This article is about the phonology and phonetics of the Spanish language. Unless otherwise noted, statements refer to Castilian Spanish, the standard dialect used in Spain on radio and television. For historical development of the sound system see History of Spanish. For details of geographical variation see Spanish dialects and varieties. Phonemes are written inside slashes () and allophones inside brackets (). Consonants The phonemes , , and are realized as approximants (namely , hereafter represented without the downtacks) or fricatives in all places except after a pause, after a nasal consonant, or—in the case of —after a lateral consonant; in such contexts they are realized as voiced stops. (In one region of Spain, the area around Madrid, word-final is sometimes pronounced especially in a colloquial pronunciation of its name, Madriz ().) The phoneme is realized as an approximant in all contexts except after a pause, a nasal, or a lateral. In these environments, it may be realized as an affricate (). The approximant allophone differs from non-syllabic in a number of ways; it has a lower F2 amplitude, is longer, can only appear in the syllable onset (including word-initially, where non-syllabic normally never appears), is a fricative in emphatic pronunciations, and is unspecified for rounding (e.g. viuda 'widow' vs ayuda 'help'). The two also overlap in distribution after and : enyesar ('to plaster') aniego ('flood'). Although there is dialectal and ideolectal variation, speakers may also exhibit other near-minimal pairs like abyecto ('abject') vs abierto ('opened'). There are some alternations between the two, prompting scholars like to postulate an archiphoneme , so that ley would be transcribed phonemically as and leyes as . In a number of varieties, including some American ones, a process parallel to the one distinguishing non-syllabic from consonantal occurs for non-syllabic and a rare consonantal . Near-minimal pairs include deshuesar ('to debone') vs. desuello ('skinning'), son huevos ('they are eggs') vs son nuevos ('they are new'), and huaca ('Indian grave') vs u oca ('or goose'). Many young Argentinians have no distinct phoneme and use the sequence instead, thus making no distinction between huraño and uranio (both ). The phoneme (as distinct from ) is found in some areas in Spain (mostly northern and rural) and some areas of South America (mostly highlands). Most varieties spoken in Spain, including those prevalent on radio and television, have both and (distinción). However, speakers in parts of southern Spain, the