Using Spanish as an example:

People learn a deterministic way to sound a word at school, same for everyone. The very fact of having that as part of education tends to stabilise the language to a degree: I can read 16 century poems and stuff sounds the same and rhymes perfectly.

Most local variations and accents will deviate in semi standard ways: For example, southern spaniards will usually use the same sound for S and C (which in Spain's Spanish is the famous 'lispy s' sound). So in general people are aware of what is part of the standard and what is a local characteristic.

Our educative system makes a point of those variations explicitly not being 'wrong', but sometimes in practice there are ideological debates about this stuff: For example, people might self police in media by adapting to the standard, which in turn draws criticism for "reneging of their identity").

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gus_massa 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

There are also variants accepted for local dialects, for example "small car" can be

Argentina: "autito"

Colombia: "autico"

Spain: "autillo" but last time I posted it, anthk said it's more complicated https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44490096

They sound quite different, and all are accepted and understood, but it's very unusual to use the "wrong" one. Only if you are a tourist or immigrant or something.

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For the GP: the idea is that a few variants/dialects are accepted. When the pronunciation changes, it slowly is introduced in the written text as a literally recourse, and then it the new spelling may get popular in some area, and then accepted as a regional variant. If the new variant gets everywhere it becomes the official one. So the spelling slowly changes to accommodate the changes in the local or global variants and the old spelling get's deprecated.

So the spelling is keep somewhat in sync with the oral version.

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torben-friis 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Ah yes, fair addition there: The language is not assumed to be set in stone forever, but "guided" by certain academic authorities, that try to strike a balance between the system representing the reality of the spoken language and rules being kept standard. We get dictionary patch notes, so to speak.

The Real Academia Española does this job in the case of Spain, and there's an equivalent in each Spanish speaking country, with all belonging to a larger entity.

>Spain: "autillo" but last time I posted it, anthk said it's more complicated

Yup, diminutives are very regional here, one of the easier ways to pinpoint someone's origin: iño is common in the northwest due to influence of Portuguese, -ete in the northeast as an influence of French and Catalan, etc.

	▲	anthk 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		>: iño is common in the northwest due to influence of Portuguese, And the Galician influence into Spanish, OFC. For the HN'er, once Galician and Portuguese where the same language.

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anthk 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

>(which in Spain's Spanish is the famous 'lispy s' sound)

No. In Spanish Spain it's

za, ce, ci, zo, zu with /th/ as in think.