Re: Request for help, Spanish

Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...> wrote:

> What is the distribution of the allophones [a] and [A] in Spanish?  And
> do all dialects have those allophones?
I don't know. I find it very difficult to distinguish allophones
in my own dialect!

> What are the pronunciations of {ll} and {y} in different dialects?
> Particularly in Mexican dialects.
Any Mexicans on the list? What I've heard in all Mexican soap operas
is /j/ for both letters... though I think the sound is more closed
than that, almost a palatal affricate.

> One sound change involves the loss of intervocalic voiced stops.  Now,
> in words like "ciudad", this would produce [sju'a] (I think, or is it
> [sju'A]?).  What should I do with those kinds of words?  Ordinarily,
> unstressed high vowels become glides when prevocalic, but *[sjwa] would
> be impossible.  Would it be reasonable for that to become a rounded
> glide, that is [s;ha]?  Or would it be reasonable for an epenthetic [w]
> to be added, creating [sju'wa]?  Or should I just leave it at [sju'a]?
> Or, might the [j] be vocalized, creating [si'wa]?
I think [sju'a] is fine, though it may become [s;ha] in a later stage
of the language. You could change the rule slightly, to make it 'unstressed
high vowels become glides when before *unstressed* vowels'. Thus, _cuidado_
would become [kwi'dao] or [kwi'daw], which is how many people pronounce
it *today*.

What are you going to do with double vowels resulting from this
loss of voiced stops (as in _cada_ > *[kaa]?).


--Pablo Flores
  http://draseleq.conlang.org/pablo-david/