03/12/2006 – Leeds's Singing Organ-Grinder

Imaginary correspondence between Ferdinand the Catholic and Suleyman the Magnificent

I’ve been merrily dilettanting away recently with a couple of literary robberies and forgeries, so it’s good to see that Zazie over at cocanha found a really great one. What he has are extracts from a book published in 1842 in Porto, Portugal under the promising title, Cartas d’el Rei Don Fernando, O Catholico, a…

Use of both ceceo and seseo by individual speakers without register distinction

Noted the other day in the speech of a couple of elderly working class immigrants from Cádiz in the Poblenou district of Barcelona. Ceceo (the characteristic Andalusian lisp which assimilates /s/ and /Î¸/ to [Î¸]) has traditionally been considered socially inferior to seseo (assimilation to [s], associated particularly with Seville and New World dialects), as…