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Could you please give an example of a word where th is hispanized as z?


The phoneme 'th' does not exist in Spanish. So, we tend to mispronounce it. Many of us, at least for the native European Spanish speakers, pronounce a Spanish 'z' instead of 'th'.

By the way, the spanish phoneme 'z' is pronounced differently to the english phoneme 'z'.


Just to be more precise:

We can do that in "think" or "thanks". But not in "they". In the latter case we tend to mispronounce it as a Spanish phoneme 'd'.


Actually the sound /ð/ exists in Spanish, but it is an allophone of /d/. For example, the word dedo is pronounced as /'deðo/. That means that for a native Spanish speaker it is very difficult to learn to separate both sounds.

Taken from Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_phonology#Consonants

"The phonemes /b/, /d/, and /ɡ/ are realized as approximants (namely [β̞, ð̞, ɣ˕], hereafter represented without the downtacks) or fricatives[6] in all places except after a pause, after a nasal consonant, or—in the case of /d/—after a lateral consonant; in such contexts they are realized as voiced stops.[7] (In one region of Spain, the area around Madrid, word-final /d/ is sometimes pronounced [θ] especially in a colloquial pronunciation of its name, Madriz ([maˈðɾiθ]).[8]) "


It's more obvious with "dado".

And, if the case of participles, we just nearly butcher the in-between 'd' in -ado as -ao, simillarly to the Southern speakers from the US on lots of words.


Good point. Hispanized is not the correct term here.

What I meant is that the closest sound to "th" in Spanish would be "z" or "d" instead of "t", as other replies have pointed out.




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