Mexican y (was: analytical versus inflected languages)

[Donald M. Lance]

There is not just one Spanish, and not just one Mexican Spanish.  The Mexican Spanish I
grew up hearing from locals and from workers who came from Guanajuato and Nuevo Leon to
our farm in the 1940s did not have an affricate like the English j-sound.  An
approximation to our y-sound occurs in the [ie] diphthong, as in 'hielo' = 'ice' or in the
Spanish y-consonant in a word like 'calle' = 'street' (Andalusian and American
varieties).  In other varieties of American Spanish, 'hielo' sounds similar to English
'jello' but with a fortis palatal fricative that becomes affricated in utterance-initial
position.  Perhaps the person who made the recording for Peter's instructional material
was a South American.  I suspect that assibilation of this [ie] diphthong is becoming more
widespread (a sound change in progress).  Interestingly, though it was not a "normal"
pronunciation in the Spanish I grew up hearing, these same speakers would produce what
Peter describes when they tried to say English words like 'yellow' -- an interlanguage
phenomenon rather than transfer.
DMLance

"Peter A. McGraw" wrote:

> 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
> > From Chinese, German, French, Spanish,
> > Italian, Dutch and Portuguese into English
> > Thollon-les-Memises, 74500 Evian, France
> > E-mail: paulfrank at post.harvard.edu
>
> ****************************************************************************
>                                Peter A. McGraw
>                    Linfield College   *   McMinnville, OR
>                             pmcgraw at linfield.edu