be rich in archaisms. The same study does also show a perception that the speech of northern Chile is influenced by the Spanish spoken in Peru and Bolivia. Chile is part of a region of South America known as the Southern Cone (Spanish: Cono Sur; Portuguese: Cone Sul). The region consists of Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay; sometimes it also includes Paraguay and some regions of Brazil (Paraná, Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina, and São Paulo). The vocabulary across the region is similar for Spanish speakers, and in some cases it's also shared by the Portuguese speakers in the Southern Cone parts of Brazil. The Chilean Spanish dialect of Easter Island, most especially the accent, is influenced by Rapa Nui language. Phonology There are a number of phonetic features common to most Chilean accents, but none of them is individually unique to Chilean Spanish. Rather, it is the particular combination of features that sets Chilean Spanish apart from other regional Spanish dialects. The features include the following: Yeísmo, the historical merger of the phoneme (spelled ) with (spelled ). For speakers with yeísmo, the verbs cayó 's/he fell' and calló 's/he fell silent' are homophones, both pronounced . (In dialects that lack yeísmo, maintaining the historical distinction, the two words are pronounced respectively and .) Yeísmo characterizes the speech of most Spanish-speakers both in Spain and in the Americas. In Chile, there is a declining number of speakers who maintain the distinction, mainly in some Andean areas south of Santiago. Like most other American dialects of Spanish, Chilean Spanish has seseo: is not distinguished from . In much of the Andean region, the merged phoneme is pronounced as apicoalveolar , a sound with a place of articulation intermediate between laminodental and palatal . That trait is associated with a large number of northern Spanish settlers in Andean Chile. Syllable-final is often aspirated to or lost entirely, another feature common to many varieties of Spanish in the Americas, as well as the Canary Islands and the southern half of Spain. Whether final aspirates or is elided depends on a number of social, regional, and phonological factors, but in general, aspiration is most frequent before a consonant. Complete elision is most commonly found word-finally but carries a sociolinguistic stigma. Thus, los chilenos '(the) Chileans' can be . The velar consonants , , and are fronted or palatalized before front vowels. Thus, queso