Mi “Casa” No Es Su “Caza”
By: Laura Nagle
Tags: Spanish, Language Learning, Spanish Language, Phonetics, Language

Photo by David Monje on Unsplash

Before you started learning Spanish, you probably heard somewhere that it’s an easy language to learn because the spelling and pronunciation are so regular. Then you got going and discovered that “easy” is a relative term. Sure, spelling is more regular in Spanish than in English, but that’s an awfully low bar!

Even as a beginning learner of Spanish, you can probably look at a word on the page and figure out how to pronounce it without much trouble; but can you hear a word spoken and know how it’s spelled? And what’s up with the letters b and v sounding the same? Or the /s/ sound being spelled three different ways?

If spellings using c, s, and z to represent the same sound seem arbitrary to you — and especially if you’ve gotten to the point where -zar verbs are giving you a headache — read on to learn the logic behind the spellings of the /s/ sound.

The Big Picture

The first broad concept to keep in mind is that the spoken language exists first, and the written language represents it. Sure, spelling can also be influenced by etymology, which is often behind the doubts that even native speakers sometimes have about b/v distinctions or the presence or absence of a silent h. By and large, though, written Spanish reflects the language as it is actually spoken . . .

. . . but it’s not spoken the same way everywhere. If the written distinctions between c, s, and z strike you as totally arbitrary, you’re not imagining things; you’re learning Spanish as it is most commonly spoken in the Americas.

And that, of course, is fine! I’m not here to suggest that learning to speak like a madrileño is the only worthwhile goal; on the contrary, all dialects and accents are valid. However, taking a few moments to understand a key difference between the dominant pronunciation patterns in Spain and the Americas can demystify some patterns in the written language.

Seseo and ceceo

Do the first consonant sounds in the words cerca, serio, and zapato all sound the same to you — and they all sound like the English letter s? This reflects seseo, the standard pronunciation for a large majority of Spanish speakers worldwide. Simply put, ce, ci, and all occurrences of s and z are pronounced the same, using the /s/ sound.

Some native speakers — located primarily in southern Spain, but also in some communities in Latin America — instead use ceceo. The general concept is the same, but in this case, the pronunciation is /s̟/ or /θ/, something like the unvoiced th sound in English (think, fourth).

If you speak using seseo or ceceo, the nouns casa (house) and caza (hunting) will be pronounced exactly the same: from an English speaker’s perspective, they’ll sound like KAH-sah using seseo or KAH-thah using ceceo. Which leads us to…

Distinción

The pronunciation pattern most commonly used in Spain, distinción, means exactly what it suggests: speakers draw a clear distinction between these sounds. Here’s how it works:

S always sounds like /s/

Z always sounds like /θ/ (the unvoiced th sound in English)

C also sounds like /θ/ when followed by an e or i; otherwise, it sounds like /k/

A speaker using distinción, then, will pronounce casa and caza differently: KAH-sah and KAH-thah, respectively. Returning for a moment to the principle that the written language reflects the spoken language, we can see now why these two words are spelled differently: for a considerable number of native speakers, they are pronounced differently.

Let’s say you hear a word like selva and you want to look up its meaning. If it’s pronounced by a speaker using seseo, you might not be sure whether it’s spelled with an s, c, or z. If you’re hearing it from a speaker who uses distinción, however, there’s no question about it: the spoken /s/ sound means the word must be spelled with an s.

C or Z?

There’s still plenty of room for confusion, though, since c and z can represent the same sounds. If you hear a word pronounced with /θ/ (the unvoiced th sound), how can you know whether it is spelled with a c or a z? Fortunately, once again, something that looks arbitrary at first glance does have a logical pattern behind it.

As previously mentioned, a c in Spanish makes the /k/ sound if it’s followed by a, o, u, or a consonant, or if it’s at the end of the word. (This is an easy pattern for English speakers to recognize, because we do the same: cat, coat, cup, act, disc.) C only makes the /θ/ sound (or /s/, in seseo) when it is followed by e or i. (Again, we do this in English as well: certain, city.)

Meanwhile, z always makes the /θ/ sound (or /s/, in seseo). So why not just use z and forget about c altogether? Well, Spanish allows for the ze and zi letter combinations . . . in words of foreign origin. This includes words like zeta (borrowed from Greek), zigzag (from a German root), and zebra (borrowed from Italian . . . and with the alternate spelling cebra, because that just looks right).

To summarize, here are the letter combinations representing the /θ/ sound in speakers using distinción:

In fact, c and z are often two sides of the same coin, used in words that share a root but contain the /θ/ sound in different contexts. For example, the noun capacidad is related to the adjective capaz. The same consonant sound is used in both words, but the spelling reflects the difference in context (z at the end of a word vs. c used before -idad).

This helps clarify a common source of frustration for intermediate learners of Spanish: the spelling changes that occur in the imperative, preterite, and present subjunctive forms of -zar verbs. It can seem picky and unnecessary to change from z to c (for example, yo lancé rather than yo *lanzé), given that both letters represent the same sound. But if you keep in mind that the combinations ze and zi are rare and limited to words of foreign origin, the rules make plenty of sense.

Remember when I said that all dialects and accents are valid? I’ll go a step further: the more accents and regionalisms you’re exposed to, the better. Keeping an open mind to the variants of your target language helps you develop your comprehension skills, your cultural competence . . . and yes, in this case, even your spelling!