• BeMoreCareful@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    The ancient Spanish basically all had a lisp. Nobody thought about it at the time and it eventually became the status quo and then correct pronunciation. I base this on absolutely nothing and will die on this hill.

    • lolcatnip@reddthat.com
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      15 hours ago

      It’s not a lisp. Castilian pronunciation uses the same S sound as for the letter S as speakers from Latin America. It’s only Z and soft C that are different.

    • stevedice@sh.itjust.works
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      1 day ago

      When Spain invaded Latinamerica, they recorded the language of the natives phonetically but there were a lot of sounds that didn’t have an Spanish equivalent so they just wrote X for all of them and now they’re trying to retroactively fix the spelling of several words so you’re kinda right. For example, Spain insists México is spelled Méjico.

      Edit: Apparently, as of recently, Spain no longer insists México is spelled Méjico but still keeps it around as a correct spelling (it’s not, it’s literally only them).

      • nshibj@lemmy.world
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        14 hours ago

        That sounds interesting, do you have a source? I’d like to learn more.

        I’ve read that in ancient Spanish the letter X had in some cases the sound that the letter J has in modern Spanish, therefore the spelling of some words changed accordingly: Don Quixote is Don Quijote in modern day Spanish.