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Yeísmo is a distinctive feature of many dialects of the Spanish language, which consists of the loss of the traditional palatal lateral approximant phoneme (written ll) and its merger into another phoneme, usually realized as a palatal fricative or affricate. The term yeísmo comes from the Spanish name of the letter y (i griega or ye), which is used to represent the latter. Most dialects realize the merger phoneme as a voiced palatal fricative , which becomes an affricate or a plosive (either a voiced postalveolar affricate as in English gin, a voiced palatal affricate or a voiced palatal plosive ) when it is pronounced after a pause (as at the beginning of a sentence) or after a nasal (as in the words cónyuge and conllevar). However, in Rioplatense it is typically realized as a voiced postalveolar fricative , called zheísmo (or as a voiceless postalveolar fricative , called sheísmo,among the younger generations), which may become a voiced postalveolar affricate (or voiceless postalveolar affricate among the younger) in the same context as above. Yeísmo produces homophony in a number of cases. For example, the following word pairs sound the same to speakers of dialects with yeísmo: Due to the relatively low frequency of both y and ll, confusion is unlikely. However, orthographic mistakes are common (for example, writing llendo instead of yendo — for some reason, most people tend to err towards ll).
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