Recently I've been consuming a lot of my favorite English language media with Spanish dubs to further immerse myself in the language, but instead I have found myself with a bit of a phonological conundrum.
I know that in Spanish the "a" vowel is hypothetically an open central vowel, pronounced slightly more front than the "a" in the word "father." Like with all Spanish vowels, there is never an abundance of variation there; the Spanish vowels are remarkable stable.
Or at least that's what I thought, until I started paying close attention to the voice actors Netflix uses to dub their shows. On multiple occasions, I have heard the "a" pronounced like "ĂŠ" (or as in the English word "cat" if IPA isn't your thing). I know this is not the standard pronunciation, but I'm not even aware of any regional accents that do this.
You can especially hear this on the dubbed versions of "Supernatural" and "Breaking Bad" (no not the god awful Colombian remake, but the Spanish dub of the original). You can hear it in the first episode of both shows if you are interested in hearing it yourself, specifically the words "claro" and "blanco."
Is this a dialectal thing or is Netflix using non-native speakers to dub their content? I'm not just asking for the curiosity element; if they are speaking poor Spanish then obviously I don't want to mimic other aspects of their pronunciation (intonation, hiatus resolution, etc). This is the dub for Latin American viewers, to be clear.
TL;DR Netflix voice actors in Spanish dubs sometimes pronounce "a" like in English "cat." Is this bad Spanish or are there certain dialects that actually do this?
submitted by /u/Radical_Redneck1992
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