Colombian Spanish - Phonology

Phonology

• The phoneme /x/ is realized as glottal "in all regions ", in common with the pronunciation of El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Caribbean coast of Venezuela, Spanish Caribbean islands, Canary Islands, and southern Spain. The speech of Colombia is widely held to be a prestige standard of "prestigious" language, perhaps due to its historically conservative nature.
• As in most American dialects, also, Colombian Spanish has yeísmo (a merger of /ʎ/ and /ʝ/), and seseo (traditional /θ/ merges with /s/). That is, calló ("s/he became silent") and cayó ("s/he fell") are homophones, and casa ("house") is homophonous with caza ("hunt"). Seseo is common to all of Hispanic America, the Canary Islands, and southern Spain, and yeísmo is prevalent in most Spanish variations.
• The voiced consonants /b/, /d/, and /ɡ/ are pronounced as plosives after and sometimes before any consonant (rather than the fricative or approximant that is characteristic of most other dialects). Thus pardo, barba, algo, peligro, desde —rather than the, of Spain and the rest of Spanish America. A notable exception is the region of Nariño.