Explanation of Pronunciation
El Cantar de Mio Cid was composed between 1140 and 1207 in Old Spanish, which is comprised of numerous phonemes that contrast the modern version of Spanish. The main difference between the pronunciation of graphemes in Old and Modern Spanish is in consonants, which is due to the lenition, palatalization, and fortition of them as they evolve. To enumerate, the grapheme “ç”, which isn’t present in Modern Spanish and is instead assimilated into the fricative alveolar voiceless /s/ sound, is pronounced as the affricate alveolar voiceless /ts/, such as in “rats” in English. A “z”, rather than being pronounced in the same manner as the modern fricative alveolar voices /s/ sound, is pronounced as an affricate alveolar voiced /dz/ sound. If an “s” is seen alone between vowels, it is pronounced as the fricative alveolar voiced /z/ sound, but if there is a geminated “ss” between vowels, it is pronounced as the modern “s” fricative alveolar voiceless /s/ sound. Unlike Modern Spanish, if an “I” or a “j” is seen between vowels or if a “g” precedes a high or mid front vowel – “I” or “e”, it is pronounced as an affricate postalveolar voiced /dʒ/. An “x”, instead of the modern /x/ sound, is pronounced as a voiceless postalveolar fricative /ʃ/ in all contexts. In Modern Spanish, the graphemes “b” and “v” have nearly become entirely assimilated to represent the voiced bilabial stop /b/ sound at the beginning of words and the voiced bilabial fricative /β/ in intervocalic positions. However, in Old Spanish, the distinction between the two still existed, and the “b” corresponded to the voiced bilabial stop /b/ while the “v” corresponded to the voiced bilabial fricative /β/. In Modern Spanish, the “h” is completely unpronounced, even when at the beginning of a word or in an intervocalic position. However, this evolution took several stages, including the Old Spanish “f” being pronounced as a voiceless glottal fricative /h/, then that in Middle Spanish when the “f” came to represent the voiced labiodental fricative /f/ and the “h” came to represent the voiceless glottal fricative “h” before becoming a silent sound. Finally, the geminated “nn” in Old Spanish corresponds to the modern “ñ” grapheme, which is pronounced as the voiced palatal nasal /ɲ/.