The Andalusian dialects of Spanish (, , ) are spoken in Andalusia, Ceuta, Melilla, and Gibraltar. They include perhaps the most distinct of the southern variants of peninsular Spanish, differing in many respects from northern varieties in a number of phonological, morphological and lexical features. Many of these are innovations which, spreading from Andalusia, failed to reach the higher strata of Toledo and Madrid speech and become part of the Peninsular norm of standard Spanish. Andalusian Spanish has historically been stigmatized at a national level, though this appears to have changed in recent decades, and there is evidence that the speech of Seville or the enjoys high prestige within Western Andalusia.
Due to the large population of Andalusia, Andalusian dialects are among the most widely spoken dialects in Spain. Within the Iberian Peninsula, other southern varieties of Spanish share some core elements of Andalusian, mainly in terms of phonetics notably Extremaduran Spanish and Murcian Spanish as well as, to a lesser degree, Manchegan Spanish.
Due to massive emigration from Andalusia to the Spanish colonies in the Americas and elsewhere, all Latin American Spanish dialects share some fundamental characteristics with Western Andalusian Spanish, such as the use of instead of for the second person informal plural, , and a lack of . Much of Latin American Spanish shares some other Andalusian characteristics too, such as , weakening of syllable-final , pronunciation of historical or the sound as a glottal fricative, and merging syllable-final and . Canarian Spanish is also strongly similar to Western Andalusian Spanish due to its settlement history.
Phonology
Sibilants
Most Spanish dialects in Spain differentiate, at least in pre-vocalic position, between the sounds represented in traditional spelling by and (before and ), pronounced , and that of , pronounced . However, in many areas of Andalusia, the two phonemes are not distinguished and is used for both, which is known as seseo . In other areas, the sound manifests as (a sound close, but not identical to ), which is known as (). Unless a specific dialect is transcribed, transcriptions in this article follow the standard pattern found in the syllable onset, so that the orthographic and the soft are transcribed with , whereas the orthographic is transcribed with . Additionally, in most regions of Andalusia which distinguish and , the distinction involves a laminal , as opposed to the apico-alveolar of most of Spain.
The pronunciation of these sounds in Andalusia differs geographically, socially, and among individual speakers, and there has also been some shift in favor of the standard . As testament to the prevalence of intra-speaker variation, found that many Andalusians alternate between a variety of sibilants, with little discernible pattern. Additionally, the idea that areas of rural Andalusia at one time exclusively used has been challenged, and many speakers described as or -using have in fact alternated between use of and with little pattern. While is stigmatized and usually associated with rural areas, it is worth noting that it was historically found in some large cities such as Huelva and Cádiz, although not in the more prestigious cities of Seville and Córdoba.
Above all in eastern Andalusia, but also in locations in western Andalusia such as Huelva, Jerez, and Seville, there is a shift towards . Higher rates of are associated with education, youth, urban areas, and monitored speech. The strong influence of media and school may be driving this shift.
provides a map showing the different ways of pronouncing these sounds in different parts of Andalusia. The map's information almost entirely corresponds to the results from the Linguistic Atlas of the Iberian Peninsula, realized in the early 1930s in Andalusia and also described in . These sources generally highlight the most common pronunciation, in colloquial speech, in a given locality.