How To Lose A Lisp?

How did the Spanish language lose its lisp and the informal plural when the Spaniards colonized America and taught Spanish to the Indians?

• Answer:

  It didn't exactly "lose" either of these things. I assume that what you mean by "lisp" is the tendency to pronounce soft "c" or "z" like a "th". This is not a uniform feature of Spanish. It is most common in the Andalusian (Southern Spanish) dialect, and different regional varieties of Spanish use it differently. Some don't use it at all. The Spaniards who colonized America did not all come from the same region of Spain, so Latin American varieties of Spanish cannot be expected to conform perfectly to any one Iberian Spanish variety. Spanish linguists are still in the process of studying which regions sent the most emigrants to Latin America and how that is reflected in the dialects that developed, and some of the data is pretty messy, so I can't give you anything more specific. Regarding the informal plural, or "vosotros" form: colonization occurred around the same time that the distinction between "vosotros" and "ustedes" was evolving in Spain. Iberian Spanish was still experimenting with "vosotros," "ustedes," and several other forms of address that didn't last. Latin American Spanish reflects this uncertainty. I don't think you'll hear "vosotros" very much in Latin America, but some dialects (a minority) do have it. Others use "ustedes" exclusively. Argentina has a "vos" form that looks a lot like the "vosotros" form but is not quite the same. Latin American Spanish is much more varied than what I was taught in my high school in the USA.