhere more polarized than in 

Andalusia. Opinions and attitudes run the gamut, from fierce defenders of andaluz as a separate 

language and culture to those who minimize linguistic and cultural differences in favor of 

España, español or castellano. Despite the fact that Andalusian phonetic traits continue to 

spread throughout Spain (Salvador 1987b: 62, originally written in 1963, states that èl andaluz 

gana terreno'), attitudes of Andalusians and non-Andalusians alike show a long-standing 

ambivalence. Within Andalusia, there is a considerable segment of the population which 

believes that Andalusian Spanish is `poor' speech, while there exist equally ardent defenders of 

the properness, even superiority, of Andalusian language. For the city of Córdoba, Uruburu 

Bidaurrázaga (1990: 149-150) asked his respondents to name the language they spoke: 50% 

responded castellano, 30% called it español, and only 8% responded andaluz. Asked whether 

Andalusians spoke better, worse, or the same as in other Spanish-speaking regions, 4% 

responded better, 31% responded worse, and 60% believed that Andalusian Spanish is neither 

better nor worse than other dialects. In Sevilla, Ropero (1982) reports on similar surveys 

conducted in the late 1970's. Asked to name their language, 39% of the respondents said 

andaluz, 22% called it español, 27% called it castellano, 5% español andaluz, and nearly 4% 

responded castellano con acento andaluz. Asked whether Spanish was spoken better in Madrid 

or in Sevilla, 38% favored Sevilla, 32% favored Madrid, and 25% felt that the dialects were 

different but not ranked. To the question `¿Crees que el andaluz es un castellano mal hablado?' 

nearly 79% responded with a resounding no, while some 22% accepted the negative appraisal. 

On the other hand, 84% of the respondents confessed to feeling uncomfortable speaking the 

Andalusian dialect outside of Andalusia, while only 13% indicated no discomfort. The similar 

question `¿Piensa que el andaluz habla mal?' produced varying answers according to the 

profession and educational level of the respondents. The negative values range from 4% 

(university students) to nearly 39% (managers), while the positive ratings varied from 60% 

(workers) to nearly 92% (liberal arts professors).

Many observers have noted the highly polarized attitudes towards Andalusian Spanish 

within the region. Although many speakers feel that Andalusian is simply mal hablado, others 

fiercely defend the regional dialect, to a greater extent and with more fervor than occurs with 

other dialects of Spanish: Èl habla andaluza--al menos, buena parte de sus rasgos 

característicos--no se reserva ... exclusivamente para la comunicación familiar o privada, sino 

que se emplea, por toda clase de hablantes, en cualquier situación ... se cree que es debido a que 

la minoría en cuyas manos ha estado durante mucho tiempo la mayor parte de los bienes y 

recursos productivos no ha necesitado diferenciarse lingüísticamente de las amplias capas 

populares. A ello, entre otras causas, podría responder la inclinación de bastantes andaluces a 

enaltecer su modalidad idiomática, incluso a sentirse orgullosos de ella ...' (Narbona et al. 1998: 

23). 

As for specific phonological traits associated with Andalusian Spanish, Carbonero 

(1982c) reports on quantitative data reflecting educated speakers in Sevilla. Aspiration of wordinternal 

preconsonantal /s/ was àccepted' in 95% of the instances, with a 90% level of 

homogeneity among speakers and a 90% level of confidence (consistency) at the idiolectal level. 

Aspiration of word-final prevocalic /s/ occurs 70% of the time. Seseo is present in 70% of the 

data, but with only a 40% inter-speaker consistency rating. Neutralization of preconsonantal /l/ 

and /r/ is accepted only 27% of the time, while loss of word-final /l/ and /r/ has only a 21% 

acceptance rate. 

DATING OF ANDALUSIAN CONSONANTAL REDUCTIONS 

Dating the reduction of Spanish final /s/ is the subject of an unresolved debate, with 

probable dates of inception ranging from the early 16th century or before (e.g. Boyd-Bowman 

1975, Frago García 1983, 1984, 1993: 475-488; Lapesa 1980: 387-9, Menéndez Pidal 1962) to 

the early 19th century (e.g. Alonso 1953: 351). Claims of a very early date are based on isolated 

words, such as the often-cited Sophonisba > Sofonifa written by Fernando Colón (1488-1539) 

and highlighted by Menéndez Pidal (1942: 34), and may well be due to scribal error or 

idiosyncratic developments. Torreblanca (1989b: 284-5) asks why, if at the beginning of the 

16th century even educated Andalusians like Diego Colón already weakened /s/, there exist large 

regions of Latin America where final /s/ is retained as a sibilant. He also points out that no 

variety of Sephardic Spanish systematically reduces final /s/, thereby pushing the earliest 

possible dates for widespread loss of /s/ in Andalusia well into the 16th century. Torreblanca 

finds no firm evidence of /s/-reduction before the early 18th century, in either Andalusia or Latin 

America. 

Some early examples of apparent loss of /s/ or hypercorrect insertion of syllable-final /s/ 

(indicating widespread elision of /s/ in the same positions) begin in the 14th century, but are so 

sporadic as to suggest nothing more than the occasional lapse in unguarded speech: lo pechero 

(Sevilla, 1384), escriuano públicos (Alcalá la Real, 1492), el dicho exámenes (Sevilla, 1485-88). 

During the 16th and 17th centuries scribal attestations of loss of /s/ increase significantly (Frago 

García 1993: 475-488), but still constitute sporadic and isolated examples in texts which 

otherwise maintain all instances of final /s/: para que vo lo digan (1550), fueron sus padrino 

(1526-9), los engaño (1938), valisdación (1641), etc. By the 18th century, written attestations of 

aspirated /s/ in Andalusia are more frequent. In the play La infancia de Jesu-Christo (ca. 1784) 

by Gaspar Fernández of Málaga, we find evidence of the aspiration of word-final prevocalic /s/,

through the use of both the grapheme s and the grapheme j (Narbona et al. 1998: 70-71; 

Mondéjar 1991: 144-5): los jojos, las jorejas, pobres jandrajos, las jarree, mal de jojo, qué 

jojos. 

Turning to Latin America, Jiménez Sabater (1975) presents evidence that /s/-reduction 

became prevalent in the Dominican Republic at the beginning of the 18th century. Fontanella de 

Weinberg (1987), tracing the development of Spanish in Buenos Aires, discovered sporadic 

examples of /s/-reduction prior to the 18th century, but postulates that widespread weakening of 

/s/ began well into the 18th century. In the Guanacaste region of coastal Costa Rica (originally 

part of Nicaragua), evidence of systematic loss of final /s/ begins to appear in the middle of the 

17th century, and becomes significant by the early 18th century (Quesada Pacheco 1990: 51-2). 

Lloyd (1987: 349) arrives at a different conclusion, namely that weakening of /s/ was 

common at least among the lower social classes of Andalusia (and by extension in at least some 

American colonies), by the end of the 16th century. Alvarez Nazario (1982: 83-4) also leans in 

favor of a late 16th or early 17th century origin for /s/-weakening in the Caribbean. Boyd- 

Bowman (1975) presents examples from the 16th century Caribbean which he interprets as 

evidence of an early weakening of /s/. 

Foremost among the research questions raised by the high degree of /s/-reduction in 

Andalusian Spanish are the causes for this phenomenon, regionally confined within Spain, 

although common in the history of other Romance and Indo-European languages. The logical 

possibilities are several, and speculation has run high on a phonetic issue which literally divides 

Spain geographically, culturally, and sociolinguistically. 

The first possibility is that /s/-weakening is the product of Spanish-Arabic bilingualism in 

the southern reaches of Al-Andalus. Although initially attractive as a circumstantial hypothesis, 

this suggestion is easy to invalidate. In Arabic adaptations of Spanish words, the Castilian 

apicoalveolar /s/ was represented by shin, the Arabic character for /sh/. The later Andalusian 

dental /s/ was represented by the character @, closer to the Andalusian /s/. No Arabic 

borrowings of Spanish words lack syllable-final sibilants, and no extant Mozarabic or Morisco 

text gives the slightest evidence of the eliimination of final /s/. 

Narbona et al. (1998: 72) are of the opinion that `la aspiración, y pérdida de -s parece un 

cambio surgido en un castellano ya formado.' However, there is nothing to suggest that /s/weakening 

was carried from Castilian speakers moving southward during the reconquest. This is 

clear from the extreme resistance of syllable-final /s/ to effacement in most of Castile and León, 

although pockets of aspiration found in Cantabria and western Salamanca province. Narbona et 

al. (1998: 73) conclude that `todo parece, pues, indicar que en estas alteraciones de s se trata de 

un desarrolo paralelo en Andalucía al de otras regiones, con una relativa independencia mutua 

(es evidente que los contactos entre las gentes de los territorios, casi todos contiguos, que alteran 

la s implosiva contribuirían a consolidar el fenómeno), y que en Andalucía logró una 

implantación más homogénea gracias a la tantas veces mencionada autonomía de vida y 

costumbres que conoció la región en la Baja Edad Medía y siglos posteriores.' 

It is equally improbable that the growing trend towards aspiration of syllable-final /s/ e.g. 

in La Mancha, Toledo, Salamanca, and other Spanish regions outside of Andalusia results from 

Andalusian migration, since such migration has been all but nonexistent until recent decades, 

when the principal Andalusian emigration has been to Cataluña and the Basque provinces. Pérez 

Galdós's Fortunata y Jacinta (1886) described the speech of Fortunata, a native of central 

Madrid, as `las eses finales se le convertían en jotas sin que ella misma lo notase ni evitarlo 

pudiese.' Galdós, himself from the /s/-aspirating Canary Islands, was sensitive to this

pronunciation, which was already well underway in Madrid more than a century ago, although 

never coming close to the figures registered for Andalusia. 

Walsh (@) and more recently Narbona et al. (1998: 73) have offered a novel explanation 

for /s/-aspiration in Andalusia. Noting that in many Leonese dialects preconsonantal /s/ was 

frequently pronounced as [ʃ] (a phenomenon also common in Sephardic Spanish), and given the 

notable Leonese contribution to the reconquest of Andalusia, these authors suppose that a 

palatalized syllable-final /s/ was brought to Andalusia by Leonese speakers. When Spanish /ʃ/ 

was backed to /x/ (itself a weak aspiration [h] in Andalusia), syllable-final /ʃ/ was also affected, 

giving rise to the all-pervasive Andalusian /s/-aspiration. This proposal, while certainly possible, 

places severe strains on credibility in several respects. Leonse presence was significant mostly 

in western Andalusia, while aspiration of /s/ covers all of southern Spain. Many Leonese 

dialects did not palatalize syllable-final /s/ at all. Finally, the remaining cases of the shift /ʃ/ > 

[x] occurred in syllable-initial (onset) position, while /s/-aspiration is a syllable-final (coda) 

phenomenon. In phonology, few processes uniformly affect consonants in onset and coda 

positions; prosodic conditions usually result in different outcomes depending upon syllable 

position. 

WEAKENING OF /S/ IN EARLY AFRO-HISPANIC LANGUAGE 

The representation of the speech of African-born black slaves or bozales in Golden Age 

Spain helps to shed light on the dating of consonantal reduction phenomena. Golden Age habla 

de negros has been the subject of considerable linguistic research, although the interpretations 

are still debated. The search is blurred by frequent stereotyping and exaggeration, reflecting a 

negative attitude toward ethnolinguistically marked varieties of Spanish, and which attributes to 

all of them a wide range of defects and distortions that are frequently an inaccurate repudiation 

of this group. In more recent times, the linguistic characteristics attributed to black Spanish 

speakers, in regionalist literature and folklore, have been simply those of the lower 

socioeconomic classes, found among the speech habits of more educated individuals, without 

any objective racial connotations (Lipski 1985b). However, a careful examination of available 

texts from 16th and 17th century Spain, numbering several dozen plays, entremeses, villancicos, 

romances and other items, reveals a striking degree of phonetic and morphological consistency, 

which suggests a reasonably accurate representation of bozal language. Quevedo (1988: 127) 

once joked in the `Libro de todas las cosas,' that `sabrás guineo [= bozal Spanish: JML] en 

volviendo las rr ll, y al contrario: como Francisco, Flancico; primo, plimo.' However, most 

writers gave a more realistic approximation to the speech of at least some Africans. The most 

frequent stereotyping lay in not in phonetic distortion but in humorous plays on words, such as 

the frequent cagayero/cagayera for caballero, in the use of onomatopoeia and songs, and in the 

repetition of stock lines such as àunque negro(s), gente somo(s).' Sixteenth and seventeenth 

century Spain, when Andalusian consonantal reduction probably began and when Afro-Hispanic 

language was first recorded, is therefore a useful place to begin the search. 

The conclusion that some attestations of Afro-Hispanic language can serve as mileposts 

for Spanish consonantal evolution, embodies two fundamental research hypotheses. The first is 

that the phonological structures attributed to African slaves in Golden Age and colonial Latin 

American texts are qualitatively accurate: although stereotyping and formulaic repetition is 

found, the most egregious cases of exaggeration and distortion involve the lexicon and plot lines.

The second is that a comparative analysis of these texts will aid in determining the chronology of 

consonant reduction in other Spanish dialects. The relationship between the literary 

representation of bozal speech and regional Spanish pronunciation was ultimately bilateral and 

reciprocal, and this is reflected in the texts. African slaves took as input regional phonetic 

tendencies, partially altering them to conform to a broad cross-section of West African 

phonotactics. To the extent that consonantal reduction had already begun in regional Spanish 

varieties, bozal speech effaced the weakened variants even further, categorically eliminating 

sounds in contexts where native Spanish speakers performed only partial and variable 

weakening. Spanish writers gave graphological recognition to bozal pronunciation only when 

the latter departed significantly from prevailing regional trends, with the possible exception of 

the very lowest Spanish-speaking social classes, whose speech was also the object of ridicule. 

The lack of a given weakening process in bozal texts does not necessarily imply that the 

phenomenon was absent in the speech of Africans, but only that Spanish writers found Africans' 

speech no different from their own in this feature. The consonantal reductions in question follow 

well-established historical routes, so a comparison between Spanish and bozal texts can 

potentially delimit the earliest threshold for the advent of a given reduction process, while 

subsequent developments in the corresponding regional Spanish dialects allow for a reasonable 

hypothesis as to when, if ever, bozal and Spanish pronunciation became indistinguishable. 

The earliest texts from Portugal and Spain contain no phonetic modification, but 

concentrate on grammatical oddities such as lack of agreement, use of uninflected infinitives 

instead of conjugated verbs, substitution of subject pronouns, and drastic syntactic 

simplification. Also found are African place names, onomatopoeic words which create the 

flavor of African speech or song, and inappropriate use of Spanish lexical items. Beginning with 

Sánchez de Badajoz in the first quarter of the 16th century (ca. 1525-30), phonetic modifications 

began to appear in literary representations of Africanized Spanish, although many texts from the 

same period contain no such modifications. Lope de Rueda incorporated phonetic deformations 

more consistently in his plays (ca. 1538-42), and by the end of the 16th century, certain phonetic 

characteristics had been established in the habla de negros. In the 17th century, Africanized 

Spanish was used extensively by major and minor writers, particularly in drama. Once `black 

Spanish' became established in Golden Age theater, the linguistic characteristics move sharply 

away from pidgin Portuguese, and acquire traits typical of Spanish `foreigner talk,' including 

considerable phonetic deformation. Judging by the literary examples, the transformation was 

completed in the last decades of the 16th century, since after the turn of the 17th century, bozal 

language becomes more consistently `broken Spanish.' This apparent dating may only reflect the 

solidification of a Spanish literary stereotype, in that Portuguese features may never have been 

present in significant quantities in Africanized Spanish, or may have disappeared during the first 

decades of the 16th century. Although documentation of /s/-weakening in pre-19th century 

Spanish is scarce, literary habla de negros exhibits loss of final /s/ beginning early in the 16th 

century. Many objections have been raised against accepting bozal cases as valid evidence for 

the evolution of Andalusian Spanish. Salvador (1981), noting the early loss of /s/ in bozal texts 

such as those of Lope de Rueda and Góngora, suggests that if loss of final /s/ had already been 

widespread in Andalusia beginning in the 16th century, these authors would not have attributed 

the phenomenon only to African slaves. Alvarez Nazario (1971: 84) categorically rejects any 

connection between Golden Age bozal texts and the development of regional Spanish dialects, 

claiming that the former `vienen a ser completamente independientes por su origen de las 

correspondientes evoluciones en el consonantismo del castellano central y meriodional.' Pereda

Valdés (1965: 179-80) is of the opinion that `había más inventiva humorística que autenticidad 

en aquel lenguaje literario deformativo y onomatopéyico.' The opposite point of view is 

sustained, e.g. by Dunzo (1974: 121): Ìn an effort to transport local color to the stage, the 

Spanish playwrights portrayed in a remarkably accurate fashion the speech common to the 

Blacks of the era.' Deeper investigation into early Afro-Hispanic texts suggests that bozal 

speech is indeed of use in dating consonantal reduction in southern Spain, although not serving 

as a simple mirror of contemporary events. For example, loss of /s/ in Golden Age bozal texts 

demonstrates both internal consistency and compatibility with independently documented Afro- 

Hispanic language, thus giving to the bozal documents more credibility than suggested by the 

previous comments. 

Loss of final /s/ first appears in bozal Spanish texts in the first decades of the 16th 

century, beginning with Sánchez de Badajoz and Lope de Rueda. The only consistent case 

involves the verbal desinence -mos. By the time of Vélez de Guevara's El negro del seraphín 

(ca. 1643), the final /s/ of second person verb forms is also variably elided (Sánchez 1979). 

These same texts show very limited instances of /s/-reduction where no morphological 

conditioning is involved, e.g. in word-internal preconsonantal position, or final lexical /s/. The 

frequent loss of /s/ in Jesús is probably attributable to Portuguese, or to clipping based on 

Jesucristo. Sánchez de Badajoz shows a few examples of loss of preconsonantal /s/, as in crito 

[Cristo], trequilado [trasquilado] and etar [estar] (the unreduced form estar occurs more 

frequently). These may be scribal errors or idiosyncracies, but their scarcity, in comparison with 

numerous cases of retained preconsonantal and word-final /s/, renders it unlikely that early bozal 

Spanish was eliminating syllable-final /s/ in a wholescale fashion. 

Elimination of preconsonantal /s/ appears occasionally in a few of Lope de Vega's plays, 

written in the first two decades of the 17th century. In El santo negro Rosambuco we find vito 

[visto], riponde [responde], and Franchico [Francisco] (the latter name and the pronunciation 

without /s/ became a stereotype in bozal literary texts). The form paqua [Pascua] is found in a 

late 16th century romancerillo, alongside numerous instances of retained preconsonantal /s/. In 

the late 17th century bozal texts of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (actually written in Mexico), loss of 

preconsonantal /s/ is still very sporadic, with only a handful of cases in her entire Afro-Hispanic 

corpus: Flasica [Francisca], fieta [fiesta] (alongside fiesa and fiesta), naquete [en aqueste], etc. 

In Sor Juana, we find some of the first consistent cases of another example of 

morphological conditioning of /s/-reduction: loss of plural /s/ in nouns when preceded by a 

plural article in which /s/ is generally retained: las leina [las reinas], las melcede [las 

mercedes], lus nenglu [los negros], lo billaco [los bellacos], las paja [las pajas], etc. This 

configuration, where plural /s/ appears only on the first available position of a NP, is typical of 

vernacular Brazilian Portuguese (Guy 1981), and is found in many basilectal varieties of Latin 

American Spanish, particularly those with a strong African connection, in the Dominican 

Republic, Colombia, Ecuador, and in the Spanish of Equatorial Guinea. In Brazil, highland 

Ecuador and Equatorial Guinea, syllable-final /s/ is generally not weakened to [h], while in the 

other dialects morphologically-conditioned retention of /s/ is combined with general loss of 

word-final /s/. 

Other late 17th century bozal texts from Spain begin to show loss of /s/ across all 

components of the noun phrase, while retaining final lexical /s/ as well as the second person 

singular verb ending. In a villancico dated 1673 (S-26), we find ¿Lo bajo habemo veniro? ... ¿Lo 

tiple essá tura junta? Another song, dated 1699 (S-18), contains lines like Reye zamo del 

Oriente. An anonymous villancico dated 1661 (S-10) provides Hagámole plaça a lo Reye Mago

turo lo neglo, e turo lo branco; another dated 1676 (S-6) offers Tlaemo mucho cantare and still 

another dated 1694 (S-3) contains lines like turu lo Neglico la noche de Nasimienta ha de andal 

como pimienta. These examples indirectly suggest that reduction of final /s/ in southern Spain 

and the Caribbean was still not conditioned by purely phonetic factors as late as the beginning of 

the 18th century. 

The Golden Age texts show a striking imbalance in apparent cases of /s/-reduction. The 

corpus used for the present study reveals more than 440 instances of loss of /s/ in the verbal 

ending /-mos/, beginning in the early 16th century. This compares to a literal handful of other 

cases of /s/-loss, none of which occur until well into the 17th century. Among the latter, most 

involve plural /-s/. Although the exact proportions are irrelevant, it is clear that bozal 

pronunciation of the verbal ending -mos extended an already weakened pronunciation found in 

local Spanish dialects. 

The earliest Afro-Hispanic texts from Latin America, such as those of Sor Juana, and 

some songs from Mexico and Peru, properly belong to the Spanish Golden Age tradition, but by 

the turn of the 18th century letigimately Latin American bozal language was developing. Afro- 

Mexican texts are of special interest, since many come from interior areas (e.g. Puebla, Oaxaca) 

where consonantal reduction has never been characteristic, but where contact with evolving 

dialects of southern Spain was intense in the 17th and 18th centuries. A small corpus of 17th 

century Afro-Colombian texts also comes from interior highlands where final consonants are not 

usually reduced. Afro-Peruvian texts are also instructive, since they represent both coastal areas 

(Lima) where consonantal reduction is characteristic, and the Andean zone (Cuzco) where 

elimination of final consonants never took root. A few of the 17th century Afro-Peruvian texts 

(e.g. P-1, P-2) appear to have come from Bolivia, known in colonial times as Alto Peru. In 

Buenos Aires and Montevideo, Afro-Hispanic texts represent the late 18th/early 19th century 

period, and provide a probe into a dialect zone where consonantal reduction stabilized at rates 

between those of Andalusia/Caribbean dialects and the Castilian/Andean zones. 

The earliest surviving Latin American bozal texts, from 17th century Mexico, Colombia 

and highland Peru, show some loss of /s/ in the verbal ending /-mos/, as well as in Jesú/Sesú 

[Jesús], and various derivations of Francisco/Francisca, a stereotyped name in Afro-Hispanic 

texts. Hardly any other examples of loss of /s/ are found (although etreya < estrella appears in 

P-1, from late 17th or early 18th century Bolivia). Bozal texts from 19th century Argentina and 

Uruguay, as well as Afro-Peruvian texts from the 19th century (all representing coastal areas), 

show loss of /s/ not only in the desinence /-mos/, but in more general syllable-final 

environments. The earliest of these texts represent the end of the 18th century, while the latest 

come from nearly a century later. Of the Spanish bozal texts being considered, none shows 

reduction of preconsonantal /s/ without reduction in the ending -mos, while the opposite 

configuration is quite common, characterizing nearly the entire Golden Age corpus. The 

consistency of the textual data suggests a reasonably accurate transcription of bozal speech, from 

which it may be concluded that by the end of the 17th century, Afro-Hispanic speech was just 

beginning to effect wholescale elimination of preconsonantal /s/ and lexical word-final /s/. 

Andalusian and Caribbean Spanish were obviously not providing a model for elimination of all 

syllable-final /s/, since the imperfect language acquisition represented by bozal speech invariably 

reduced syllable structure, and never enhanced it. However, this does not necessarily mean that 

Andalusian Spanish showed no reduction of /s/ until at least the beginning of the 18th century, 

only that weakened variants were still perceivable by Africans. It appears that some 

preconsonantal and word-final /s/ among both Andalusians and Africans was already an

aspiration [h], as early as the last decades of the 16th century. In contemporary Spanish dialects 

where aspiration rather than loss of preconsonantal /s/ is the rule (e.g. Argentina, Paraguay, 

Uruguay, Chile and much of Central America), native speakers are often unaware of their 

weakened pronunciation of /s/, asserting that they are actually pronouncing [s]. Literature from 

these regions rarely represents the aspirated /s/, which is considered unremarkable (cf. Lapesa 

1980: 387); only when /s/ disappears altogether is this loss reflected in written form. A 

diachronic scan of Golden Age bozal texts shows that apparent loss of preconsonantal /s/ is 

proportionately more common towards the end of this period. Moreover, all instances of /s/-loss 

discussed so far have been in perceptually weak positions, preconsonantally or word-finally 

following an unstressed vowel. If Andalusian Spanish were already weakening (but not 

eliminating) /s/ in these positions, e.g. to an aspiration, Africans, most of whose languages do not 

contain the distinction between strongly and weakly stressed syllables, might easily fail to 

perceive any sound at all. 

DATING ANDALUSIAN LIQUID REDUCTION 

Reduction of Spanish syllable-final liquids embodies so many different phonetic 

manifestations that it is unlikely that a single chronology accounts for interchange of 

preconsonantal liquids, interchange of phrase-final liquids, and loss of phrase-final liquids. In 

each context, evidence is limited and contradictory, allowing an uncomfortably wide margin of 

error. In Latin America, modification of liquids is not well documented until the 19th century, 

although extrapolation in such zones as the Caribbean suggests that modification of liquids 

began substantially earlier. In Latin America, some early attestations of liquid reduction may 

reflect Peninsular Spanish arrivals rather than local developments. 

Lapesa (1980: 385f.) suggests a very early origin of liquid reduction in some regions of 

Spain: Mozarabic examples from Toledo dating from the 12-13th centuries, and Andalusian 

examples (generally /r/ > [l]) in the early 16th century. The first examples are isolated and 

scribal error or idiosyncracy cannot be ruled out. Lapesa's examples involve the shift of /r/ to [l], 

while in contemporary Andalusia the opposite change of /l/ to [r] is more common in 

preconsonantal contexts, whereas elision of liquids is the preferred solution word-finally. 

Sephardic Spanish, often used as a linguistic time capsule from the early 16th century, is of little 

help, since sporadic interchange of liquids occurs in all Sephardic dialects (involving different 

words in each case), just as in regional Spanish dialects far removed from Andalusia. 

Lloyd (1987: 347-8) analyzes the bulk of 14th and 15th century interchange of liquids as 

dissimilation rather than neutralization, since most involve words with two or more liquids. By 

the middle of the 16th century, the accumulation of words exhibiting interchange of /l/ and /r/ as 

well as loss of final /r/ leads Lloyd to suggest that liquid reduction was common in southern 

Spain before the end of that century. Adopting a much different stance, based on dialect 

geography as well as historical documentation, Alonso and Lida (1945) conclude that 

widespread interchange of syllable-final /l/ and /r/ did not occur until the beginning of the 19th 

century, particularly in America. In opposition, Alvarez Nazario (1982: 85-6) uses early 

examples from Puerto Rico to conclude that at least some weakening of liquids was occurring in 

Caribbean Spanish by the middle of the 16th century. Fontanella de Weinberg (1984, 1987) cites 

17th and 18th century examples of interchange of preconsonantal /l/ and /r/ in the Río de la Plata 

zone, a zone where neutralization of liquids is today conspicuous by its absence. She concludes

that by the end of the 18th century, neutralization of liquids was not uncommon among nativeborn 

residents of Buenos Aires. This neutralization included not only syllable-final liquids, but 

also intervocalic and postconsonantal /l/ and /r/. The incompatibility of these findings with 

contemporary Río Plata Spanish and other South American dialects remains unexplained. 

Similar data appear in 18th century Costa Rica (Quesada Pacheco 1990: 47-8), particularly in 

Guanacaste, although today this zone is not characterized by neutralization or loss of liquids in 

any position. 

THE WEAKENING OF ANDALUSIAN /X/ 

The softening of the posterior fricative /x/ to an aspiration [h] in Andalusia is similarly 

difficult to trace, but written attestations such as hentil < gentil, baho < baxo, etc., occur in 16th 

and 17th century texts (Narbona et al. 1998: 67-8). By the time of the first dictionary of the 

Real Academia Española (1726), Andalusians and Extremeños were contrasted with Castilians 

for their aspiration of /x/ and confusion of h, x and j. 

THE SPANISH OF GIBRALTAR 

Belonging linguistically to Andalusia, although presenting several peculiarities, is the 

British colony of Gibraltar, less than 5 km 2 of territory on the tip of a peninsula near Algeciras, 

in Cádiz province (Lipski 1987b; Mondéjar 1991: 165-6; Kramer 1986; Ruíz Fernández 1995, 

Fierro Cubiella 1997). The peninsula is dominated by the impressive Rock of Gibraltar (el 

Peñón de Gibraltar), and the city of Gibraltar, on the north shore, is the principal settlement. 

According to the 1981 census there were 26,479 residents of Gibraltar, of whom 16,640 were 

natives of Gibraltar, 3,459 were natives of the United Kingdom, 2,694 were natives of Spain, and 

2,389 were natives of other nations. In addition there were some 2,265 family members (nearly 

all natives of the U. K.) accompanying British military personnel in this heavily fortified outpost. 

Comparing these data with the census of 1860 (Sayer 1862: 458-9), we see that little has 

changed in more than a century. In 1860 the total population of Gibraltar was 25,179 

inhabitants, and the civilian population was 17,647. Of the later group, 9,802 were natives of 

Gibraltar, 995 were from the United Kingdom, 1,892 were from Spain, 782 were from Genoa, 

240 were Àfrican Jews' [probably from Morocco], and 525 were Portuguese. 

In addition to its permament population, Gibraltar houses a large temporary population of 

Spanish workers, some of whom live in nearby Spanish towns and cross the gate into Gibraltar 

daily, while others live in the British colony for varying periods of time, due to an Anglo- 

Spanish accord which allows for such temporary labor. 

The British first occupied Gibraltar in 1704, during the War of the Spanish Succession. 

Felipe V, the French-backed pretender to the crown, was opposed by the Hapburg Carlos III, 

supported by an alliance of the Netherlands, Austria, and England. Most of the Spanish 

Gibraltarians fled to nearby San Roque; Italian fishermen in Catalan Bay chose to remain 

behind, apparently unconcerned with loyalty to one or the other royal pretender. Spain mounted 

an unsuccessful seige of Gibraltar, and although Felipe V eventually attained the Spanish 

monarchy, Spain was unable to recover Gibraltar. Eventually, under the conditions of the Treaty 

of Utrecht (1713) Gibraltar was officially ceded to Great Britain. Over the ensuing centuries,

Spain has mounted several diplomatic and military efforts to regain Gibraltar, but all have fallen 

short of the objective. 

Once Gibraltar became a British territory, Sephardic Jews from Morocco, Spain, 

Portugal, and Italy moved to Gibraltar in large numbers; at one point the population of Gibraltar 

was nearly half Jewish (Kramer 1986: 14). Throughout its history, British (i.e. British-born) 

individuals have been a minority in Gibraltar; Jews, Italians, and Spaniards formed the 

overwhelming majority, and Spanish was always the prevailing language of the territory. By the 

late 1800's Gibraltar, now under a civilian government, began to receive a sizeable Spanish labor 

force, beginning a trend which continues to this day. During the Spanish civil was more than 

10,000 Spanish refugees poured into Gibraltar. During World War II the British government, 

fearing a massive Axis attack on Gibraltar, evacuated much of the population to Great Britain 

and the British West Indies. This forced exile had the effect of solidifying English as the 

dominant administrative language of the colony. At the same time the marginalized conditions 

of the refugee camps reinforced emotional ties to Spanish, the home language of many of the 

temporarily displaced Gibraltarians. Even during the war, Spanish workers continued to enter 

Gibraltar to work in the port and in other service jobs. 

Although English has always been the official administrative language of Gibraltar, 

Spanish has at times been given more prominence in education than at present. Already in the 

19th century Methodist schools had implemented de facto bilingual education; the Anglican 

schools soon followed suite (Kramer 1986: 33-4). In response, Catholic schools began to 

include more Spanish-language classes in their curriculum, although still attempting to wean 

students away from Spanish as a public language. The Irish Christian Brothers in particular 

encouraged use of Spanish, and even used bilingual readers in lower grades. Spanish continued 

to be required as a medium of instruction, especially in lower grades, and the governmental 

educational code of 1880 explicitly allowed for the use of Spanish as a means of explaining 

English terms and concepts. However, use of Spanish for other purposes was forbidden during 

school hours. 

Matters continued apace until the mass evacuations of World War II; in 1944 the British 

formed an education committee for Gibraltar, which included in its mission the retention of 

Spanish through the creation of fully bilingual pupils. 

Relations between Spain and the local government of Gibraltar have been strained ever 

since 1704, the date of the British conquest of this territory, and insistent Spanish claims over 

Gibraltar have on many occasions restricted free movement between Gibraltar and Spain. 

Although the majority of Gibraltarians have family ties with Spain, and despite the fact that the 

work contracts are mutually beneficial to Gibraltar and Spain, there have been time periods in 

which contact between the two nations was reduced to a minimum, direct travel (only a few 

minutes by land) had to be by air or sea through third countries, usually Tangier, Morocco. 

Currently the situation has stabilized in a more favorable configuration. 

Within Gibraltar, there appears to be some systematic discrimination against native 

Gibraltarians as opposed to natives of the United Kingdom, particularly as regards civil service 

jobs. This results in a sociocultural polarization which underscores the bicultural nature of the 

colony and the often less than harmonious coexistence. Spain is similarly ambivalent in its 

treatment of Gibraltar and Gibraltarians. Many Spaniards see Gibraltar as a land of opportunity, 

due to its traditionally high standard of living (a distinction which has diminished considerably 

since the entry of Spain into the European Union), and the higher purchasing power of the 

British pound. In previous decades, Gibraltar also contained a broader array of consumer goods

and was governed by a more desirable political system; currently these are moot points for 

Spain. At the same time, Spaniards often consider Gibraltarians of Spanish descent as lost souls, 

despised by the British and ignored by Spain. These sentiments have spilled over into the public 

arena; for example Spanish television once transmitted the statement that `los gibraltareños son 

ciudadanos de segunda o tercera clase, que no merecen tenerse en cuenta en las discusiones entre 

Inglaterra y España' (Bruzon 1967: 14). This covert hostility is not lost on Gibraltarians, and in a 

referendum held in 1967, annexation to Spain received a mere 44 out of the more than 12,000 

votes cast. 

The majority of Gibraltarians have at least some Spanish parentage, often resulting from 

the marriage of Gibraltarian or British men with Spanish women. Typical names are composed 

of a Spanish given name and an English surname; the opposite combination is also frequent, 

much as found in bilingual areas of the United States and Central America. There are few 

(perhaps no) native Gibraltarians who speak no Spanish, and in the majority of truly Gibraltarian 

households Spanish is in daily use, often combined with English. Even natives of the United 

Kingdom who have resided in Gibraltar for a considerable time use Spanish spontaneously in all 

but the most formal situations, and their children learn Spanish natively. Despite the recurring 

political difficulties which have impeded free passage between Spain and Gibraltar, linguistic 

contacts have never been cut off, and the Spanish dialect of Gibraltar is a variant of western 

Andalusian Spanish, as spoken around Algeciras and Cádiz. Even natives of Morocco, India, 

and other nations who have emigrated to Gibraltar learn this regional variety of Spanish. 

In Gibraltar, linguistic reality contrasts sharply with official language policies, in which 

English is the only language acknowledged for all government activities, in newspapers, radio, 

and television of the colony. The Gibraltar radio station broadcasts a few Spanish-language 

programs, but these deal only with non-serious topics such as cooking, home decoration, and 

musical variety. Few native Gibraltarians listen to these programs, preferring instead the more 

interesting and varied programming of the nearby Algeciras stations. In Gibraltar schools, 

public and private, English is the sole language of instruction, and the British government has 

tenaciously resisted proposals for bilingual education programs, apparently in the belief that any 

official recognition of Spanish as a viable language in Gibraltar will encourage separatist and 

anexationist feelings among Gibraltarians. That the results of political referenda suggest no such 

feelings has not been regarded in maintaining the official stance that English is the only language 

of Gibraltar. 

In Gibraltar schools Spanish is taught as an elective subject, and is presented as a foreign 

language, similar to French and Latin. Neither the textbooks nor the pedagogical approach 

found in most Spanish classes reflects the fact that the majority of Gibraltarian students speak 

Spanish natively or quasi-natively. At the same time, English classes presuppose that students 

are native speakers of English with full fluency in that language, an assumption which is at odds 

with reality. Naturally these official views have little effect on informal language choice, and 

Spanish continues to be the language of choice in most non-official domains. At the same time, 

despite the fact that virtually all children in Gibraltar attend school, the proportion of the 

Gibraltar population which speaks little or no useful English is surprisingly high. The 

educational system does indirectly acknowledge the frequently limited English skills of many 

pupils by organizing English classes according to the skill level of the students, from little or no 

English through total fluency. Some Gibraltarian households use English frequently, particularly 

if one of the parents is from the United Kingdom, and when possible many such families send 

their children to Britain for extended vacations and even to study. Among Gibraltarian children

with no British family members and who speak only Spanish as a home language, very few 

speak English with native ability. Steward (1967: 72), despite demonstrating a sympathetic 

attitude towards the people of Gibraltar, commented that `the Gibraltarians look and sound so 

like us that their off-beat English comes as a shock.' The òff-beat' English is not that of an 

isolated but native dialect left to run its course in the absence of normative tendencies (such as 

found, e.g. on the south Atlantic islands of Tristan de Cunha and St. Helena), but rather the 

second-language approximations of a fundamentally Spanish-speaking population. There are 

many older Gibraltarians who know no English, and even young residents who have studied 

English for many years may have little usable ability. My fieldwork in Gibraltar brought me into 

contact with many bright and motivated students who nonetheless spoke English with great 

difficulty. It is unlikely that such students can fully benefit from the rigidly monolingual British 

educational model; this may partially explain the noteworthy preference for natives of the United 

Kingdom for government jobs in Gibraltar. As late as the 1950's, some 60% of Gibraltarian 

students could not pass the English language exams administered by the British government 

(Stewart 1967: 72-3), which underscores the discrepancy between official language policies and 

true language usage in Gibraltar. 

Spanish, conspicuous by its absence in official domains, is learned in homes and on the 

street, and through the naturally permeable border with Spain. In Spain, the terms 

yanitos/llanitos are used to refer to Gibraltarians, possibly deriving from English Johnny or 

Italian Gianni (Italian immigration to Gibraltar was once heavy, and some elderly residents of 

Catalan Bay still speak the Genoese dialect). 

In the phonological dimension, Gibraltarian Spanish fits neatly in with all western 

Andalusian traits, as regards velarization of word-final /n/, aspiration and loss of syllable- and 

word-final /s/, and neutralization and elision of syllable-final /l/ and /r/. Tables 1-3 give 

quantitative data which situate Gibraltar Spanish as unquestionably a western Andalusian 

dialect. As in rustic Andalusian Spanish, the level of phonological restructuring is considerable 

among Gibraltarians, most of whom have not studied Spanish formally and are not aware of 

originally underlying consonants which have disappeared in speech. Thus the plural of túnel 

(pronounced as [túne]) is also [tune], the plural of árbol [árßo] is [árßo], etc. This is similar to 

what has occurred in many rural Andalusian dialects, as well as in parts of Latin America (e.g. 

Terrell 1982 for the Dominican Republic). As with Andalusians outside of Spain, Gibraltarians 

have diminished the sociolinguistic differences which within Andalusia separate speakers of 

varying educational and socioeconomic levels. Given the status of Spanish as an oral, informal 

code in Gibraltar, Gibraltarians are not compelled to retain final consonants in formal speech, 

such as sometimes occurs in Andalusia. Elimination of final /s/, /l/, and /r/ is nearly categorical 

in Gibraltar, whereas within Spain there is some resistance to effacement in more formal styles, 

particularly as regards word-final liquids. As an anecdote, in the 1980's I recorded an interview 

in Spanish, broadcast on Spanish radio, between the British governor of Gibraltar and a Spanish 

radio announcer. The Spaniard, despite his obvious origins in Andalusia, maintained a formal 

diction and partially suppressed the Andalusian consonant-weakening. The governor, on the 

other hand, while maintaining impeccable grammar and an appropriately formal vocabulary, 

eliminated all final consonants without concern, a pronunciation which would be unlikely under 

the same circumstances within Spain. An exception to this trend is the minimal Spanishlanguage 

radio programming on (government-owned) Gibraltar radio; the announcers, 

occasionally revealing some Andalusian traits, speak with great articulatory precision and their 

speech is more similar to Castile than to the southern dialects of Spain. When questioned

explicitly by this writer as to why they adopted a pronunciation which was so patently at odds 

with the speech of the surrounding community, the announcers responded that the decision was 

purely personal, and reflected no official policy. Indeed, there is no official policy whatsoever as 

regards Spanish-language programming in Gibraltar, and the announcers affirmed that they 

based their radio styles on visits to Spain and their observations of the speech of fellow radio 

announcers in Spain. 

Gibraltarians do not typically distinguish /s/ and /θ/, and seseo (neutralization in favor of 

[s]) predominates, unlike the prevailing ceceo in rural areas of neighboring southwestern 

Andalusia. Kramer (1986: 87) speculates that the tenacious seseo of Gibraltar Spanish may 

stem in part from the fact that until at least the middle of the 19th century, many Gibraltarians 

spoke Genoese, which has only /s/. Kramer also asserts that the relative resistance of syllablefinal 

/l/ and /r/ to neutralization may be due to a Genoese carryover, although my own field work 

suggests a rather high rate of neutralization. Similarly, Kramer (1986: 86-7) claims that 

velarization of final /n/ is nonexistent in Gibraltar Spanish and that even though final /n/ in 

velarized in Genoese, this pronunciation is considered vulgar and is avoided in Gibraltar. My 

own observations reveal a high rate of velarization of final /n/ in Gibraltar. 

Lexically, Gibraltar Spanish is described by a small dictionary of regionalisms (Cavilla 

1978), which dwells on lexical innovations, many coming from English, but also from 

Italian/Genoan. The latter dialect has given pavana `seagull,' bucherío `loud noise, racket,' 

cantín `tin can,' and leveche `southwestern wind.' From English come afolinearse (< fall in), 

afordar (< afford), chuar (< choose), guardao (< guard house), manolo (< man hole), rólipo (< 

lollipop). Kramer (1986: 68-75) gives a list of numerous Anglicisms, some frequent, others 

spurt of the moment translations, in Gibraltar Spanish. Bilingual calques and hybrid 

combinations are also frequent: estar guilty, hacer nitin (< knitting), dar un ring `call on the 

telephone.' Finally, loan-translations occur spontaneously, as in other bilingual Spanish-English 

communities: estar supuesto a (< to be supposed to), dar para atrás (< to give back), venir para 

atrás (< come back), etc. The expressions with para atrás (pronounced patrá) are also found in 

many bilingual communities in the United States (Lipski 1985c, 1987c; Otheguy 1993). 

It is difficult to directly measure linguistic attitudes in Gibraltar, given the lack of official 

recognition of Spanish and the natural reluctance of Gibraltarians to challenge estalished 

authority, but the preliminary results of a survey conducted by a pair of educators (Flores and 

Ballantine 1983) are illustrative of the larger perspective. First, a questionnaire was 

administered to 70 primary school teachers, a majority of whom were from Gibraltar. 54% of 

the teachers believed that bilingualism was beneficial to the overall educational process, and 

only 6% believed that bilingualism could bring negative consequences. 86% of the teachers felt 

that the students' native language (usually Spanish) should be used to facilitate the learning of 

the second language (English), while only 10% maintained the opposing position. As for the 

proper designation of the unofficial language of Gibraltar, 15% of the teachers used the term 

`Spanish,' 10% used the term `yanito,' and 70% considered it to be `yanito/Spanish.' In speaking 

of their students' linguistic abilities, 94% of the teachers indicated that Gibraltarian students 

usually experience language-related academic difficulties, and 46% felt that these difficulties 

were widespread. 59% of the teachers believed that it was essential to employ Spanish in the 

classrooms (despite the official prohibition) to give instrucciones and to convey basic 

information (60% felt that Spanish was `very useful' in these cases). 52% of the respondents 

indicated that it was necessary to revert to Spanish in order to adequately teach their respective 

subjects (for 58% Spanish was `very helpful'); 73% indicated that it was necessary to use

Spanish in teaching English (76% found Spanish `very useful'). These figures contrast sharply 

with a linguistic self-survey included in the 1970 census (this self-survey disappeared from 

successive census forms). In 1970, of the economically active populatio of Gibraltar, 92.6% 

responded that they could speak English (89.5% could read English), and 98.5% indicated that 

they could speak Spanish (95.6% could read Spanish). Of the population above 15 years of age, 

81.3% could speak English (78.6% could read English) and 97.5% could speak Spanish (93.0% 

could read it). It is clear that the notion of `speaking English' reflected on the census forms is 

not strongly correlated with useable proficiency in the language, and falls far short of nativelevel 

fluencye. 

The above-mentioned data can be compared with the results of another preliminary 

survey conducted with a group of secondary school students (Flores and Ballantine 1983). 

Through the use of verbal stimuli, in the `home' lexical domain, the test indicated that 46.8% of 

the pupils were Spanish-dominant, and 34.3% were English-dominant. In the `school' lexical 

domain, 62.% of the students were English-dominant, and 9.4% were Spanish-dominant. When 

non-verbal stimuli were used and one-word answers were solicited, 59% of the students tested as 

Spanish-dominant and 50% were English-dominant. When full-sentence responses were 

requested, 73% of the students were classified as Spanish-dominant, as opposed to 26% Englishdominant. 

It should be recalled that these exams set out to measure general linguistic abilities 

attained after 7-8 years of intensive formal instruction in English, in the midst of a society which 

maintains English as its official language, all of which underscores the enormous discrepancies 

between official educational policies and the linguistic reality of Gibraltar. 

Within Spain, there is a general opinion that Gibraltarians speak `poor' Spnaish (Stewart 

1967: 72), although few Spaniards classify it as ìnadequate.' In reality only Spaniards living in 

close proximity to Gibraltar and who have frequent contact with Gibraltarians have even the 

slightest information on Gibraltar Spanish. At one point I conducted informal `matched-guise' or 

`blind' tests in Spain, playing unidentified tapes of both Gibraltar and Andalusian Spanish 

speakers to residents of Spain; most Spaniards were unable to correctly identify residents of 

Gibraltar. On the other hand, if respondents were told prior to listening that the speaker was 

from Gibraltar, they frequently pointed out èrrors' which they attributed to lack of education in 

Spanish and to interference from English, despite the fact that most of the traits also occur in 

vernacular western Andalusian Spanish. 

Actual observation of language domains in Gibraltar yields results which are somewhat 

at variance with self-assessment surveys. As noted above, in Gibraltar there is no official policy 

regarding language choice, except in school instruction, government communications, and 

government-run broadcasting. In the remaining cases, language choice is determined by a matrix 

of sociolinguistic variables which characterize Gibraltar society. In the majority of linguistic 

exchanges which take place in Gibraltar, it is presupposed that all speakers possess the ability to 

express themselves in either English or Spanish, so that ultimate language choice reflects 

external factors such as context, style, and social setting. In reality, this working principle must 

be amended somewhat, since many Gibraltarians are not able to easily maintain a conversation 

held entirely in English, although their listening comprehension may be high. There are some 

cases in which Spanish is the preferred opening gambit in Gibraltar, under the assumption that 

the interlocutor will not be comfortable speaking English. This would be true, for example, with 

laborers and domestic servants, working-class housewives, and in general in certain 

neighborhoods of Gibraltar. The majority of predominantly Spanish-speaking Gibraltar 

households originate from Spanish immigration, and within Gibraltar these families as a general

ule occupy a lower socioeconomic position than English-speaking households. Despite this 

demographic differentiation, it is not possible to base language choice on the physical 

appearance of a speaker, since many Gibraltarians with obviously Mediterranean/Spanish 

complexion and features are completely fluent in English, whereas even the most ruddy-cheeked 

blue-eyed Gibraltarians speak fluent Spanish. This fact notwithstanding, many Gibraltarians 

themselves claim to be able to predict language preference by looking at the features and 

complexion of a potential interlocutor. Stewart (1967: 59), a British civil servant who lived for 

ten years in Gibraltar in the 1950's, remarked that to initiate a conversation with an unfamiliar 

interlocutor would immediately provoke a response in English, and might well offend a 

Gibraltarian, who resented being mistaken for a Spaniard or a poorly-educated person. This may 

well have been the case of the high British official, whose face must surely have been familiar to 

nearly all residents of the tiny colony, but nowadays Gibraltarians are warmly receptive to 

visitors who initiate conversations in Spanish. During my own field work I was able to 

determine this in two different manners. First, I held monolingual conversations--some in 

English, others in Spanish--with diverse residents of Gibraltar, in no case revealing that I spoke 

the other language. Conversations held in English were typically somewhat stilted, even in the 

most casual contexts. Some Gibraltarians, obviously struggling to maintain a high level of 

English, slipped into what British colonial officials derisively refer to as `Babu English,' that is 

the erroneous use of erudite and even common words, and seemed unable to fully express their 

sentiments. Spanish conversations, on the other hand, revealed no reluctance or inability to 

express nuances and complex ideas, and no conversation held in Spanish appeared strained or 

artificial. As a second phase, I conducted conversations in which I began in English, and 

suddenly switched to Spanish after hitting on the `surprising discovery' that Gibraltarians also 

spoke Spanish. The results of this informal survey were striking, since nearly all interlocutors 

experienced visible relief, and the tone of the conversations immediately became more animated, 

punctuated with jokes, anecdotes, friendly profanity, and slang, which almost never occurred in 

English-language conversations. It was impossible to test the effects of the opposite change, 

from Spanish to english, since a friendly conversation in Gibraltar would never follow this 

course, which could actually be regarded as offensive, removing the conversation to a 

linguistically less comfortable code. 

In formal contexts, for example in government offices, bilingual transitions are frequent, 

although not without occasional communication breakdowns, which induced Stewart (1967: 182) 

to quip that èverything one says in Gibraltar is half understood, everything said to one is half 

expressed. Every Gibraltarian you meet is using his second language.' Stewart related incidents 

in which Gibraltarians proudly refused to admit an insufficient knowledge of English, preferring 

instead to stumble through tasks inadequately. Obviously the situation has changed in the last 

half century, since it is now regional Gibraltarian English which defines exchanges in English, 

regardless of the observable prestige enjoyed by British-born government officials. 

My own observations indicate that use of English is nearly categorical in at least the 

following contexts: 

(1) When speaking to an unfamiliar government official, or to any government employee 

in a public or official setting; 

(2) When speaking to any employee or receptionist in a government office when the 

speaker wishes to maintain a high level of personal dignity; 

(3) When speaking to any obviously foreign tourist or visitor who is presumed to not 

come from Spain.

(4) In general in any situation which might sustain or enhance the prestige and social 

status of the speaker. This last trait reinforces the pro-British sentiments of most Gibraltarians, 

to the point that even in official closed-door meetings, at social events, and in public greetings 

among residents of high social standing, use of English is expected. During my fieldwork I had 

occasion to attend a public reception, British style, in the governor's mansion. All guests were 

dressed elegantly, despite the fierce Andalusian summer sun, and since most guests knew one 

another, greetings and conversations were frequent. As each guest entered the courtyard garden, 

they exchanged impeccable formal greetings in English. After a few minutes, conversations 

naturally drifted to Spanish and became more effusive and intimate. However, each time it was 

necessary to great a newly arriving guest, all responded in English, after which the conversation 

immediately returned to Spanish. The childeren playing in the garden spoke Spanish to one 

another, but when a parent had occasion to speak to a child in a loud public voice, English was 

always used. Finally, as the guests were leaving, as they passed out of the courtyard gate, 

goodbyes were once more said in formal English. 

The majority of religious services in Gibraltar are held in English, and the less common 

Spanish-language services carry a lower social esteem. Newspapers are published in English 

and Spnaish, but the Spanish-language papers have small circulation and appear only at irregular 

intervals. In short, although Spanish is used in the majority of Gibraltar households, in public 

speech usage is more nuanced, affected by official norms and the social aspirations of the 

speakers. The need to maintain rigid if informal linguistic protocols gives rise to a transitional 

period upon leaving a workplace where use of English is expected on the job. During rest 

periods and as the work day comes to a close, English-only usage shades off into a free codeswitching, 

which in turn gives rise to predominantly Spanish conversations. Telephone 

conversations are more diverse; when the speaker feels no need to reaffirm social status and 

presumes that the interlocutor is in a similar situation, Spanish is the usual gambit, with frequent 

incursions of English. On other occasions English is the preferred medium, and mixed-language 

conversations are not uncommon, in which one speaker uses Spanish and the other responds in 

English, being in a situation where use of Spanish would not be appropriate. The social status 

associated with English rapidly dissipates in non-official settings, especially among individuals 

who express themselves more easily in Spanish. 

There is a striking similarity between the linguistic profile of Gibraltar and those speech 

communities where a European postcolonial metropolitan language competes with a creole 

language of inferior social status, often derived from the same European lexifier language (e.g. 

Jamaica, Guyana, Martinique and Guadeloupe, Cape Verde, and to some extent Haiti) or another 

European language (e.g. Suriname, Curaçao, Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon, Trinidad. What is 

unique about Gibraltar is that the yanito Spanish dialect is in no way creolized, nor is it even 

essentially different than neighboring Andalusian Spanish. In Gibraltar Spanish is not the 

language of an oppressed group, such as occurs in some parts of the United States, since native 

Gibraltarians are the descendents of British subjects and Spaniards who emigrated voluntarily to 

Gibraltar (the original Spanish residents abandoned Gibraltar more than 250 years ago following 

the British conquest). Despite the sometimes contentious Hispano-British relations centered on 

Gibraltar, residents are in closer contact with prestige registers of Spanish than with comparable 

sociolects of English. In terms of their own linguistic production, Gibraltarians come closer to 

educated norms of Spain than of Great Britain. Despite this fact, the British government has 

maintained the position that any official recognition of Spanish as anything other than the lingo 

of immigrants and temporary laborers would nourish separatist tendencies. The end result is a

high degree of ambivalence among Gibraltarians, who on the one hand are more fervently pro- 

British than most residents of the United Kingdom and insist that Gibraltar is an Englishspeaking 

colony, and on the other hand maintain Spanish as the primary language of daily 

intercommunication. 

There are also noteworthy parallels between Spanish-English bilingualism in Gibraltar 

and in the United States. In both regions English is the official language, enjoying higher 

prestige, and bilingual contacts give rise to a wide range of code-switching phenomenona, 

semantic and syntactic calques, and mutual influence at all levels. In Gibraltar, however, 

residents speak both Spanish and English voluntarily and not through coersion, as sometimes 

occurs among Spanish speakers in the United States, and frequently take the more difficult path 

of communication in English for purely extralinguistic reasons. In every respect, Gibraltar 

represents a unique linguistic configuration, different from both Spain and the United Kingdom, 

and exhibiting both similarities and differences with respect to other bilingual communities 

throughout the world. 

Table 1: Behavior of /s/ in Gibraltar and other Spanish dialects (%) 

----------------------------------------------------------------- 

/sC/ /s#C/ /s##/ /s#V/ /s/#v 

[s][h][Ø] [s] [h] [Ø] [s] [h] [Ø] [s] [h] [Ø] [s] [h] [Ø] 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

Gibraltar 

1 96 3 0 94 6 4 1 95 78 8 14 4 17 79 

Cáceres 

2 91 7 0 94 6 9 8 83 23 77 0 0 95 5 

Sevilla 

0 95 5 0 91 9 5 2 93 69 10 21 1 46 54 

Granada 

0 82 18 0 85 15 1 2 97 0 15 85 2 50 48 

Las Palmas 

2 85 13 0 89 11 2 17 81 75 25 0 0 92 8 

Madrid 

94 6 0 69 29 2 82 12 6 92 8 0 96 4 0 

Melilla (pop.) 

11 25 62 29 14 57 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

C = consonante; # = word boundary; ## = phrase boundary; 

V = stressed vowel; v = unstressed vowel

Table 2: word-final /n/ in Gibraltar and other Spanish dialects (%) 

----------------------------------------------------------------- 

Dialect /n/## /n/#V 

[n] [ŋ] [Ø] [n] [ŋ] [Ø] 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

Gibraltar 2 43 55 54 36 10 

Cáceres 0 65 35 21 51 28 

Sevilla 2 42 56 40 38 22 

Granada 0 77 23 48 35 17 

Las Palmas 18 49 33 54 34 12 

Madrid 98 0 2 97 0 3 

Melilla (pop.) 0 40 60 53 33 13 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

/n/ ## = phrase final (muy bien) 

/n/ #V = word final prevocalic (bien hecho) 

THE SPANISH OF CEUTA AND MELILLA 

The Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla, along the northern coast of Morocco, are esentially 

linguistic continuations of Algeciras and Málaga, respectively, although the presence of a 

substantial Arabic-speaking Moroccan population brings first- and second- language varieties of 

Spanish in contact. Since both enclaves are sustained by Spanish military garrisons, housing 

soldiers from all parts of Spain, a certain amount of dialect levelling also takes place. 

González Las (1990) studies the pronunciation of Spanish in Melilla. This dialect reveals 

velarization of word- and phrase-final /n/ at rates comparable to those found in Andalusia. The 

posterior fricative /x/ is more usually a velar fricative [x], with the aspiration [h] being less 

common. The /s/ is alveolar, and there is some distinction /s/-/ /, although seseo predominates. 

Syllable- and word-final /s/ are aspirated or elided at high rates, although more educated men 

retain a sibilant [s] at rates considerably higher than found in Andalusia. Word-final /l/ and /r/ 

are also lost, but at rates lower than in vernacular Andalusian speech. 

ANDALUSIAN SPANISH OUTSIDE OF ANDALUSIA 

Emigration from Andalusia to other areas of Spain, and to industrialized countries in 

western and northern Europe, has been considerable in recent decades, and transplanted 

Andalusian speech communities are found in several European cities. The Andalusian 

immigrants typically represent the lower socioeconomic classes, since economic necessity is the 

primary factor influencing emigration, and the educational level in Spanish is correspondingly 

low. As a result, vernacular tendencies confined to the most informal registers and lowest 

sociolects in Andalusia are frequently extended to embrace all members of expatriate Andalusian 

communities (much as happens with Gibraltar Spanish, and New York and Dominican Spanish 

on the U. S. mainland). Children born of Andalusian parents abroad acquire phonologically 

restructured varieties of Spanish in which variable consonantal modifications have become

categorical, and in which underlying representations have been modified to reflect consonantal 

neutralization and erosion. Narbona et al. (1998: 187) offer examples of uneducated Andalusian 

Spanish abroad, exemplifying the massive consonantal modifications which have spread 

unchecked in environments in which formal instruction in Spanish is lacking and little normative 

Spanish is available in the surrounding environment: 

El paladá e otra folma en Epaña que aguí. Kando mi mae ase aguí una paeya 

faltan la cosa que mete y ayí el pehkao ma freco y etá ma güeno [el paladar es de 

otra forma en España que aquí. Cuando mi madre hace aquí una paella faltan las 

cosas que mete y allí el pescado es más fresco y está más bueno] 

Po la alemana (a)hín mucha coha rebuelta la ehpañora son mucha behe aín po en 

una coha (a)hín to de una be (a)hín [pues la (comida) alemana, así muchas cosas 

revueltas; la española son muchas veces, así pues, en una cosa así, todo de una 

vez así] 

The authors note that `lo que verdaderamente llama la atención en la forma de pronunciar el 

español de estos hablantes es la concentración e intensidad de tales rasgos, fenómeno que en 

Andalucía sólo se da de manera excepcional en individuos muy incultos y que tienen poco 

contacto con su entorno social, cada vez menos numerosos por la profunda modificación de los 

modos de vida tradicionales ...' (Narbona et al. 1998: 187-8) 

IMITATIONS OF ANDALUSIAN SPANISH 

From a letter published in a Spanish newspaper in 1986 by a businessman from Algeciras, Cádiz, 

in response to a letter written in Catalan (Narbona et al. 1998: 17): 

Agecira Mare (Cai) 

24 d'enero 1986 

Zeñó: 

He recibío zu carta de fesha catorse der corriente me d'Enero. 

Nó ha sío una jartá de difisi enterarno de los sucedío, y má o meno eztamo casi orientao. 

Lo que toavía no z'entiende der tó e lo de "Que fem aquest estiu?" y ezo no lo podemos 

conchabá. En cuantito lo zepamos le contestaremo con musho arte. 

Eá, zeñores, quedar con Dió. 

Table 3: Behavior of /l/ and /r/ in selected Spanish dialects (%) 

/r/C /#C r/## /l/C /l/#C /l/## 

______________________________________________________________________ 

[r] [l] [Ø] [r] [l] [Ø] [r] [l] [Ø] [l] [r] [Ø] [l] [r] [Ø] [l] [r] [Ø] 

______________________________________________________________________ 

Gibraltar 

82 0 18 56 1 43 5 0 95 31 29 40 47 17 36 11 0 89

Cáceres 

96 0 4 88 2 10 47 0 53 84 0 16 81 1 18 56 0 44 

Sevilla 

84 2 14 70 0 30 29 0 71 43 38 18 47 18 35 38 0 62 

Granada 

89 1 9 65 1 34 27 1 72 48 31 21 52 10 38 25 0 75 

Las Palmas 

73 12 15 59 17 24 28 8 64 65 23 12 73 2 25 36 7 57 

Madrid 

99 0 1 99 0 1 97 0 3 100 0 0 100 0 0 99 0 1 

Melilla (popular) 

51 0 49 52 0 47 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

C = consonant; # = word boundary; ## = phrase boundary 

NOTES 1 

The apparent reluctance of a wide cross-section of Spanish dialects to accept phonetic 

sequences of the sort [...h...h...], whether the aspiration [h] instantiates the posterior fricative /x/ 

or the reduction of /s/, is the signature behavior of the Obligatory Contour Principle (OCP), a 

theoretical postulate accepted by many phonologists (McCarthy 1986; Schein and Steriade 1986; 

Yip 1988, 1989), which disallows identical adjacent elements in phonological representations. 

The OCP was originally proposed to cover suprasegmental or autosegmental manifestations such 

as lexical tone, but there is evidence in some languages that the OCP serves as a quantitative 

constraint on certain combinations of vowels and consonants, both in underlying representations 

and as the result of superficial phonetic modifications. In many languages, OCP effects 

involving sequences of nonadjacent segments do not directly manifest themselves by blocking or 

triggering rules, but may exist as more subtle morpheme structure constraints whose synchronic 

existence at times emerges only upon a detailed quantitative cross-section. For example, Mester 

(1986) verifies the existence of OCP effects and hierarchically arranged feature tiers in Javanese 

by computing co-occurrence frequencies for a large number of Javanese morphemes. Such 

morpheme structure constraints, while formally describable by the OCP, may become partially 

lexicalized across time, admitting lexical exceptions particularly among recent borrowings or 

neologisms. OCP effects may represent the results of gradual evolution, and occasional 

exceptions do not necessarily invalidate the postulate of OCP-induced co-occurrence constraints. 

In scanning the Spanish lexicon, it becomes apparent that for all practical purposes, Spanish 

lacks morpheme-internal sequences of the type /...xVx.../ or /...hVh.../. The ready availability of 

combinations in which another consonant intervenes, such as Jorge, ajonjolí, jengibre, etc., 

demonstrate that consonants block any potential OCP effects triggered by two instances of /x/ 

separated only by a vowel. The handful of Spanish words containing /...xVx.../ sequences have a 

vanishingly low frequency in normal speech, are borrowings from non-Romance languages, and 

often prevail in dialects where /x/ is given an obstruent pronunciation: jején `gnat,' jeja `white 

wheat,' jijallo à type of bramble,' jojoto ìmmature corn [Venezuela],' jojana `mocking tone of 

voice,' jajá type of bird [Argentina],' Gijón à city in northern Spain,' Jujuy à city in northern

Argentina,' etc. The reasons for the low frequency of /...xVx.../ combinations in Spanish may 

originally have been accidental, reflecting the early Romance sources of modern Spanish /x/. 

The latter sound (which was pronounced [s] or [z] in medieval Spanish) comes from a variety of 

sources, including the intervocalic cluster /-kl-/ (e.g. oculu > oclu > ojo), the combination /li/ 

(e.g. filiu > hijo), the combination /-ks-/ (e.g. fixu > fijo), initial /g-/ (e.g. gentem > gente), and 

several other possibilities. Rarely in Romance did more than one of these proto-sources of /x/ 

appear in close succession, separated only by a vowel. Aside from the relative scarcity of 

/...xVx.../, the reluctance of native speakers to freely accept such combinations is somewhat 

unusual in Spanish, where combinations of identical consonants separated by a single vowel are 

not uncommon. Certainly /...kVk.../ and /...gVg.../ sequences are not infrequent (although the 

very term cacofonía suggests that some speakers may find the combinations less than 

euphonous), so that neither [+back] or [+high] is necessarily implicated in the general avoidance 

of /...xVx.../ sequences. Similarly, sequences of identical labial, dental, and palatal consonants 

are evidently not excluded by morpheme-structure constraints of the OCP type, although there 

exist few phonological processes operating intermorphemically which would further test the 

possibility of OCP-based co-occurrence restrictions. The existence of word- internal avoidance 

of [...hVh...] provides additional support for the notion that some type of OCP-induced 

phenomenon is at stake. The presence of word boundaries is not crucial to the constraint, 

although combinations involving word-final SA provide the most common test cases. Once 

expanses larger than a single word are involved, additional prosodic conditioning must be 

invoked. Given the variability of SA reduction in different environments, the precise domain of 

the constraint is not clear, but the largest expanse appears to be the clitic group (in the sense of 

Nespor and Vogel 1986). This accounts for the frequent blockage of SA in DETERMINER + NOUN 

and ADJECTIVE + NOUN combinations. Occasionally the entire phonological phrase may be at 

stake, as suggested by Catalán's example of compras hojas, a V + DO sequence.

The spanish of andalusia

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