When I first started learning Spanish (about thirteen years ago) I was deeply puzzled by some of the pronunciation rules I read about (any 'c' followed by an 'e' or an 'i' must be pronounced 'th,' the letter 'z' must also be pronounced as a 'th' and more). Life was made even more puzzling for me because I was acutely aware that the Spanish people around me were pronouncing the language in a totally different way to the guidance offered by my handy BBC phrase book.

I confess that (back then) I was like a rabbit in the headlights and my attempts at communication took no account of different pronunciation of the same language. Tune in to a Madrid-based radio station and you will hear classical Spanish being spoken. Compared with the accent used in the south of Spain, it sounds like the user has a really bad cold …all the 'v's become 'b's and so on.

There is a story that is circulated around Spain that there was once a king who had a dreadful lisp and found it impossible to pronounce his own language properly. Instead of just humouring the king, courtiers and the wider nobility copied their sovereign's afflicted pronunciation and this led to the modern-day method of pronouncing Spanish.

It's good story, if only it were true!

None of the anecdotal stories I have heard name the king responsible!

I always wondered why it was that the mispronunciation of a language should have spread outside the aristocracy and become the standard and accepted form of a language. Heaven help me, I have actually repeated this lisping king story as though it were true and this was my fault for not properly researching the tale

Generalissimo Franco tried to standardise the language spoken throughout his country and didn't succeed. Names of places were changed. None of it lasted in the regions where people held fast to their local roots.

All the evidence seems to point to the account of the 'lisping king' being apocryphal…and not a story I intend to repeat; unless in the context of being an entertaining tale that is, nonetheless, entirely untrue!