Spanish Phonetics

AboutEdit

The Spanish language has only 5 vowel sounds and 18 consonants.^[1] The language also has 29 possible allophones and 841 theorically possible combinations, requiring only 521 to cover more of  the 99.99% of the concurrences within the language.^[2]

Notes on AccentEdit

Despite the general belief that singers completely lose their accents when they sing, this is not the case in every instance and an accent is possible to be heard even in singing vocals.

However, the reason many are led to believe this is that there are several methods of training singers to disguise or otherwise hide their natural accents - they may even adopt an accent that isn't their own for singing. Samples include genres such as western or country, black music such as Jazz or Soul. Singing also uses different muscles to speech, resulting in difference of air pressure and way the throat moves. Genres such as Opera are most likely to make a accent appear almost entirely absent thanks to the impact of the opera vibrato.^[3][4]

VOCALOID will capture any form of accent quite easily at times. It depends on the recording method used on the voicer, type of sound being recorded per sample (accent impact varies per sample and language) and overall number of samples that make up the voicebank (the more samples, the more chance of it slipping in).

Spanish is a language that can be impacted by accents at times. For example, the first 3 Vocaloids, all were noted for their Castilian Spanish accents. However, while it is noteworthy that accents can exist in Spanish Vocaloids, it is not considered currently as problematic as with other languages. Generally, most Spanish Speakers seem able to understand Spanish Vocaloids fairly adeptly enough to use them with little problem.

Spanish VocaloidsEdit

The following are a list of Vocaloids that use Spanish.

• Clara
• Bruno
• MAIKA

Phonetic System's CharacteristicsEdit

VowelsEdit

The system includes the 5 vowels of Spanish. In comparison to other languages such as English or Korean, the system doesn't includes diphones for the diphthongs. Instead, the system includes the respective glides or semivowels of the "weak" vowels ([i] and [u]) which allows it to perform the diphthongs when combined with the corresponding vowels.

GlidesEdit

The system includes 4 glides which allows to perform all the diphthongs of the Spanish. There are 2 tyoes of glides:

• The semivowels  [I] and [U], used for the falling diphthongs (vowel+glide).

• The approximants [j] and [w], used for the  raising diphthongs (glide+vowel).

ConsonantsEdit

Weak AllophonesEdit

Lenition or Weakening, is a kind of sound change that alters the consonants, making them "softer" in some way. Lenition occurs especially often intervocalically (between vowels). In this position, lenition can be seen as a type of assimilation of the consonant to the surrounding vowels, in which features of the consonant that are not present in the surrounding vowels (e.g. obstruction, voicelessness) are gradually eliminated.

In the Spanish, the Lenition has been an important phenomena since the evolution from the Latin, and continues affecting some consonants, particularly the voiced plosives /b/, /d/ and /g/. Those ones in intervowel context are realized as "softer" voiced fricative or approximant allophones.

Due this, the Spanish Phonetic system includes individual phonemes for the softer allophones. These ones are differenced of their standard "stronger" counterparts by the uppercase symbol, fitting in that way with their respective X-SAMPA's symbol for the fricatives.

The "harsher" plosives generally appears at the beginning of the words, after a nasal consonant like [m] or [n], and after a pause, while their "softer" allophones appears in all the other context, especially intervowel.

Like in the case of the English's aspirated allophones, both versions can be interchanged without alter the overall word meaning, varying only by the degree of stress and emphasis of the words. The slow speech tends to favor the "harsher" plosives while the fast speech tends to favor their "softer" allophones, as the first one has more pauses and silences that allows a full realization and articulation of the plosives while the later do not.^[5]

Rhotic ConsonantsEdit

The Spanish language is one of the few Indo-European languages which has a clear distinction of the rhotics consonants /ɾ/ alveolar tap (the "flapped D" in the American English, known as "ere" in the Spanish) and /r/ alveolar trill (Rolling R, known as "erre" in the Spanish).

The alveolar trill and the alveolar tap are in phonemic contrast word-internally between vowels but are otherwise in complementary distribution. In the Spansih orthograpy, for distinct a intervowel alveolar trill the double R (or 'rr') notation is used while a single intervowel R always is an alveolar tap. In the Spanish phonetic system, this orthographic notation was used instead the usual X-SAMPA notation, as the the alveolar tap is represented as [r] while the alveolar trill is represented as [rr] (not as [4] or [r] how they should be respectively in the X-SAMPA).

TechniquesEdit

Phoneme ReplacementEdit

In the Spanish shows a notorious contrast at the beginning of the syllable, however at the end of the syllable (coda position) the contrast of some consonant is much less marked, making them prone to assimilation processes or merging. Knowing these ones it's possible replace some of the phonemes for the respective allophone, allowing change the stress and pronunciation without alter the meaning of the word.

Voicing AssimilationEdit

Nasal AssimilationEdit

In syllable-final position the nasal consonant are prone to assimilate the place of articulation of following consonant, even across a word boundary. Knowing this, it's possible replace a nasal consonant with another one more appropiate for the context of said phoneme.

Examples:

• For the word Chancho ('Pig') it may be input as [tS a J][tS o] instead [tS a n][tS o] in the VOCALOID Editor because the /n/ should be palatalized in that context due the influence of the following /tʃ/.
• In the phrase Corazón Confundido ('Confused Heart'), it's possible to replace the [n] at the end of the first word for its velar counterpart [N] if the context allows the assimilation of the nasal consonant.
  [k o][r a][T o n][k o n][f u n][D i][D o] → [k o][r a][T o N][k o n][f u n][D i][D o]

Realization of the REdit

In coda or syllable-final position the realization of the Spanish R is neutralized, which it means this one can be realized either as flap or trill.

Phonetic ListEdit

Additional PhoneticsEdit

The following is a list of additional phonemes avaible for MAIKA. Although this phonetic expansion is intended mainly for Catalan, Voctro Labs suggested that with her added phonemes she would be able to achieve a decent imitation of other languages like English, Portuguese and Japanese - although disclaimed that she would not sound like a native speaker.

Aside it's potentional for imitate other languages, it's important to point out this phonetic extension also can be used for complement the Spanish language, as many of the additional sounds are allophones or variants existent in other dialects or variations of said language.

Current UsageEdit

The Spanish language is currently the least popular language of VOCALOID, seeing no known new developments since 2016 and no new releases since 2013. It is currently unknown what the overall state of development is for this language as a result. This has greatly impacted VOCALOIDs continued development of the language and much is currently unknown about the VOCALOID engine and Spanish as a result.

It offers the second least selection of vocals, beating Korean VOCALOID by just 1 voicebank release.

See alsoEdit

Conversion Lists

• Japanese - Spanish

Interwiki articles

• Spanish Phonology (Wikipedia)
• IPA for Spanish (Wikipedia)

ReferencesEdit

1. ↑ link
2. ↑ Jordi Bonada and Xavier Serra - Pompeu Fabra University, Music Technology Group, Ocata, 1, 08003 Barcelona, Spain: Synthesis of the Singing Voice by Performance Sampling and Spectral Models
3. ↑ explanation for accents in singing and also a lack of
4. ↑ [ http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2013/08/why-british-singers-lose-their-accent-when-singing/ "Why do British singers lose their accents?"]
5. ↑ link

External linksEdit

• Spanish Phoneme Chart (Phoneme List  provided by Voctro Labs)

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