Lisps and other dialects
When I was in Spain I got to spend a lot of time in Madrid, where the Spanish lisp is alive and well. One thing that surprised me was that words ending in a "D" often were lisped as well, so Madrid was pronounced Madrith, and oportunidad was pronounced oportunidath.
What are some strange dialects or pronounciations you've heard that people don't talk about much?
(The Spanish lisp is well known, but I don't think lisping the "D" was common knowledge.)
PLEASE NOTE: I am using 'lisp' generically. I know it is really an accent. I was in close contact with Spaniards for over 13 months in the U.S. and Spain. I should have realized that there is a common misconception that they really have a lisp. I often get teased because of my accent when I am in the U.S. because it is very much Castillian.
11 Answers
My two cents:
As Samdie said, the term lisp leads to a lot of confusion. I prefer to use the terms "seseo" and "ceceo":
1) seseo: to pronounce the letter "z" (plus "ce" and "ci") like an "s".
2) ceceo: to pronounce as a Spanish "z" (th in English) sounds that should have been "s". This is a true lisp, according to the normal English usage.
Medieval Spanish have many sounds that do not exist nowadays, all between the "s" and the "z" (th in English), but some of them they were so similar to one another, that natives often misunderstood one another. As a result, the pronunciation of the language became simpler, fusing several sounds into a single one. The northern and central part of Spain fused some sounds into "s" and others into "z" (Castilian dialect), whereas the south fused all of them into an "s". Both dialects have their own status for centuries, but eventually Spain tried to impose the Castilian dialect as the official one. Most people who went to Latin America did so from Sevilla, the "capital" of the southern dialect, which is why in Latin America people do not use the "z" sound. In the south of Spain many people still refuse to pronounce the "z" sound.
When Spain tried to impose the Castilian dialect, the people from the south tried to learn, but it wasn't a natural process for many, and many speakers doing their best to use the "z" sound ended up doing it when they should have used the "s" sound - this is ceceo, a true lisp. So this people say "Zol" instead of "Sol", for example. This is considered a horrible mistake.
"Seseo", on the other hand, was the natural pronunciation of the south of Spain and even now it is the main one of Latin America, so it is a just a perfectly valid variety of Spanish, not a mistake, like that "ceceo".
Lisp is when people pronounce "z" instead of "s". Saying "Zol" is a lisp, and a bad mistake, but saying "zapato", like the northern part of Spain, is not a mistake, but a dialectal feature, as valid as any other one. Any person from Spain would feel insulted if you told them that they have a lisp, because they are not mispronouncing words (like those "Zol" guys), but pronouncing perfectly in their own way, like people in South America. It is important to differentiate between pronouncing a "z" when it is right for a dialect from pronouncing the "z" almost randomly when the word has no "z" and no "z" sound in any dialect.
Besides, the Castilian dialect clearly differentiates between the pairs of words "ciento/siento", "casar/cazar" and many others, which is useful for spelling better, whereas "ceceo" makes different words sound the same, and wrong.
By the way, English likes to use double L in many words, even if the original word had just one, so why on Earth does Castilian have just one, if the original word in Spanish has two? (from Castillo)
First off, I call it a lisp because that is just the common usage. I know it is not really a lisp.
I agree that D is pronounced differently in Spanish than in English. I've never said otherwise. But when Castellanos tell me they hate how Madrileños pronounce the D, you know it is a local accent and is not just part of Spanish at large. Like I said, it was the D at the end of the word. In words like diversidad, it was only the ending that had a TH sound, not the first or second Ds.
Here are some quotes I found online:
For example, Madrileños pronounce the "d" at the end of a word like "th" (Madrith instead of Madrid). My teacher, who was from Valencia, considered that a perversion.
Found at: http://www.dpchallenge.com/forum.php?action=read&FORUM_THREAD_ID=876907
Within Spain, people from Madrid (Madrilenos) would pronounce their home town like Madrith.. with the “th” actually extended such as Madrithhhh…
Found at: http://www.fluther.com/20612/how-do-native-spanish-speakers-sound-to-each-other/
Wanna know something about the concrete dialect in Madrid? Final -d is pronounced like [th], but only in Madrid. So an authentic “madrileño” (from Madrid) always says [Ma-dríth].
Found at: http://www.spanishpod101.com/2008/01/06/regional-series-2-how-goes-iberian/
There's even a Spanish language blog called "Es Madrid no Madriz" (remember that in parts of Spain the 'c' and 'z' make a 'th' sound).
I'm not a newbie Spanish speaker giggling to myself about how the language sounds. There really is a difference between the way Madrileños say "Madrid" and the way most of the Spanish world says it.
The Spanish lisp is well known, but I don't think lisping the "D" was common knowledge
Not common knowledge but, rather, common ignorance. Lisping is no more common in Spain than in any other country of the world (I would guess, well under 1% of the population). What is, however, common is the misapplication of the term "lisp" to certain sounds as pronounced by Spaniards. Note: these same sounds are also quite common in English and nobody calls it lisping when English speakers do it.
Do you pronounce "sink" and "think" or "sat" and "that" the same when speaking English? If so you might be said to have a "lisp" (although, normally the term is restricted to the confusion of the first pair, only). Three different sounds in English. Three different sounds in the Spanish of most of Spain. Some languages/dialects have all the sounds (make the distinctions), some don't. To suggest that those that do make the distinction are "lisping" is sheer ignorance (either of what sounds are being used or of what the word "lisp" means).
Instead of anyone actually answering or discussing the question we've spend all our time arguing about exactly what the word "lisp" means and insulting the OP.
We're talking about a certain type of TH sound that would be "incorrect" in English where you put your tongue behind your teeth instead of between them. (If your tongue doesn't go between your teeth when you say "that" you're not pronouncing it "correctly" in the official sense.)
To actually answer the question: If you look at the IPA for Spanish you'll see every official sound in the language: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:IPA_for_Spanish
? cereal; encima; zorro; enzima; paz [7] thing (in central and northern Spain only; elsewhere merged with /s/)
That's an English TH sound as in "thumb" which as I said already is not part of the dialect the OP is talking about. The tongue is in a different part of the mouth, therefore it's a different phoneme.
There's nothing wrong with calling it a lisp, even Michel Thomas used that word, and he's my hero.
Hi Wen - I have never heard the Spanish pronounciation of the letter 'D' called a 'lisp' before but mostly referred to as a 'softer' sound than the 'hard' D sound which is common in English. In fact the hard D sound is one of the traits of the English accent which most newcomers to the Spanish language have a diffuclt time eliminating and which is usually a good sign that it is a foreign speaker. I find the soft D quite attractive and I actually find myself 'noticing' just how hard English speakers make their 'D's'.
Having learned most of my Spanish in Madrid, I am quite familiar with the sound that you are attempting to describe (and, in fact, that is the pronunciation that I use). However your description/terminology leaves much to be desired.
The 'd' in Spanish is never pronounced the way it is in English. Furthermore, your use of "th" to represent the sound is most unfortunate since "th" (in English) can be either voiced or unvoiced (two quite distinct sounds though both lingua-dental) The unvoiced consonant (cf. the "th" in thin/think), of course corresponds to the sound associated with "c"/"z" (in Spain) and widely mis-labeled even by those who should know better as a "lisp". The voiced version (cf. the "th" in the/than) has two allophones in Spanish, differentiated mostly by duration and stress. The shorter/lighter version is used if the "d" is not after a pause, "m", or "n" and the longer/more emphatic version is characteristic of the final "d" of Madrid and its environs.
As for someone from Valencia not liking the sound? Boo hoo!
I havent been learning spanish for very long but from all the spoken spanish accents that I have encountered so far, (Im not very good at explaining things like this sorry) I think you put your tongue between your teeth, like you're going to make a 'TH', sound but instead say the 'D' but sort of lazily if that makes any sense 
The lisp on some "s" sounds is pronounced in Madrid. "El proceso" is pronounced, "el pro-THE-so." Only the first "s" sound gets the "th" the others, no. Same for "gracias" pronounced as, "GRA-thee-as."
The distinction between "s" and "c"/"z" is by no means restricted to Madrid. It is made in most (but not all) of Spain. The question of where in a word "c"/"z" occurs in a word is totally irrelevant. They are never pronounced like "s" (no matter where in a word they occur) by those who make the distinction (and always pronounced the same by those who use the "seseo"). They are, quite simply two different sounds ("s" versus "c"/"z") and are consistently represented by different letters. (In passing, they are two different sounds in English, Greek and Arabic too [among the languages with which I am acquainted] [each of these languages also has a sibilant which it considers to be a distinct sound]).
For those who (properly speaking) have a "lisp", "s" would always be pronounced like "c"/"z" (since what characterizes a lisp is the inability to pronounce a simple sibilant even though normal speakers of the same dialect do so). Thus, having a "lisp", is not a description of how one pronounces certain sounds/letters but, rather, an inability to pronounce the "s" as do the members of ones dialectal community. The fact that speakers of other languages (or dialects of the same language) use a different pronunciation is irrelevant.
From Wikipedia
Castilian lisp A persistent urban legend claims that the prevalence of the sound /?/ in Spanish can be traced back to a Spanish king who spoke with a lisp, and whose pronunciation spread by prestige borrowing to the rest of the population. This myth has been discredited by scholars for lack of evidence.[4] Lundeberg (1947) traces the origins of the legend back to a chronicle of López de Ayala stating that Pedro of Castile "lisped a little" ("ceceaba un poco"). The timeline is totally incorrect, however: Pedro reigned in the 14th century, but the sound /?/ only began to develop in the 16th century (see below). Moreover, it is clear that a true lisp would not give rise to the systematic distinction between /s/ and /?/ that characterizes Standard Peninsular pronunciation. For example, a lisp would lead one to pronounce both siento "I feel" and ciento "hundred" the same (as [?jento]), whereas in Standard Peninsular Spanish they are pronounced [sjento] and [?jento], respectively.
Nevertheless, for speakers of seseo varieties of Spanish, where /?/ is absent, and for people who are more familiar with seseo pronunciation (e.g., learners of Spanish in North America), the use of /?/ by Peninsular speakers is striking, and does indeed give an impression of "lispiness". The misnomer "Castilian lisp" is used occasionally to refer to this aspect of Peninsular pronunciation (in both distinción and ceceo varieties).
From a blog written by someone from Barcelona: therealspanish.blogspot.com:
A king, Alfonso X, had a impairment in the speech- a lisp- and the people from the court, courtesans, to make him feel better would imitate the way he spoke. In the same way that people from all over England try to speak with an RP accent when trying to sound smart or professional, people from the city of Madrid started imitating the courtesans, which were the wealthy hip people of the time. As centuries past and the way of speaking was used in the households it stayed as the regular variety. But, again, this only happened for the city of Madrid.
I read the same thing in a guidebook once.
The lisp on some "s" sounds is pronounced in Madrid. "El proceso" is pronounced, "el pro-THE-so." Only the first "s" sound gets the "th" the others, no. Same for "gracias" pronounced as, "GRA-thee-as."
I have found that if I say "gracias" the way my Mexican high school teacher taught us with two "s" sounds, people will look at me as if I am a real foreigner. Egads!
What the heck; when in Rome...do as the romans.
Not common knowledge but, rather, common ignorance.
Exactly!
As Luisa says, what you're hearing is not a speech impediment but an accent!
