[Sca-cooks] Apical and Laminal

[Suey]

Danielle wrote:
> Right, most of Latin America (and Andalucia) has seseo and Spain gets
> made fun of for the "lisp"-like ceceo, when in fact Castilla is mostly
> a region that has neither, preserving a two-way distinction among the
> four phonemes* that merged into/s/  in Latin America and/T/  in small
> parts of Spain. But there are many Latin Americans who use
> "castellano" (in that context) to mean "peninsular Spanish" - just as
> many less geographically astute people in the US refer to Wales as
> part of England, equally incorrectly. (It's also like calling everyone
> from the US a "yankee" - which I am very adamantly not, thank you very
> much, though I'll happily claim the short form "yank" by virtue of
> being a soccer fan.)
Up to here I am with you. The reference to Yankee's hit home. An 
American friend from high society New Haven, CT, a very educated, 
intelligent and cultured lady moved to a small town in Texas with her 
husband and family for family reasons. She had to invite the wives of 
her husband's associates, small town farmer's daughters, to tea one 
afternoon. One of the locals was blunt as Texans are and called her a 
"damn Yankee."
Now I understand, coming to Chile from Madrid, I in 'essence' have been 
called the 'damn Castellan,' which make me bristle as my 'damn Yankee!' 
friend did.
> *apical/s/, apical/z/  
spelling symbols such as accents
> (only found between vowels),

> laminal/ts/,
> laminal/dz/ ¿lamina?.

> The original voicing distinction was lost in all accents
> by 1700, and was at least beginning to disappear by 1500 and quite
> possibly significantly earlier; it's also the same process that merged
> /Z/  and/S/./
Here I'm muddled cause I do not know the technicalities of languages. I 
hear sounds such as the sound  "th" in Castillean and "s" in the 
Americas. I do not hear a phonetical difference between seso and seso.
Perhaps you are trying to say: zapatos = thapatos (shoes) pronunced in 
Castillian and sapatos pronounced in American.
To me the "th" sound is not a lisp. Is just the way we talk.
You are getting right technical. Over my head.
Can you explain what you said there in laymens terms?
Suey