(as and respectively). The symbol stands for a voiceless sibilant like the s of English sick, while represents a voiceless interdental fricative like the th of English think. In some cases where the phonemic merger would render words homophonic in the Americas, one member of the pair is frequently replaced by a synonym or derived form—e.g. caza replaced by , or ('to boil'), homophonic with ('to sew'), replaced by . For more on seseo, see González-Bueno. Yeísmo Traditionally Spanish had a phonemic distinction between (a palatal lateral approximant, written ll) and (a voiced palatal approximant, written y). But for most speakers in Spain and the Americas, these two phonemes have been merged in the phoneme . This merger results in the words ('silenced') and ('fell') being pronounced the same, whereas they remain distinct in dialects that have not undergone the merger. The use of the merged phoneme is called "yeísmo". In Spain, the distinction is preserved in some rural areas and smaller cities of the north, while in South America the contrast is characteristic of bilingual areas where Quechua languages and other indigenous languages that have the sound in their inventories are spoken (this is the case of inland Peru and Bolivia), and in Paraguay. The phoneme can be pronounced in a variety of ways, depending on the dialect. In most of the area where yeísmo is present, the merged phoneme is pronounced as the fricative or approximant , and also, in word-initial positions, affricates and (the latter is also used in other positions as variants of ). In the area around the Río de la Plata (Argentina, Uruguay), this phoneme is pronounced as a palatoalveolar sibilant fricative, either as voiced or, especially by young speakers, as voiceless . Variants of One of the most distinctive features of the Spanish variants is the pronunciation of when it is not aspirated to or elided. In northern and central Spain, and in the Paisa Region of Colombia, as well as in some other, isolated dialects (e.g. some inland areas of Peru and Bolivia), the sibilant realization of is an apico-alveolar retracted fricative , a sound transitional between laminodental and palatal . However, in most of Andalusia, in a few other areas in southern Spain, and in most of Latin America it is instead pronounced as a lamino-alveolar or dental sibilant. The phoneme is realized as or before voiced consonants when it is