Yeísmo: when ll became y

El yeísmo

c. 1500–. Spanish once had two different sounds in calló and cayó, pollo and poyo: ll was a palatal l (as in Italian gli) and y was a y.

What happened

Spanish once had two different sounds in calló and cayó, pollo and poyo: ll was a palatal l (as in Italian gli) and y was a y. Yeísmo is the loss of that difference, so both are said the same way. Spellings that confuse the two letters appear in American documents from the first half of the 16th century, written by people from regions of Spain that are yeísta today (Seville, Valladolid, Santander, Ciudad Real), and the confusions multiply in the second half of the century, above all in New Spain. Claudia Parodi concludes that American yeísmo was not independent of the Spanish one but spread earlier overseas. Today it is the pronunciation of most Spanish speakers, including the big cities of Spain; the old distinction survives in pockets of the Andes, Paraguay and rural northern Spain. In Buenos Aires the merged sound became a 'sh', the famous Río de la Plata accent.

Read about it

• El español de Andalucía — The Spanish of Andalucía

Connected

• Seseo and ceceo: how s and z merged (c. 1450–1650)

Sources

1. El yeísmo en América durante el siglo XVI (Claudia Parodi, Anuario de Letras) — UNAM, Instituto de Investigaciones Filológicas
2. Rafael Lapesa y el 'andalucismo' del español de América (H. López Morales) — Universidad de Sevilla