‘Nobody wants to sound like a provinciano’: The recession of unstressed vowel devoicing in the Spanish of Cusco, Perú1

Younger residents of Cusco, Perú, associate unstressed vowel devoicing—a distinctive feature of Andean Spanish—almost exclusively with the speech of rural migrants (provincianos), despite its persistence in local dialects. Acoustic analysis reveals that many Cusqueñans maintain devoicing rates comparable to those of rural migrants, contradicting their negative perceptions. This shift is linked to post-1950 earthquake exposure to non-devoicing Spanish dialects and heightened contact with Quechua-accented speech, alongside entrenched local ideologies devaluing rural Andean identity.

Delforge, A. M. (2012). ‘Nobody wants to sound like a provinciano’: The recession of unstressed vowel devoicing in the Spanish of Cusco, Perú¹. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 16(3), 311–335. Portico. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9841.2012.00538.x