Talk:Pronunciation and decoding exercises: /s/ vs /z/

Spanish
As a person of Spanish decent I find this comment ridiculous. I personally do not recall ever hearing a Spanish speaker say 'soo' when they intended to say 'zoo'. Having said that, my last name is Gonzales. This, and other Latin surnames are also written with a 'z' instead of an 's' at the end. And during a normal speed of conversation one can easily miss the slight difference between /s/ and /z/. In my personal experience I rarely had to emphasize the /s/ spelling when I lived in Texas. However, in the fifteen years that I have lived in Florida, I always have to explain that my surname has an /s/ at the end. This is a problem I have regardless of the race of the listener. 205.197.242.162 19:25, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

In Spanish [s] and [z] are either allophones or [z] doesn't exist. Probably the people you heard saying [zuː] instead of were bilingual speakers of Spanish and English. Also, please note that speaking Spanish has nothing to do with one's race. Ghoti (talk) 17:42, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

In Spanish the letter "z" is pronounced either [θ] in most of Spain or [s] in the rest of the world; [θ] is the last consonant of "path" and "both". The last name González is pronounced [gonˈθaleθ] in Spain and [gonˈsales] in Latin America. This explains why in some countries the normal spelling is Gonzales. Never González or Gonzales have a [z] sound in Spanish. Ghoti (talk) 22:04, 22 July 2015 (UTC)