The no voiced fricatives rule

Last week, Eleena, from Voces en español, released a podcast we recorded together, you can listen to it here. It deals with the base of articulation: the main differences between the overall "feel" of the two languages. You can find out more about that here and here.

The base of articulation is not a new concept, I´ve first read about it in a book edited in 1937. But, for some unknown reason, it´s been neglected in recent Spanish phonetic books. To those four rules Eleena and I discussed, I´d like to add a new one, it´s really simple: there are no voiced fricatives in Spanish, as opposed to the relatively complex series of English fricatives.

Too much too fast? Don´t panic. If you want to understand why you sound so gringo when saying words like manzana, jueves or calle, just keep on reading. One step at a time, I promise you will get it at the end.


So, what is a fricative again?

If I ask any of my students what a fricative is, he or she will probably say it´s a sound produced by friction. Now you know too, congratulations! So which are the sounds produced by friction? It´s easy, try to make any sound, if you can make it really really long, chances are it´s a fricative. For example, /s/. Try it, say ssss, you could go forever -if you had air enough.

Now you know what a fricative is. There are more, can you guess which ones they are? If you guessed /n/ or /m/, you are wrong! You can produce a really long nnnn, but /n/ and /m/ are nasals (the air escapes through the nose), so think about the other sounds that can be really really long. Nothing? Ok, I´ll help you.

English fricatives

/f/ as in leaf AND /v/ as in leave
/θ/ as in thing AND /ð/ as in this
/s/ as in soup AND /z/ as in zoo
/ʃ/ as in station AND /ʒ/ as in vision
/h/ as in heal

Now, the following are the Spanish fricatives, tell me if you see a pattern. It should be noted that I´m talking about the Spanish used in Argentina.

Spanish fricatives

/f/ as in fácil
/s/ as in sol
/ʃ/ as in coyote
/x/ as in joder

If you don´t see a pattern, don´t worry, bear with me just a bit more.


Voiced vs. voiceless

If I ask any of my students why I wrote those fricatives in pairs, he or she will say that the sounds from each pair share the same place of articulation, but the one of the left is voiceless and the one on the right is voiced. Let´s translate that: to make the sounds from the pair /f/ /v/, your mouth and tongue are in exactly the same position, but the difference is that when you say /v/, your vocal folds vibrate, when you say /f/, they don´t. If you still don´t know what the hell I´m talking about, just do this: put your hand on your throat, and say ffff. Now say vvvv. Which one produced a vibration? If you guessed /v/, congratulations, you´ve just discovered what a voiced sound is! If you´re not sure yet, this may also work: put you hands on your ears, and say ffff, then vvvv, noticed any vibrations? (Thanks Charlotte for the tip!)

Now that we know what a voiced sound is, why don´t we rewrite those lists?

English fricatives

voiceless------------voiced
/f/ as in leaf AND /v/ as in leave
/θ/ as in thing AND /ð/ as in this
/s/ as in soup AND /z/ as in zoo
/ʃ/ as in station AND /ʒ/ as in vision
/h/ as in heal

Spanish fricatives

voiceless------------voiced
/f/ as in fácil
/s/ as in sol
/ʃ/ as in coyote
/x/ as in joder

Seeing any patterns now people? Nothing yet?! We´re almost over.


The no voiced fricatives rule

In English, almost every letter "z" is pronounced as the sound /z/, like zoo, zip or quiz. But, how will you pronounce the letter "z" from Spanish words like zapato or azul?

In English, almost every letter "v" is pronounced as the sound /v/, like vine, savage or love. But... how will you pronounce the letter "v" from Spanish words like voz or avión?

You taking the hint? In Spanish, the letter "z" will always we produced as the sound /s/. If you still don´t know what´s the diffeerece between /z/ and /s/, I must ask: have you even read this whole thing, or have you just skeemed through the headlines? One last time: /z/ is produced with vibrations of the vocal folds, /s/ has no vibrations whatsoever! And what´s more important: there is no /z/ in Spanish!

As you can see, there is not one voiced fricative in Spanish. We´ll say ssss in words like cazar, zápate, corazón, we´re are so crazy we´ll even say ssss in zoológico. If you don´t, you will sound like a tourist, sorry! What about the letter "v", you ask? Just pretend it´s a "b", because we´re out of our minds, we don´t care if we write jueves, vaca, violín or nieve, we will say juebes, baca, biolín and niebe, don´t you dare us!

Now, the philosophical part of the blog, why is it there are no voiced fricatives in Spanish? We can simply guess, or study philology, but I´d rather guess, is funnier and doesn´t take as much time. I guess it´s connected with the relatively strong muscular tension that characterizes the Spanish language, as opposed to the rather relaxed English pronunciation. These voiceless sounds are all fortis, which means that they require more tension around the mouth. But it´s just my very personal guess. You got any better?