Spanish, stress-timed?
I always thought that Spanish was syllable timed, because both stressed syllables and not the stressed ones in a word take the same amount of time when pronounced. This is a consequence of the CV nature of most of Spanish syllables. But according to Wikipedia, it is stress timed, which means that in Spanish the stressed syllable takes are pronounced during a longer lapse of time, and not stressed syllables get softened . I think that Wikipedia is wrong:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stress-timed_language
"Most languages are stress-timed. Examples are: Germanic languages, like English and Dutch, Slavonic languages, like Russian and Czech, and the other Romance languages (apart from French), like Spanish and Italian."
I forgot to say that it seems strange too that Italian is stress-timed. It is clear to me that English is stress-timed, because stressed syllables are clearly pronounced and during a longer lapse of time, and the rest degrade and become schaws. This does not happen in Spanish at all, all syllables are pronounced at the same pace. It is hard for a language which has only 5 open vowels and almost all syllables are CV to be stress-timed. More than a matter of perception, it is a question of the limitations of Spanish phonetics
But Spanish has only open vowels, and Italian has closed/open e and o.
Spanish just 5 vowel sounds Italian 7 vowel sounds
About Spanish itself, which elements could make it a stress-timed language?
Spanish is a paradigmatic syllable-timed language, with machine gun-like rythm. Don't believe Shitpedia.
Spanish it's definitely stressed-timed? I would have to add the different dialects found in Spanish that can make this measurement difficult. A comparison would be Uruguayan Spanish and Spanish from different regions of Spain. Big diffences in stressing.
El espanol es un idioma caliente con sabor y no frio como el frances o el ingles.
Spanish is neither a syllable-timed nor stressed timed because it depends on the phonetic context.
there is a lot of problems knowing where Spanish belongs because it seems to fit both categories. It's like if one has two categories of blue and red and we don't know whether green belongs to blue or to red. green is green. humanity categorizes everything because it puts order and it's easier to comprehend. It's like answering the questions of what is normal and abnormal and and what is good or bad(where to we draw the line?). there is no such thing as time-stressed nor syllable-stressed languages, so this thread is a waste of time.
Spanish is syllable timed. Don't believe everything which appears on Wikipedia.