Yeísmo

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Main article: Spanish dialects and varieties

Yeísmo (pronounced /ɟʝeˈismo/) is a distinctive feature of many dialects of the Spanish language, which consists of the loss of the traditional palatal lateral approximant phoneme /ʎ/ (written ll) and its merger into the phoneme /ɟʝ/ (written y), usually realized as a palatal fricative or affricate. The term yeísmo comes from the Spanish name of the letter y (i griega or ye). The opposite phenomenon, lleísmo (pronounced /ʎeˈismo/), is the realization of both as the palatal lateral approximant phoneme /ʎ/.

Most dialects currently realize the merged phoneme as a voiced palatal fricative [ʝ], which becomes an affricate or a plosive (either a voiced postalveolar affricate [ʤ] as in English gin, a voiced palatal affricate [ɟ͠ʝ] when it occurs after a pause (as at the beginning of a sentence) or after a nasal (as in the words cónyuge and conllevar). However, in Rioplatense it is typically realized as a voiced postalveolar fricative [ʒ], called zheísmo (or as a voiceless postalveolar fricative [ʃ], called sheísmo, among the younger generations), which may become a voiced postalveolar affricate [ʤ] (or voiceless postalveolar affricate [ʧ] among the younger) in the same context as above.

Yeísmo produces homophony in a number of cases. For example, the following word pairs sound the same to speakers of dialects with yeísmo, but would be minimal pairs in áreas lleístas (i.e. areas which employ lleísmo):

haya ("beech tree" / "that there be") ~ halla ("s/he finds")
cayó ("s/he fell") ~ calló ("s/he became silent")
hoya ("pit, hole") ~ olla ("pot")
baya ("berry") and vaya ("that he go") ~ valla ("fence")

Due to the relatively low frequency of both y and ll, confusion is unlikely. However, orthographic mistakes are common (for example, writing llendo instead of yendo — for some reason, most people tend to err towards ll). A similar effect took place in the local name of the island of Majorca: Mallorca is a continental Catalan hypercorrection of the earlier Maiorca.^[1]