cecear

A linguistics term describing ceceo, a phonetic feature of some southern Spanish dialects (parts of Andalusia) where /s/ is pronounced like the English 'th': en su pueblo, mucha gente cecea (in his town, a lot of people speak with the ceceo).

• En Andalucía, algunos hablantes cecean. — In Andalusia, some speakers use ceceo.
• El actor tuvo que aprender a cecear para el papel. — The actor had to learn to speak with ceceo for the role.
• No todos los andaluces cecean; también hay seseo y distinción. — Not all Andalusians use ceceo; there's also seseo and the s/z distinction.

Ceceo isn't a speech defect, despite sometimes being stigmatized — it's a genuine regional dialect feature, distinct from seseo (pronouncing both s and z/c as 's'), which is far more widespread across Latin America.

Often confused with sesear.