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Does Spanish have words which can be pronounced with a different number of syllables? For example, in English one can pronounce lightning with 2 syllables, meaning the companion of thunder, and 3 syllables, meaning brightening.

I was wondering if Spanish has such words as well.

aparente001
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dimid
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1 Answers1

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Yes, but they tend to be barely perceptible to the average speaker because they tend to be based on dialect. For example, the word guion can be pronounced in one (/'gjon/) or two (/gi'on/) syllables. There is no change in meaning however. As the Ortografía points out:

Estas secuencias [de vocal cerrada átona y vocal abierta tónica], que en España y en una parte de América se articulan en muchos vocablos como hiatos, se pronuncian, en cambio, como diptongos o integrando triptongos en otras zonas, especialmente en México, Centroamérica y parte de las áreas caribeña y andina. Así palabras como piano, enviar, guion, jesuita, diurno o fieis son silabeadas por unos hispnohablantes separando las vocales contiguas en sílabas distintas: [pi.á.no], [em.bi.ár], [gi.ón], [je.su.í.ta], [di.úr.no], [fi.éis]; y por otros, agrupando las vocales dentro de la misma sílaba: [piá.no], [em.biár], [gión], [je.suí.ta], [diúr.no], [fiéis].

Sometimes you can have a hiatus in unstressed syllables and some speakers will have the resulting extra syllable. For example, any word with the prefix bio- which can be either /bi.o/ or /bjo/. The reasons for when someone would use one pronunciation or another are quite varied:

La articulación de determinadas secuencias vocálicas dentro de la misma sílaba o en sílabas distintas no solo depende de la procedencia geográfica, sino que se ve influida asimismo por otros factores, como la posición que la secuencia ocupa dentro de la palabra, la velocidad de emisión, el mayor o meno esmero en la pronunciación, la etimología o la analogía con otras palabras de la misma familia léxica, etc.

But these differences are not (by design) indicated in writing except when they affect the stressed syllable (as in vídeo ~ video, but those are spelt differently so they don't count as an answer to your question :-) ). None of these will affect the meaning of the word, however, as can happen in English read /riːd/ ~ read /rɛd/.

user0721090601
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  • I've come across a spectacular exception. I asked directions to the "Paseo Bravo." It took me a while to understand the answer (from a random person): she directed me on how to get to the Paseo Brap. – aparente001 Jan 17 '18 at 04:49
  • Thanks, are there regional differences between /bi.o/ and /bjo/ or is it a just a personal choice? – dimid Jan 17 '18 at 04:54
  • @dimid neither really. It's pretty spontaneous for any possible hiatuses like that. Most speakers aren't even aware that such a thing exists (unlike words like guion where they tend to hear it slightly) – user0721090601 Jan 17 '18 at 04:57
  • That is wrong in many dimensions. The problem with Bio, for example, is that if you assume Bio-tecnológico as two words, people tend to accent it in some way as if they were really two words: Bio and Tecnológico. So where should Bio has the accent? The tilde should be in Bío (/bi.o/) but not in Bio (/bjo/) (monosyllable). – Billeeb Jan 17 '18 at 10:36
  • But the rule says that the particle is not accented: Biotecnológico (which is correct) Is going to sound like /bjo/. But Bio-tecnológico, is felt like two words, therefore getting the two accents wrongly stressed: Bío-Tecnológico. And coming the particle from Bio (greek for live, life) is a compositional particle (Bio does not exist as a word in spanish, just as a prefix) the supposition that a wrong spelled word is a "regional difference" is absurd, specially when spanish is super straight forward in the pronunciation. – Billeeb Jan 17 '18 at 10:36
  • @billeeb Note that I did not say that bio- is stressed or accented, I said that it can have a hiatus. A hiatus can only be explicitly marked if the weak vowel receives the stress, otherwise it is hidden (another example: enviar which will be pronounced as either /en'bjar/ or /en.bi'ar/). The Spanish orthography system has no way of marking this, except in poetry where a dieresis is used to force the two-syllable pronunciation, and most speakers will end up realizing the pronunciation both ways, hence negating the need to mark it regularly. – user0721090601 Jan 17 '18 at 14:14
  • Por favor lee lo que se detalle en la Nueva Ortografía (2010), específicamente en los apartados 3.2h y 3.2i (págs. 223-224). – user0721090601 Jan 17 '18 at 14:26
  • I don't get a dieresis in a non accented word. Día, has it. Stating that whenever a diptong has stress in the weak vowel then the hiatus is broken by the diéresis, and the stress is visible with a tilde, even when accentuation rules would no allow it normally. Dieretic accent. – Billeeb Jan 17 '18 at 16:39
  • A link to that?? – Billeeb Jan 17 '18 at 16:40
  • Other examples memoria. Ia is diptong, stress in the a has no tilde. Diario. Ia and io are diptongs, the word is stressed in the a, no diptong is broken by dieresis and is a "grave" word ended in vocal, so, no tilde. – Billeeb Jan 17 '18 at 16:44
  • The diéresis is not a lyrical tool, is a grammatical rule!!! – Billeeb Jan 17 '18 at 16:45
  • http://aplica.rae.es/ortografia/ – user0721090601 Jan 17 '18 at 16:47
  • @billeeb Also note the difference between a dieresis (as in rüido, süave, or fïel) and an acute accent (called tilde in Spanish, as in alemán, alcántara, librería). The acute marks the stress, and as the Ortografía notes, that it marks hiatuses is a side effect. The dieresis, outside of its use in -güe- or güi combinations, is used to indicate, for metric reasons, the obligatory nature of a hiatus. – user0721090601 Jan 17 '18 at 17:56
  • In the previous comment I said all the time diéresis but I was refferring to the interruption of the hiatus by the dieretical accent. Forget about the diéresis, it should be read as hiatus. – Billeeb Jan 17 '18 at 20:21
  • Let us continue this discussion in chat. – Billeeb Jan 17 '18 at 20:22