Why Spaniards pronounce the Z different?
I have a Colombian friend and she does not pronounce the Z like the Spaniards. She told me that in Spain is the only Spanish speaking country that the Z is pronounced differently.
Does anyone know why?
19 Answers
I am no linguist, but not everyone in Spain "lisps" the "s" and "z." In Andulucía, you can find pronunciation of the "z" y "s" similar to that in Latin America. Also, a lot of the conquistadores came from Andulucía, so this helps to explain why certain Latin American dialects do not adopt the ? (th) pronunciation of the [s] [z]. Also, in the Canary Islands, the Spanish spoken closely reflects English traits, such as syntax and pronunciation because a lot of English speaking people stopped through there on their way to the Americas. If you would like more information on this subject, by all means you can do an internet search about this subject.
I'm Spanish,and I'll try to answer the question. First, sorry for my bad English,but I'm still learning! In Spain za,ze,zi,zo,zu,ce,ci are pronounced like English "th". Why? Sincerely, I don't know. I think that American pronounce them like "s" for the U.S influence, because United States is closer than Spain. Homever, here in Spain, in Andalucía, Murcia, Extremadura and Canary Islands, people pronounce those syllables like Latin American. There also exist three co-official languages (Galician, Catalan and valencian). In these languages, z and c is pronounced like "s" too. So, now, I ask. Why in the USA is "t" pronunced so, so, so rare?....
Yes, in Spanish the letter "z" as well as a "soft c" are pronounced along the lines of an English "th".
For example: "Gracias por los cinco zapatos" would come out something like "Grathias por los thinco thapatos".
Latin American comedians have been known to have a lot of fun with this!
Hi smithy, welcome to the forum
Why Spaniards pronounce the Z different
Hmmm, this is a weird question as we are the only people who pronounce the z as it should be pronounced
:::hiding, hiding::::
Does that mean a Latinamerican person with a lisp will talk like a Spaniard? 
Why don't English speakers pronounce "th" like "s"? Why do the French pronounce "th" like "t"?
I am a beginner in Spanish, but I do know the story to the lisp.
I was told it was because a ruler back then had a lisp. Here is a good article
http://spanish.about.com/cs/qa/a/q_lisp.htm
So who really knows. I believe the urban legend.
People in different regions speak a differently, even if it's the same language, just as the dialects in each region uses a few different words.
... It's kind of like how people in America, England and Australia all speak English, but with different pronunciations, different spellings and different words.
... Hope that helps...
Because it is their language and they can do whatever they want with it.
In Spanish from Spain (in other words, the original Spanish, meaning nothing more but nothing less than the first Spanish that ever was), the "Z" is pronounced exactly the same way as "TH" in the English word "THINK". Do English people have a lisp just because they prounce "think" as it is supposed to be pronounced (I am talking about standard English, of course) and they don't pronounce "sink"? I do no think so.
On top of that, please take a moment to think a bit more and ask yourself (if you still don't know, that is): how do Spaniards pronounce the "S"? Well, exactly the same way as English people pronounce it... So, if Spaniards pronounce the "s" without any problem whenever they come across one, but they pronounce "Z" as you pronounce the "th" in "think"... wouldn't it be a silly thing to say they have a lisp? Wouldn't it mean that for them the "z" and the "s" have their own sound each, and it is a different one? I do think so.
Furthermore, having said that, I believe the question "why don't Spanish American people pronounce the "z" as the Spaniards, bearing in mind the language came originally from there, and they just pronounce it as if it were an "s"?" is far more interesting.
an interesting fact I heard from my friend who studies linguistics: very few languages have the "th" sound, although some of the most common languages have it.
To my certain knowledge English, Arabic, Greek and some flavors of Spanish have both the "theta" and the /s/ and consistently distinguish between them. French, Italian,, Japanese and some flavors of Spanish do not have the "theta" sound. (I know of no language that lacks the /s/).
"to lisp" is to inappropriately substitute the "theta" for the /s/ (in other words, where most speakers of that same dialect use /s/). It is total nonsense to apply the term "lisp" (or "cecear") to the pronunciation of "z" and "c" in (roughly) northern Spain.
P.S. the "lisping king" myth is just that, a myth. In addition, it is a stupid myth because 1) languages/dialects do not evolve that way and 2) it totally ignores the fact that the /s/ is alive and well throughout almost all of Spain.
I believe Spanish is from Spain so why doesn't Latin America pronounce it like Spain?
I do not know the answer but find this very interesting. Do people from barcelona pronouce the 'z' and 'c' like 'th' in english?
The Greek language has the "th" and has a separate letter for it called "theta" which looks like this: ?. Many languages very often use it to specify the "th"-sound when they write other languages phonetically to explain what the correct pronounciation of words is.
That is very interesting. When I first heard Enrique Iglesias sing in Spanish, I thought he had a lisp, but then I told myself 'no, that would be impossible', a singer would have proper pronounciation. Then I started studying Spanish and found out about the soft 'c' and 'z' sounding like the 'th' in English. (for most Spaniards anyway).
