The [e] felanitxera: practical guide to understanding a felanitxer

PalmHave you ever dealt with someone from Felanitx? We speak strangely, don't we? The Felanitxer subdialect is one of those Joan Veny calls 'bell tower' dialects, those that stand out for having particular characteristics compared to their surrounding areas. However, most of the features of Felanitxer are shared with other varieties. Today we'll talk about vowels. First, we pronounce the final 'a' in proparoxytone words ending in '-ia' (like Artà and Capdepera), such as farmacia, historia, or paciencia; second, before the group 'lt', [a] becomes either open ([ò]), deim [ò]other, d[either]lt and evil[either]ltAnd thirdly, it seems we lack the open 'e', ​​as is also the case with speakers from San Juan and María de la Salud. It is precisely this last feature that we will address in this article. Impression does not allow for phonetic symbols, so we will resort to using [é] for the open 'e' (cielo) and [é] for the closed 'e' (viento), just as we have already used [ó] for the open 'u'.

If you listen I've gone for a coffee Maria Hein will show that we don't drink the same 'coffee'; ours is decaf, metaphorically speaking. Are we missing a vowel? Not really. Within our vowel repertoire, we have the [é]. The problem—if it can even be called a 'problem'—is that for the people of Felanitx, the difference in pronunciation between [é] and [é] is minimal, which means the difference isn't audible. Therefore, when we say 'Dios' (divinity) and ''Ten' (number) seems to be pronounced the same way. And that's why you often make us say "God ten ten," to laugh at us and think, "These Felanitx people are so slow, they don't know how to open the 'e' sound." Don't be mistaken, we do open it (sound analysis systems prove it), but so little that it's not perceptible. We could say that our 'coffee' has little caffeine, but it does. However, I don't think it wakes you up much.

Phonological deafness

Rosa Calafat explained to an article from ARA Baleares from May 2025 The concept of 'phonological deafness': when someone hears a sound that is not part of their speech and is therefore 'foreign' to them, they unconsciously tend to identify it as another sound, one that is known and used by the speaker. What does this mean? We Felanichians, who don't pronounce the [é] sound—although we've already said that's not entirely true, but this simplifies the explanation—when we hear that sound, our brains relate it to a similar one we know: the [é]. That is, when someone tells us coffee[e], we feel coffee[é] (although there are exceptions, which we will explain later). Therefore, if we recover the words 'God'/'ten', not only do you not notice the difference when we Felanitxers pronounce them, but we Felanitxers generally don't notice it either when you pronounce them. One day these verses occurred to me to illustrate it humorously:

"It's not shit, is "Shit. To me, they both smell the same."

This phonological deafness we were talking about isn't incurable—nor is it an illness: please don't make an appointment at the health center. Since I started moving in non-Felanitx circles and immersed myself in the world of linguistics, my ear for the [é] sound has become more and more attuned to it. Interestingly, the vowel opening isn't the same for all people, and sometimes it even depends on the individual. There are subdialects that open the vowel more, which helps me identify it more easily. It also depends a lot on the context of the listeners: the degree of exposure they've had to non-Felanitx people and each person's linguistic ear—if phonetics is something that interests you, you're probably able to distinguish the sounds. Therefore, being from Felanitx doesn't necessarily mean 'not hearing' the [é] sound.

Peculiar vowel system

I might consider that the Felanitxer is a rare elderlyBut we're not the only ones in the Balearic Islands with a peculiar vowel system. On the one hand, we have the other side of the coin. Alaró, Binissalem, and Lloseta—the famous Bermuda Triangle—eastern Menorca (Mahón, Alaior, and the surrounding area), and the westernmost part of Ibiza (San José and San Antonio) pronounce words with [é] that the rest of us islanders pronounce with the neutral vowel (the sound equivalent to the second vowel of '). Words like 'pereza' (laziness)—which has three neutral vowels for us—are stressed with [é]. by[and]healthyThey say, for example, [è]spetit[and]t, because[é] [é]s of The[and]taWe Felanitx residents are lacking caffeine, while they seem to have too much. On the other hand, we have the case of Solleric, Menorcan, Ibizan, and Formentera, subdialects that pronounce unstressed oiu vowels (vowels that don't carry the stress) as [u]: they say d[or]nar rather d[either]nar and car[u] instead of car[o]. Finally, we cannot talk about vowels without mentioning the case of the sineuers, which are easily identifiable with the good day[é]. You've already seen it, there's no rare elderlyEach dialect has its own little peculiarities. However, all the manifestations of Catalan are more similar than we think: we have far more similarities than differences. For some reason, we speak the same language!

It's difficult for someone from Felanitx to pass themselves off as someone from another town. Not only do we have to learn to pronounce the [é] sound (when we imitate it, we tend to open our mouths too wide), we also have to know how to identify it: which words are open and which are closed? That's the key. We would fall into the temptation of pronouncing [é] in words that don't belong: c[and]nt and v[and]ntAnyway, when we order a coffee at a bar they understand us – if they don't understand us, it's not because we're speaking Felanitxer, but Catalan, but that's a [ò]other history. When it's hot it's even worse, because we ask coffee[I] with g[and]lIt must have peace[and]nce with us.