The Spanish Lisp

I apologize for the radio silence. Wednesday and Thursday I was taking a cybersecurity course, and had no time to blog. Today I had to get caught up a bit. Over the past weekend, I was at Windycon, where I was on a panel entitled "Where Did English Get That Word."

As is typical with panels, we digressed a bit and got on other languages, namely Spanish. If you've been to Spain, you'll note that people in the interior of the country seem to speak with a lisp. I told the audience the story I'd heard, namely that this was because a king of Spain had developed a lisp and his people imitated them. (It actually tied into English, as we were discussing how words associated with the common people developed negative connotations while words associated with nobility got positive connotations.)

Well, somebody in the audience jumped up and said "that story about the lisp is wrong!" She had lived for 18 years in Madrid and said that the cause of the "lisp" was just an artifact of language. I thanked her for her correction. When I got home, I did some googling and found out that she was right and I was wrong.

You learn something every day.