The Sounds of Spanish

This accessible textbook provides a clear introduction to the sounds of Spanish, designed particularly for English-speaking students of the language. Assuming no prior knowledge of linguistics, it explains from scratch the fundamentals of phonetics (the study of sounds) and phonology (the study of sound systems) and describes in detail the phonetic and phonological characteristics of Spanish as it is spoken in both Spain and Latin America. Topics covered include consonants, vowels, acoustics, stress, syllables, intonation and aspects of variation within Spanish. Clear comparisons are made between the sounds of Spanish and those of English, and students are encouraged to put theory into practice with over fifty graded exercises. Setting a solid foundation in the description and analysis of Spanish sounds, The Sounds of Spanish will help students improve their pronunciation of the language, and will also be useful to those studying the linguistic structure of Spanish for the first time. All the sounds discussed in this book are demonstrated on The Sounds of Spanish audio CD, included with this book.

JOSÉ I. HUALDE is Professor in the Department of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese and the Department of Linguistics at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He is co-author of Introducción a la lingüística hispánica (Cambridge University Press, 2001), author of Basque Phonology (1991) and editor of Generative Studies in Basque Linguistics (1993), Towards a History of the Basque Language (1995), and A Grammar of Basque (2003). He has also published a large number of articles and book chapters, mostly on topics in Spanish, Romance and Basque phonology.

The Sounds of Spanish

José Ignacio Hualde

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo

Cambridge University Press
The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK

Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York

www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521545389

© José Ignacio Hualde 2005

This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without
the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2005

Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data
Hualde, José Ignacio, 1958–
The sounds of Spanish / José Ignacio Hualde.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0 521 54538 2 (paperback)
1. Spanish language – Phonetics. 2. Spanish language – phonology I. Title.
PC4135.H83 2005
461′.5 – dc22 2004061593

ISBN-13 978-0-521-54538-9 paperback
ISBN-10 0-521-54538-2 paperback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Contents

Figures

Preface

The idea for this book was suggested to me by Dr Katharina Brett, of Cambridge University Press. The proposal was to write a book that could be used as a text for an introductory course in Spanish phonetics and phonology, but could also serve for independent study and as a reference book for anyone interested in obtaining information about Spanish pronunciation, following the model of Bernard Tranel’s The Sounds of French. That is what I have tried to accomplish in these pages.

 The first six chapters are of a general nature. In Chapter 1, the basic concepts of phonological analysis are introduced. Chapter 2 offers an overview of geographical and social variation in Spanish pronunciation. Chapter 3 provides an introduction to the articulatory analysis of Spanish vowels and consonants, and Chapter 4 does the same thing from an acoustic perspective. The structure of the syllable in Spanish is the subject of Chapter 5, and Chapter 6 illustrates the main types of phonological process. In Chapters ⁷, the different classes of Spanish phonemes are discussed in some detail.

 Alternations in sounds between related words, like the one observable in the first syllable when we compare puedo ‘I can’ and podemos ‘we can’, for instance, are usually not discussed at all in books on Spanish phonology written from a structuralist perspective (e.g., Quilis 1993). On the other hand, these facts take a central role in books on Spanish phonology with a generative orientation (e.g., J. Harris 1969, or Núñez-Cedeño and Morales-Front 1999) and knowledge of these phenomena is usually an important component of the Spanish phonology curriculum at North American institutions. In the present book, morphophonological alternations are treated in a separate chapter, Chapter 12. The two last chapters are devoted to Spanish stress (Chapter 13) and intonation (Chapter 14). The volume is complemented with four appendices on topics such as Spanish orthography and bilingualism in Spain and Latin America. There is also a glossary of important terms. These terms appear in small capitals in the text on their first occurrence, and again when reference to a definition seems appropriate. Incidentally, Latin roots of Spanish words, for which the usual convention is to use small capitals, are, in addition, italicized in this book, in order to visually distinguish them from glossed terms.

 I have tried to be even in my coverage of both Latin American and Peninsular Spanish. It is, however, unavoidable that those varieties with which I have more familiarity are better represented.

 To finish this preface, I want to thank Kate Brett, Helen Barton, Mary Leighton and Karl Howe of Cambridge University Press; my copy-editor, Leigh Mueller; and an anonymous reader. For comments and help of various kinds, I am grateful to Jennifer Cole, Erin O’Rourke, Marta Ortega, Pilar Prieto and Erik Willis. Este libro se lo dedico a mis padres.

Abbreviations

Chart of the International Phonetic Alphabet (revised 1993, updated 1996)