Yeísmo

The yeísmo is a phonetic change that consists of pronouncing the letter ye identically (y) /ʝ̞/ ([ʝ̞]~[ɟ͡ʝ]~[d͡ʒ ]~[ʒ]~[ʃ]), and the digraph elle or double ele (ll) /ʎ/. That is to say, it is a phonological process of confusion of two originally different phonemes, due to delateralization of one of them. The phenomenon occurs widely in Spanish and, although with variations, it also occurs in other languages, such as Italian, Catalan, Portuguese or Galician.

It has also been called lleísmo in contrast, both to the maintenance of said distinction, and to the pronunciation as elle /ʎ/ of both letters., although this is rare.

Yeismo in Spanish

The pronunciation yeísta is the most common in most modern Spanish dialects. It consists of the fusion of the phonemes voiced palatal fricative and voiced palatal lateral approximant: the voiced palatal fricative /ʝ̞/, represented in the orthography by ⟨y⟩ and the palatal lateral approximant /ʎ/, represented by ⟨ll⟩. This unified phoneme is pronounced in a number of ways, usually as an approximant [ʝ̞] but also as an affricate [ɟ͡ʝ] or [d͡ʒ] after the archiphoneme /N/ or emphatically.

In medieval Spanish the sounds of y and ll represented different phonemes; but most varieties of modern Spanish do not differentiate both pronunciations, however, the difference is maintained in areas of Bolivia with the exception of the south, isolated areas of Colombia, in Paraguay and the Andes of Peru and Ecuador, the entire Andean zone in general including northeastern Argentina, small parts of southern Chile, and the Philippines. In Spain it is maintained above all in rural areas of the northern half, as well as in some bilingual speakers of other languages of Spain, such as Catalan and Galician, especially the former.. Yeísmo is a widespread phenomenon in most countries and large Spanish-speaking cities today.

In Río de la Plata Spanish (of most of Argentina and all of Uruguay), a yeísmo occurs with rehilamiento, this phoneme appears as a voiceless postalveolar fricative [ʃ] (English sh) or voiced postalveolar fricative [ʒ] (French j).

Yeísmo, in some dialects, does not apply to phonetic diphthongs with /i-/, such as those that appear in the words hielo or hierba:

	Mexico	Spain	Argentina
grass	[chuckles]je marginβ]a]	[chuckles] e marginβ]a]	[chuckles]je marginβ]a]
Ice	[chuckles]jElo]	[chuckles] Elo]	[chuckles]jElo]

Origin

Yeism in Spain.

The existence of this characteristic in numerous Spanish-speaking regions of America is due to the fact that the phenomenon has its origin in Spain itself, where currently in a large part of the territory «ll» and «y» are pronounced the same and for some the Yeísmo is no longer considered a dialect variety. There are many hypotheses about its birth. In the article by Rosario González Galicia, "Mi querida elle", some of the causes that could have originated it in Spain are outlined.

• One is the comfort in speech, so present not only in Spanish but in many other languages, where the speakers naturally seek to differentiate only the essential elements for the understanding of the words.

• In addition to this natural activity within the dynamics of the languages, there is the fact that very few words in Spanish are distinguished from one another only by the presence of the and instead of the ll. Some common examples of this distinction would be arrollo (bell, run over) and creek (water current), valla (a pig) baya (berry) and Go. (draw to) Shut up. (husbanding) and fell. (he dropped), He's found. (from the verb to find) aya (institutional) and there. (from the verb, and the tree).

• Another aspect is the uniformity of the language produced by television and the media. As the capital of Spain is fundamentally the Yaeist and broadcast throughout the country, there has been an extension of the Yaeism to non-Yeist areas, especially affecting the young population.

Thanks to the sound recordings of the time one can see that even King Alfonso XIII (n. 1886) was a Yeist.

Yeísmo, according to González Galicia, presents written testimonies from a very early date that go back to previous times and the beginning of the conquest of America where in the written texts and letters there are confusions in the writing between the use (and, therefore, pronunciation) between ll and y, favoring the latter. It is then seen how words like cabayo, yorar, yamar, ayá, and, on the other, and in the use of the same people, sullos (for theirs) or vallan (for they go).

Extension of yeísmo

The countries that best preserve the distinction are Bolivia (except in the department of Tarija), all of Paraguay, where Yeísmo is still a minority and almost non-existent in rural areas, and the Philippines. In the past, the distinction was widespread throughout the interior of Colombia and almost all of Peru. In Colombia, the inland regions that retained the distinction have been losing it at an accelerated rate over the generations, having been completely lost, for example, among the population under 40 years of age in the eastern cordillera (Bogotá, Altiplano Cundiboyacense and department of Santander), and it is maintained although with a similar evolution in the department of Nariño; and in the rural areas of the interior of Peru, but with deep roots in the second most important city of this country, Arequipa. In Ecuador, ll resists as a lateral palatal in the mountains, mainly in the area of Loja and Carchi. In Argentina it remains in the northern and northeastern areas far from the Buenos Aires region, especially in the neighboring Guaranític zone of Paraguay and Bolivia.

In Spain, they traditionally distinguished almost all the non-urban areas in the northern half of the country and a good part of those in the south, with the exception of Andalusia and the Canary Islands. Currently the distinction of both phonemes is probably in the process of disappearing. It is surprising that in 1930-1936 the distinction was still widely held, according to the New Mexico linguist Aurelio Espinosa Jr., who was one of those responsible for the Linguistic Atlas of the Iberian Peninsula. A key fact in the evolution of these phonemes in Spain is that film, radio and television style manuals have always "accepted" the non-distinction in the announcers. Andalusia is where yeísmo has been most deeply rooted since its inception, although there are remains of ll in the vicinity of Seville, in areas of Huelva (in the north and in Lepe) and the mountains of Malaga; in Extremadura there are pockets of important distinction in Cáceres; the Huerta de Murcia and the Campo de Cartagena have traditionally been distinguished, although the capitals and important cities are yeistas.

Currently the distinction is still heard from time to time in the media, but, with a few exceptions, the distinctions tend to be older generations, rural areas and bilingual communities. Regions where the ll resists are usually Castilla y León, Aragon, Catalonia and Navarra. The yeísmo of the Spanish language in Spain is so strong that it has even spread to the other languages of the country, which initially distinguished both phonemes, and today it is already in the majority in Galician and is spreading strongly among young speakers of Asturian and Valencian and in the urban areas of Catalonia. In these indicated places in Spain, yeísmo is relatively recent, but it can be said that in a couple of generations the indistinction of "cayó" and "shut up" It will also have become widespread, as has happened in practically all urban centers.

Yeísmo in other languages

Italor-Romance and Gallo-Italic

Evolution of fonema /*// in different dialectal varieties of Italy.

Standard Italian and Central South Italian languages have the palatal lateral phoneme /ʎ/ from words with -LE- + vowel or -LI- + vowel in Latin. However, in many dialect areas this phoneme has delateralized giving rise to a yeísta pronunciation.

Tuscany, western Campania, Sardinia and a small area in central Sicily are the only areas where the dialects have preserved /ʎ/, in other regions this phoneme in dialect speech has come to be pronounced as [j], [d͡ʒ] or to be elided completely.

In contrast, in educated Italian the distinguishing pronunciation is the norm and is used by the general population, while the realization of /ʎ/ as /j/ is considered highly incorrect.

Portuguese

In some rural parts of Brazil, both in the north and in the south, as well as in the popular speech of the peripheries of the big cities, one can find a confusion between <lh> (/ʎ/) and the <i> /j/ in intervocalic position, which is sometimes reflected in misspellings, for example, velho ('old man'), palha ('palla') and olho ('eye& #39;) misspelled veio, paia and oio.

Catalan

In Catalan, various Latin consonant clusters that include the lateral phoneme -L- have given rise to a palatal lateral sound /ʎ/. Among these groups are LL, LE-vowel, LI-vowel, P'L, T'L, C'L, where ' indicates the drop of a short unstressed vowel. Some examples are AMPULLA, ALLIU, MANUP'LU, VET'LU, CUNIC'LU, which give in Catalan ampolla 'bottle, ampolla', all 'garlic', matoll 'matojo', vell 'old man', conill 'rabbit'. (Note that unlike Spanish these never palatalize at the beginning of a word CLAVIS, PLANU, FLAMMA give in Spanish llave, llano, llama but Catalan keeps the Latin consonants without palatalize clau, pla < /plan/, flama.)

However, there are dialect areas of Catalan in the province of Gerona to the northeast of the Barcelona area, and in the Balearic Islands, where instead of the pronunciation [ʎ] in some cases is [j]. For example, in certain regions you have [ˈuj], [ˈpajə], [təˈja(ɾ)] (ull, palla, tallar) versus the usual pronunciation of Barcelona Catalan [ˈuʎ], [ˈpaʎə], [təˈʎa]. Although the cases of [j] from -LL- are clear examples of yeísmo, there are doubts about the cases in which this sound comes from -C'L-, -LE-vowel, -LI-vowel since there are many cases of old spelling with -yl- instead of -ll-, with great consistency, which is why some authors reconstruct for primitive Catalan an opposition between /ʎ/ and a different palatal phoneme, which would be the origin of the spelling -yl-.

French

Old and Middle French had a phoneme /ʎ/ other than /j/ as well, which was spelled ill between two vowels and il at the end of two vowels. word. For example, bataille [baˈtaʎə] 'battle', œil [œʎ] 'eye'. The phoneme /ʎ/ was then lost, joining /j/, giving rise to the modern pronunciations [baˈtaj(ə)] and [œj], although they continue to be distinguished in writing.

Quechua

In northern Ecuadorian Quechua, the palatal phoneme /ʎ/ has evolved in the same direction as in the Spanish. However, in both languages a distinction between the elle and ye sounds is preserved:

Hungarian

In Hungarian the historical palatal phoneme /ʎ/ <ly> has evolved to /j/. However, the Hungarian dialects in Slovakia and in the subsequent area in Northern Hungary still distinguish the two phonemes /ʎ/ and /j/.