7
votes
Does muñeca (doll) have a non-ñ form?
Etymology of muñeca
The etymology of muñeca is thus:
Old Spanish monneca > munneca > Spanish muñeca
In Old Spanish, ñ was written nn, but the sound was the same. There do exist occasional ...
- 19.5k
7
votes
Is there "liaison" in Spanish?
Disclaimer: I am not a Spanish speaker, nor have I studied Spanish to any real extent. (I've done some self-study via textbooks and online apps/websites like Duolingo.) However, I know a bit about ...
- 524
6
votes
Accepted
Are doubled consonants geminated in Spanish?
No, not normally. Spanish phonology “almost never” geminates: duplicate adjacent vowels normally fuse, and duplicate adjacent consonants “don’t happen’ natively.
So a fully assimilated loanword like ...
- 2,060
6
votes
Words which palatalise when made feminine?
We have a question and a tentative answer about how don and doña came about. The answer is mostly intended to clear up why these did not diphthongize as in dueño, a, but at the end of the accepted ...
- 39.6k
5
votes
Pronunciación de la letra uve a final de palabra
Pronunciation of orthographic "-b" vs "-v"
The RAE's Ortografía states that "v" is conserved word-terminally in some words of Slavic origin for purely etymological reasons, the implication being that ...
- 19.5k
5
votes
Is there "liaison" in Spanish?
Lenition in Spanish
This phenomenon is known as lenition, and is not exactly the same as liaison in French - which is a form of external sandhi (across word boundaries) which is viable depending on ...
- 19.5k
4
votes
Are there consistent rules for pronouncing "c" and "g"?
Yes, they are pronounced as follows (for seseo speakers replace the /θ/ with /s/):
Notes:
** qua, quo only appear in some set Latin phrases and unnativised English loanwords:
exequatur, ...
- 19.5k
4
votes
Pronunciación de la letra uve a final de palabra
Os pongo por aquí, para que conste, la respuesta que me ha dado la RAE a través de Enclave:
La presencia de la uve en posición implosiva (esto es, a final de sílaba) no es patrimonial en español. ...
- 77.8k
4
votes
Accepted
Words which palatalise when made feminine?
As pablodf76's answer says, this comes from a historical neutralization of the contrasts /ɲ/ vs. /n/ and /ʎ/ vs. /l/ in syllable-final position. (From what I remember, a similar neutralization ...
- 524
3
votes
Is there "liaison" in Spanish?
When I think of the concept of liaison in French pronunciation, I think of situations like
mes amis [my friends]
Normally, the S in les is silent. But because of the next word starting with a ...
- 10.7k
3
votes
What is the pronunciation and IPA symbol for the final 'r' sound?
The phoneme for a word-final r is /r/, which is generally trilled, that is [r], in most dialects, although it's also possible for an untrilled sound based on emphasis and other contextual factors.
...
- 30k
3
votes
Accepted
What is the pronunciation and IPA symbol for the final 'r' sound?
In word-final position the rhotic is usually:
either a tap or a trill when followed by a consonant or a pause, as in amo[r ~ ɾ] paterno ('paternal love'), the former being more common;[43]
a ...
- 19.5k
2
votes
Is there "liaison" in Spanish?
The sounds normally characterized as voiced stops in Spanish, /b/, /d/ and /g/, each have two allophones (contextual variants), as you have noted. One is pronounced as a true stop (the one you call "...
- 39.6k
2
votes
Pronunciación de la letra uve a final de palabra
Molotov y Lev se pronuncian en Español exactamente igual a Molotob o Leb. Es la regla de pronunciación y no se cambia sin importar dónde se ubican. Como bien dices, en Español no existe la diferencia ...
- 135
2
votes
Are doubled consonants geminated in Spanish?
What @tchrist says is true except for the fact that Spanish people tends to not pronounce strictly some clusters like "pc" or "tl", for instance, it is very common to hear from Spanish people \...
- 883
1
vote
Accepted
How did words starting with f- become h-?
How it exactly happened is unknown. The change itself is not really difficult to imagine. It's a frequent phonetic change in many languages.* One can say it's a kind of lenition (weakening): /f/ ...
- 39.6k
1
vote
Is there "liaison" in Spanish?
You were sort of asking several things at once. In this answer I will focus specifically on what happens with B and V. You asked what happens with the Ds in "cada dos semanas." I will talk about B ...
- 10.7k
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