The Castilian lisp, really more of an accent, comes from a separate Castilian language spoken in some parts of Spain which contains those “th” sounds mostly from Arabic words. It became the language of the court of the kingdoms of Castile and León in the 12th century, and the dominance of Castile within Spain allowed it to become part of the official Spanish language at that time. In places where Spanish and Portuguese interacted, like Latin America, it’s typically missing. I learned that accent in school, and when I later started speaking to native speakers of Mexican Spanish they would often say “Why do you talk like a priest?”
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