'Coiones!' Is the correct pronunciation of double ela disappearing?

Barcelona"Sundays are days of food in the git, from watching series on git, to raise the cat to the git", says the IKEA radio ad. Complaints are common on social media because announcers, journalists, and audiovisual communicators do not pronounce the sound of the double ela correctly in Catalan. This is a reflection of what happens very often on the street: if you listen closely, it seems that fewer and fewer Catalan speakers pronounce this sound as [y] lateral more or less open, or even with other sounds that are similar. yet either get instead of milk, or fall, coya, yogurt,podiastro, etc. Why? Are these just one-offs or an evolutionary shift in the language?

Where does the confusion come from?

The Romance languages, in the process of evolution from Latin, have adopted various solutions for the double-el sound. Currently, it doesn't exist in French and is tending to disappear in Spanish, while in Italian it sounds very elongated. "The tendency to pronounce and or other sounds can be explained by a perceptual confusion between /ʎ/ and /j/, given that they are acoustically similar. Catalan must follow this trend, reinforced by the impact of another language with which it increasingly coexists: Spanish," says Josefina Carrera Sabaté, PhD in philology from the University of Barcelona (UB) and a specialist in phonetics. "The impression is that the use of the double "el" sound is progressively being replaced by the and, especially in young people," he adds. Studies link yeísmo to children between 12 and 18 years old and to the use of Spanish, especially among beginning Spanish speakers.

According to the Grammar of the Institut d'Estudis Catalans, this widespread replacement of the double "ela" by the and It is not acceptable. It is only acceptable in the case of historical yeísmo (yodization) in the informal register and in speeches where it is native, such as in the Balearic Islands and in areas of central Catalan (in these cases, these are heritage words that have evolved from Vulgar Latin with the sound and: bee, eye, straw, towel, red, etc.). The linguist Enric Gomà points out that "the influence of Castilian has increased the cases of yeísmo in Catalan" but he also points out that historical yeísmo may "contagion" to words or speech in which it is not correct because "speakers have no idea of the origin of the words in Low Latin and do not discriminate."

What factors are involved?

Obviously, a sound like the double "el" doesn't go unnoticed for the population to have vocal difficulties or widespread muscular problems. "It's not a question of inability," says speech therapist Xon Belmonte. "That's why, when speech therapists provide speech training or speech improvement, they first rehabilitate the perceptual basis: you have to learn to identify the sound by listening to it a lot. repertoire of genuine Catalan sounds. There are people who have discovered as adults that they don't know how to say the double "el" and thought they said it correctly; cannot even discern all the sounds of other languages well. On the other hand, the fact that Catalan is less present in the environment and in media consumption can make it difficult to have sufficient exposure in Catalan for genuine listening and reproduction of sounds - this is more evident in the case of young people, who switch to Spanish and consume leisure time—. Finally, if there are more and more linguistic references—teachers, journalists, politicians, actors, advertising—who do not make this sound correctly, it can convey the idea that it is optional in Catalan.

In schools or speech therapy, the poor pronunciation of the double palatal lateral sound "ela" is rarely corrected because other sounds are considered to have priority. "It is not given much importance among families," admits Belmonte, who observes that other sounds are also being lost, such as neutral and unstressed sounds. "At early ages, they are very influenced by the models; it is a very unconscious process," she points out. Experts indicate that the palatal lateral sound should be pronounced correctly from the age of 7 (like the vibrant erra) and that there are resources to learn how to pronounce them as an adult. However, awareness that phonetics is part of linguistic quality is necessary, especially among school and professional environments.

Will Catalan change?

Considering the demographics—speakers who have Catalan as a second language and adults who should actively incorporate it (1.6 million people who never speak Catalan and 2.2 million who speak it more or less sporadically)—it is expected that Catalan will change even more rapidly than it has in recent decades. recent study by UPF certified that Catalan is already tending towards Castilian grammar among young people, even if it is for a matter of linguistic economy, said Professor Silvia Perpiñan. The question is who is the agent of this change: is it that they feel little Catalan or is it that Catalan is already different? Time and speakers will tell.

"The changes will be very pronounced. We are still in diapers. The weight of Castilian is the clearest, but English is behind it and gaining ground. It is better that we do not get angry and that we do not get melancholy (with the Catalan of our grandparents, that of the peasants, that of Loneliness, etc.). Catalan can only survive through change. We must avoid becoming a dialect of Castilian and at the same time adopting a few changes," suggests Enric Gomà. He considers the disappearance of the voiced s's to be serious, but, on the other hand, he doesn't consider betacism (pronouncing the low comes as a high bien), nor the pronunciation of the Castilian elage, to be so serious for the Catalan of the Principality. "It doesn't make me happy, but all evils like this," he admits. Ultimately, the question is where to set the bar for correctness. CatalanIn any case, there is agreement that those who have the greatest responsibility as linguistic representatives should have the most correct pronunciation. "The threshold must be set sensibly, always understanding that different origins give rise to different pronunciations. Priority must be given to the most spontaneous and convivial spoken language, with many speakers in the process of learning and becoming fluent. Media professionals must, of course, be excluded. They cannot have a phonetic system," Gomà said.