S-aspiration in Spanish

Many dialects of Spanish aspirate or “debuccalise” the phoneme /s/. In some cases this means realising the phoneme as /h/, but in other cases it means not pronouncing the phoneme at all. For me (a second-language learner of Spanish), this is the single most relevant feature for determining whether I can understand someone’s accent or not 😢

Dialects where S-aspiration is common:

• Andalusian Spanish
• Caribbean Spanish
• Rioplatense Spanish
• Chilean Spanish
• Central American Spanish (except for Costa Rica)
• coastal speech in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru
• eastern and southern Bolivian

Dialects where S-aspiration is uncommon or absent:

• Castilian Spanish
• Mexican Spanish (except some coastal areas)
• Andean Spanish