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According to the Wikipedia article on Spanish phonology, the phonemes /b/, /d/, and /g/ are realized as approximants or fricatives instead of plosives in all but certain contexts (after a pause, nasal consonant, or a lateral consonant followed by /d/). Where or when are they realized as approximants, and when as fricatives?

jrdioko
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  • Yes in fact even the IPA symbols chosen for these sounds often are not those of the plosives but rather /β/, /ð/, and /ɣ/ respectively. – hippietrail Nov 16 '11 at 16:05
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    Well close, /β/, /ð/, and /ɣ/ don't exist, [β], [ð], and [ɣ] do. Phonemes are realized as allophones. – jrdioko Nov 16 '11 at 23:25
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    Well that depends on the analysis and the linguist, etc. Just as with English, not everybody uses IPA the same way for a given language. I'll try to keep an eye out for places that use the fricative symbols rather than the stop symbols so I can provide a reference. – hippietrail Nov 17 '11 at 06:27
  • @hippietrail: I'd be curious to see that. For the fricatives to be phonemes, you'd need a minimal pair between the fricative and the plosive, and I've never heard of that existing in Spanish, even regionally. – jrdioko Nov 17 '11 at 17:41
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    No I'm not saying that there are six phonemes but that the three phonemes are sometimes represented with the other three symbols. – hippietrail Nov 17 '11 at 18:16
  • @hippietrail: Ah ok, now I understand. – jrdioko Nov 17 '11 at 18:18
  • /g/, /d/ and /b/ are often realized as approximants or fricatives intervocalically. For example, consider the words pagar, poder, and pavo. – Peter Olson Nov 17 '11 at 23:30
  • @PeterOlson: Whoops you're right, I had it backwards. They're plosives in the cases I mentioned, fricatives/approximants everywhere else. – jrdioko Nov 17 '11 at 23:35
  • This is something I'm very conscious of in having a foreign accent no matter where I speak Spanish. If I speak naturally I never make these sounds fricatives and when I try to speak "correctly" I'm sure I make too many of them into fricatives. – hippietrail Nov 18 '11 at 10:24
  • I would say that it depends a lot on accents. But yes, generally it's like that. I had a greek friend that was astonished to hear "goga-gola" in Argentina, instead of "Coca-cola" – Petruza Jan 24 '12 at 21:24
  • غ from Arabic, it truly is a fricative, and I have never EVER heard the guttural gargle sound this letter makes in Spanish. See: Voiced velar fricative – Ryan David Ward Feb 12 '12 at 18:09

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If you look at the reference on Wikipedia, you'll see that it's not a matter of sometimes they're fricatives and sometimes they're approximants, but rather it's that scholars seem to be in disagreement as to whether they are fricatives or approximants (altogether). In the past, they were called fricatives, but new analyses seem to indicate that they are actually approximants because of the lack of turbulence.

In any case, the spirantized versions [β, ð, ɣ] are realized intervocalically.

Tim Gorichanaz
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