I am by NO means an expert on spoken Spanish, but I have picked up a few things.

My wife is from Santiago de Cali, Colombia. In her spoken Spanish (castellano?) she tends to drop the final consonant of some words. However, I have read that the Spanish of the Valle de Cauca region of Colombia is the closest to real Madrid Spanish. Those from Medellin (Colombia)
have a particularly stong accent.

When we renewed our vows in church in June, several of Cilia's friends came to visit. One is from Managua, Nicaragua. She has the most adorable way of saying Nicaragua. It sounds like Manawah Nee-ha-rah-wuh.

I don't think anyone is searching for history to try and prove who speaks the 'proper' Spanish. I personally don't think it matters. But what I do find interesting is the history/evolution of sounds and dialects. This is where I think the richness in language lies, the deep intertwined history of dialect formations.

Hi guys, I feel compeled to join here.
first of all, there's no lisp. It's not my opinion, there just isn't a lisp.

St Luis University’s Madrid campus offers a great Spanish phonetics/phonology class. You could email the professor and ask for a book recommendation to learn about the specific phonetic differences that occur in the Spanish language throughout the world.

By the way, many people tell me that English sounds like a constant lisp because of our constant “th” and “sh”. Some“th”ing to “th”ink about.

Of course it’s not a lisp. It’s just simply the way we produce the sound in English. whether it has always been that way or not doesn’t matter because that’s the way we say it today.

Keep in mind that languages have graphic symbols which we use everyday to write and read and-they have phonetic symbols which show the phonetic reality, or show how letters, syllables and words sound. Realize that when transcribing phonetically, the symbol for the English “th” is the same symbol for “c” when followed by “e” or “i” and for “z” in Spain. Here is the symbol Ø. For example in English: Øis (this). Spanish in Spain: ØerBéØa (cerveza). Spanish in Latin America and parts of southern Spain: serBésa.

...but it would be wrong to say ..'somecing to cink about'. Where in Spanish how you pronounce the 'c' etc would not.
Because I've been hanging around the Spaniard MM members like a fly over the past two years I've been throwing in 'thh's here and there, (I've yet to memorise the rule), and so I'm getting into the swing of thhings, thinguenios,.. but it makes my mum smile, actually my pitiful Spanish makes everyone smile.
I've only heard fragments of the lisp story, I just found it amusing that's all and i can see how it may irritate some Spaniards,...(Iggnnathhio), jeje This thread IS interesting.

Bethhos(now that doesn't sound right)

REPEAT 3 TIMES
'cellulose thinners'
lol.

A joke (in spanish) about one who actually had a lisp problem or similar:

-"Doctor, tengo pelo por todo el cuerpo. ¿Que padezco?"
- "Puez padeze uztez un ozito."

meriam-webster:
1 : to pronounce the sibilants \s\ and \z\ imperfectly especially by turning them into \th\ and \[th]\.

The lisp is an actual affliction, or speech impediment. To say that the use of the 'th' sound is a lisp would be incorrect I think because it's not fitting the true definition. It's a learned way of speaking not an involuntary impediment.

Just remember Daffy Duck. thhhuffern thhhucotash! Now he thpoke with a lithp.

True, or one could say that english-speakers have a lisp-like deffect because they pronounce words ending in -tion in a different way than French, from where these words came originally.

or the other way round.

Of course, french people CAN pronounce these sounds (thus, they don't have a lisp) but they don't, because they consider the correct way. the way they do.

You are correct. However, I am taking a definition from an English dictionary. Maybe the definition of lisp is different among each language. The concept of a lisp as mispronouncing s an c may only exist in English and in other languages it could just be lumped into general speech impediments.

If it is then yes, English would not be speaking correctly because we don't carry one.

I looked up the definition of lisp (before), and it's the same. I was just making a comparison to support my point (and yours) that only if you can't help it, it is a lisp. Because I understand that a lisp is a kind of defect in the pronounciation. But if your pronounciation is due to the fact that your people pronounce that letter that way, then... Is it a defect?

I was making this comparison to show how something can be pronounced diferently due to the separate evolution of languages, without any speech problems on either part.