Yeísmo

Regions with the merger (yeísmo) in dark blue, regions with distinction in pink

Most dialects that merge the two sounds represented by ⟨ll⟩ and ⟨y⟩ realize the remaining sound as a voiced palatal fricative [ʝ] (listen), which is similar to the ⟨y⟩ in English your, but with the vocal chords vibrated. However, it sometimes becomes a voiced palatal affricate [ɟʝ] (listen), sounding somewhat like ⟨j⟩ in English jar, especially when appearing after /n/ or /l/ or at the beginning of a word. For example, relleno is pronounced [reˈʝeno] and conllevar is pronounced [koɲɟ͡ʝeˈβaɾ] or [koɲdʒeˈβaɾ].

Currently, the highlands of Colombia are shifting to yeísmo with older people being the only keeping the distinction, which is completely lost in people born in the 1980s onwards.

The distinction between /ʝ/ and /ʎ/ remains in the Philippines, Ecuadorian highlands, Andean Peru, Paraguay, Bolivia, and the northeastern portions of Argentina that border with Paraguay. [8] The distinction is more common in areas with a common bilingualism with indigenous languages, such as Aymara, Quechua, and Guaraní.[9] In Spain, most of the northern half of the country and several areas in the south used to retain the distinction, but yeísmo has spread throughout the country, and the distinction is now lost in most of Spain, particularly outside areas with linguistic contact with Catalan and Basque.[10]

Yeísmo produces homophony in a number of cases. For example, the following word pairs sound the same to speakers of dialects with yeísmo, but they would be minimal pairs in regions with distinction:

• haya ("beech tree" / "that there be") ~ halla ("s/he finds")
• cayó ("s/he fell") ~ calló ("s/he became silent")
• hoya ("pit, hole") ~ olla ("pot")
• baya ("berry") / vaya ("that he go") ~ valla ("fence")

The relatively low frequency of both /ʝ/ and /ʎ/ makes confusion unlikely. However, orthographic mistakes are common (for example, writing llendo instead of yendo). A notable case is the name of the island of Mallorca: since Mallorcans tend to pronounce intervocalic /ʎ/ as /j/, central Catalan scribes assumed the authentic (and correct) name Maiorca was another case of this and hypercorrected it to Mallorca. This new form ended up becoming the usual pronunciation, even for native Mallorcans.[11]

• History of the Spanish language
• List of phonetics topics
• Phonological history of Spanish coronal fricatives (distinción, seseo and ceceo)

• Álvarez Menéndez, Alfredo I (2005), Hablar en español: la cortesía verbal, la pronunciación estándar del español, las formas de expresión oral, Universidad de Oviedo
• Coloma, German (2011), "Valoración socioeconómica de los rasgos fonéticos dialectales de la lengua española.", Lexis, 35 (1): 91–118
• Lipski, John (1994), Latin American Spanish, New York: Longman Publishing
• Martínez-Celdrán, Eugenio; Fernández-Planas, Ana Ma.; Carrera-Sabaté, Josefina (2003), "Castilian Spanish" (PDF), Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 33 (2): 255–259, doi:10.1017/S0025100303001373
• Navarro, Tomás (1964), "Nuevos datos sobre el yeísmo en España" (PDF), Thesavrvs: Boletín del Instituto Caro y Cuervo, 19 (1): 1–117
• Torreblanca, Máximo (1974), "Estado actual del lleísmo y de la h aspirada en el noroeste de la provincia de Toledo", Revista de dialectología y tradiciones populares, 30 (1–2): 77–90
• Schwegler, Armin; Kempff, Juergen; Ameal-Guerra, Ana (2009), Fonética y fonología españolas, John Wiley & Sons, ISBN 978-0470421925
• Travis, Catherine E. (2009), Introducción a la lingüística hispánica, Cambridge University Press

• Pharies, David (2007). A Brief History of the Spanish Language. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-66683-9.

• Yeísmo y su desarrollo en España
• Lleísmo