Yeísmo
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Yeísmo is a distinctive feature of many dialects of the Spanish language, which consists of the loss of the traditional palatal lateral approximant phoneme /ʎ/ (written ll) and its merger into another phoneme, usually realized as a palatal fricative or affricate. The term yeísmo comes from the Spanish name of the letter y (i griega or ye), which is used to represent the latter.
Most dialects realize the merger phoneme as a voiced palatal fricative [ʝ], which becomes an affricate or a plosive (either a voiced postalveolar affricate [ʤ] as in English gin, a voiced palatal affricate [ɟ͠ʝ] or a voiced palatal plosive [ɟ]) when it is pronounced after a pause (as at the beginning of a sentence) or after a nasal (as in the words cónyuge and conllevar). However, in Rioplatense it is typically realized as a voiced postalveolar fricative [ʒ], called zheísmo (or as a voiceless postalveolar fricative [ʃ], called sheísmo,among the younger generations), which may become a voiced postalveolar affricate [ʤ] (or voiceless postalveolar affricate [ʧ] among the younger) in the same context as above.
Yeísmo produces homophony in a number of cases. For example, the following word pairs sound the same to speakers of dialects with yeísmo:
- haya ("beech tree" / "that there be") ~ halla ("he finds")
- cayó ("he fell") ~ calló ("he became silent")
- hoya ("pit, hole") ~ olla ("pot")
- baya ("berry") and vaya ("that he go") ~ valla ("fence")
Due to the relatively low frequency of both y and ll, confusion is unlikely. However, orthographic mistakes are common (for example, writing llendo instead of yendo — for some reason, most people tend to err towards ll).
