Is the reason spanish people pronounce 'Barcelona' as 'Barthelona' to do with a spanish king from years ago?

Question

my friend thinks that spanish people pronounce a lisping 's' because of a spanish king with a lisp years ago who made the whole country do the same?

is this right?
or is he spouting rubbish?

Answer 1

In Spain we pronounce 'Barcelona' as you would pronounce 'barzelona'. But in Catalonia (where Barcelona is) they speak a dialect and in that dialect called "catalan" its pronounced like 'barselona".

It has not relation with any king...

Answer 2

Not all Spanish people pronounce Barcelona as Barthelona, only those from Castille (which they pronounce Cath-tee-yah), where there is an accent which is quite different from the rest of Spain. It's sort of like the British upper crust accent, which is
'teddibly, teddibly twee' and sounds like they have a cold in the nose. Or node.
Why the Castillians began speaking with a lisp isn't really known. The story about the lisping king has been around for a few years, but there's no reason why only the Castillians should have adopted the lisp, while other Spaniards didn't. Unless the king came from Castille? In that case it would make sense. Not because the King ordered everyone to talk that way, but the Spanish are incredibly polite people and rather than embarrass the king, they would adopt his lisp. So the courtiers would lisp, but the general public wouldn't And that's a reasonable hypothesis, because the majority of Spaniards don't use the lisping accent. Interestingly enough, today, some Mexicans, who like to think of themselves as 'upper crust' speak with the Castillian lisp!

Answer 3

I have a very good friend from Barcelona and I promise you it has nothing to do with Kings, lisps or any other kind of speech condition.

It's how the language of Spanish works.

They generally pronounce the letter "s" (or that sound) as a "th" because in the history and evoloution of the whole Spanish language and with the whole accent, it's something that just is.

Kinda like how, in English, you get different accents and different ways of pronouncing the same thing in different parts of the UK :-)

Answer 4

This Site Might Help You.

RE:
Is the reason spanish people pronounce 'Barcelona' as 'Barthelona' to do with a spanish king from years ago?
my friend thinks that spanish people pronounce a lisping 's' because of a spanish king with a lisp years ago who made the whole country do the same?

is this right?
or is he spouting rubbish?

Answer 5

Back in the 60's when I was at the Foreign Language Institute, I met an Institute who was a teacher and was just learning english. We became friends and she introduced me to her friends who worked at the Spanish Embassy. The proper Catalan pronunciation of Barcelona is much closer to Barthelona than it is to Barselona and much closer to Barzelona if you came from Madrid, which is where most of the embassy staff came from.

Answer 6

Wow...that's really funny to me that you heard that too. I had this really terrible Spanish teacher who told me the same story but I thought he just made it up (he was really weird). Now that you say you heard the same story though, I'm thinking it's probably some kind of myth. It doesn't seem like something true, but I don't think you're friend just completely made it up.
Hope that helps. ^_^

Answer 7

As it happens they speak Catalan in the north so their lisp isn't quite as pronounced in Barcelona.
However, your informant was quite right. Philip II had a lisp and so as not to make him feel odd everyone else did the same.

Answer 8

My mate told me this a while ago and i didn't believe him, but after looking it up, i found a story about a king called Philip II, who had a lisp, so everyone adopted the lisp as not to offend him. Crazy, but true

Answer 9

It's just their accent stupid, like LL is pronounced as Y....

Answer 10

is their accent honey! like how they pronunce the Z compared to other spanish speaking countries in the other ones they pronunce it as an S