Mexican y (was: analytical versus inflected languages)

[Peter A. McGraw]

I'm not any kind of speaker of Spanish, but from two observations I
conclude that something at least remotely resembling English j does exist
in the Spanish spoken at least in some parts of Mexico.  It's represented
by the letter y, which is realized by a palatal, perhaps slightly
africated, and very lightly articulated stop, with a [j] offglide.  First
observation: a Mexican colleague of mine at Antioch College used it in
pronouncing the name of the town we lived in, which made it sound to an
English-speaker's ears like "Jello Springs."  The second observation was
made on a trip to Tijuana a few years ago.  Driving eastward out of town,
toward Tecate, we passed sign after sign, painted on fences, that said
"Yonque."  I finally realized that behind those fences were: junkyards.  So
obviously that palatal sound was interpreted in the borrowing of the word
"junk" as the closest thing Mexican Spanish had to English j.

I even have a third observation.  Many, MANY years ago, I had one of those
"teach yourself Spanish" record sets, and the first phrase the speaker
modeled, and I repeated over and over trying to get it right, was "Yo
deseo" (spelling of second word not guaranteed), with the y pronounced as
the palatal, affricated, off-glided stop I have tried to describe here.

So anyway, since the Mexican sound is something like the English sound
spelled j and something like the sound spelled y, but not quite like
either, it sounds to American ears more like j when used for spelled y, and
more like y when used for spelled j.

Peter Mc.

--On Tue, Oct 10, 2000 9:40 AM +0200 Paul Frank
<paulfrank at POST.HARVARD.EDU> wrote:

> From: Grant Barrett <gbarrett at MONICKELS.COM>
>> Now for something completely different.  Why do some native
>> speakers of
>> Spanish, when speaking English, substitute the "y" sound for the
>> "j" sound
>> (e.g. "Ayax" for "Ajax")?
>
> I reckon that it's because nothing remotely resembling the English j sound
> exists in Spanish, whereas the Spanish and English y sounds are quite
> similar. I'm a native speaker of Spanish, by the way, and I don't
> substitute the y sound for the j sound when speaking English. I'm glad
> you said some native speakers of Spanish.
>
> Paul
> ___________________________________
> Paul Frank
> Business, financial and legal translation
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****************************************************************************
                               Peter A. McGraw
                   Linfield College   *   McMinnville, OR
                            pmcgraw at linfield.edu