in recent generations, particularly outside of regions in close linguistic contact with Catalan and Basque. In Spanish America, most dialects are characterized by this merger, with the distinction persisting mostly in parts of Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, and northwestern Argentina. In the other parts of Argentina, the phoneme resulting from the merger is realized as ; and in Buenos Aires the sound has recently been devoiced to among the younger population; the change is spreading throughout Argentina. Seseo, ceceo and distinción Speakers in northern and central Spain, including the variety prevalent on radio and television, have both and (distinción, 'distinction'). However, speakers in Latin America, Canary Islands and some parts of southern Spain have only (seseo), which in southernmost Spain is pronounced and not (ceceo). Realization of The phoneme has three different pronunciations depending on the dialect area: An alveolar retracted fricative (or "apico-alveolar" fricative) sounds a bit like English and is characteristic of the northern and central parts of Spain and is also used by many speakers in Colombia's Antioquia department. A alveolar grooved fricative , much like the most common pronunciation of English , is characteristic of western Andalusia (e.g. Málaga, Seville, and Cádiz), Canary Islands, and Latin America. An dental grooved fricative (ad hoc symbol), which has a lisping quality and sounds something like a cross between English and but is different from the occurring in dialects that distinguish and . It occurs only in dialects with ceceo, mostly in Granada, in parts of Jaén, in the southern part of Sevilla and the mountainous areas shared between Cádiz and Málaga. Obaid describes the apico-alveolar sound as follows: Dalbor describes the apico-dental sound as follows: In some dialects, may become the approximant in the syllable coda (e.g. doscientos 'two hundred'). In southern dialects in Spain, lowland dialects in the Americas, and in the Canary Islands, it debuccalizes to in final position (e.g. niños 'children'), or before another consonant (e.g. fósforo 'match') so the change occurs in the coda position in a syllable. In Spain, this was originally a southern feature, but it is now expanding rapidly to the north. From an autosegmental point of view, the phoneme in Madrid is defined only by its voiceless and fricative features. Thus, the point of articulation is not defined and is determined from the sounds following it in the word or sentence. In Madrid, the following realizations are found: > and >