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The language known today as Spanish is derived from spoken Latin, which was brought to the Iberian Peninsula by the Romans after their occupation of the peninsula that started in the late 3rd century BC. Today it is the world's 4th most widely spoken language, after English, Mandarin Chinese and Hindi.[1] Influenced by the peninsular hegemony of Al-Andalus in the early middle ages, Hispano-Romance varieties borrowed substantial lexicon from Arabic. Upon the southward territorial expansion of the Kingdom of Castile, Hispano-Romance norms associated to this polity displaced both Arabic and the Mozarabic romance varieties in the conquered territories, even though the resulting speech also assimilated features from the latter in the process.[2] The first standard written norm of Spanish was brought forward in the 13th century by Alfonso X the Wise (who used Castilian, i.e. Spanish, along Latin as language of the administration), probably drawing from the speech of the upper classes of Toledo.[3] Features associated with the Castilian patterns of Hispano-Romance also spread west and east to the kingdoms of León and Aragón for the rest of the middle ages, owing to the political prestige achieved by the Kingdom of Castile in the peninsular context and to the lesser literary development of their vernacular norms.[4] From the 1560s onward the standard written form followed Madrid's.[5]
The Spanish language expanded overseas in the Early Modern period in the wake of the Spanish conquests in the Americas (as well as the Canary Islands). Besides the Caribbean, the colonial administration in the new territories had its main centres of power located in Mexico City and Lima, which retained more features from the central peninsular norm than other more peripheral territories of the Spanish Empire, where adoption of patterns from the southern peninsular norm of Seville (the largest city of the Crown in the 16th century and the port linking to the Americas) was more pervasive, even though in other regards the influence from the latter norm (associated to Andalusian Spanish) came to be preponderant in the entire Americas.[6] Spanish varieties henceforth borrowed influence from Amerindian languages, primarily coming from the Caribbean, the Central-Andean and Mesoamerican regions.[7] Today it is the official language of 20 countries, as well as an official language of numerous international organizations, including the United Nations.
Main distinguishing features
The development of Spanish phonology is distinguished from those of other nearby Romance languages (e.g. Portuguese, Catalan) by several features:
- diphthongization of Latin stressed short E and O in closed syllables as well as open (tiempo, puerta vs. Portuguese tempo, porta)
- devoicing and further development of the medieval Spanish sibilants, producing (1) the velar fricative in words such as caja, hijo, gente, and (2)—in many dialects of Spain, including the prestige varieties of Madrid, Toledo, etc.—the interdental in words such as cinco, hacer, and lazo
- debuccalization and eventual loss of Latin initial /f/ in most contexts, marked in modern spelling by the silent ⟨h⟩ of words such as hablar, hilo, hoja (from Latin fabulare, filum, and folia respectively. Also in Gascon: hilh, huelha)
- early fricativization of palatal /ʎ/ (from Vulgar Latin -LJ-, -CL-, -GL-), first into palatal /ʒ/ and ultimately into velar /x/, e.g., filius →hijo, *oc'lu → ojo, *coag'lare → cuajar; cf. Portuguese filho, olho, coalhar)
- development of initial PL-, CL-, FL- into palatal /ʎ/ in many words, e.g., plorare → llorar, clamare → llamar, flamma → llama; cf. Portuguese chorar, chamar, chama, Catalan plorar, clamar, flama)
- Vulgar Latin initial /j/ (from J-, DJ-, G(E)-, G(I)-) remains before /a/, /e/ and /i/, subsequently disappearing in an unstressed syllable (iaceō→yace, gypsum→yeso, ienuārius→enero, *iectāre→echar, gelāre→helar, *genuclum→hinojo vs. Portuguese jaz, gesso, janeiro, jeitar, gelar, joelho)
The following features are characteristic of Spanish phonology and also of some other Ibero-Romance languages, but not the Romance languages as a whole:
- palatalization of Latin -NN- and -LL- into /ɲ/ and /ʎ/ (año, caballo) (also in Catalan: any, cavall).
- the phonemic merger of /b/ and /v/, making, for example, the noun tubo and the verb tuvo phonetically equivalent (in all contexts except those of hypercorrection or spelling pronunciation)[8] (also in Galician, Northern European Portuguese and some Catalan and Occitan varieties)
- spirantization of /b/, /d/, and /ɡ/ → , and —not only from original Latin B, D, and G (as in Sp. probar, sudar, legumbre), but also from Latin *V, P, T, and C (as in Sp. tuvo, sabe, vida, lago) (also in Galician, European Portuguese, Catalan and parts of Occitan)
The Latin system of four verb conjugations (form classes) is reduced to three in Spanish. The Latin infinitives with the endings -ĀRE, -ĒRE, and -ĪRE become Spanish infinitives in -ar, -er, and -ir respectively. The Latin third conjugation—infinitives ending in -ĔRE—are redistributed between the Spanish -er and -ir classes (e.g. facere → hacer, dicere → decir). Spanish verbal morphology continues the use of some Latin synthetic forms that were replaced by analytic ones in spoken French and (partly) Italian (cf. Sp. lavó, Fr. il a lavé), and the Spanish subjunctive mood maintains separate present and past-tense forms.
Spanish syntax provides overt marking for some direct objects (the so-called "personal a", see differential object marking for the general phenomenon), and uses clitic doubling with indirect objects, in which a "redundant" pronoun (le, les) appears even in the presence of an explicit noun phrase. (Neither feature occurs in other Western Romance languages,[citation needed] but both are features of Romanian, with pe < PER corresponding to Spanish a.) With regard to subject pronouns, Spanish is a pro-drop language, meaning that the verb phrase can often stand alone without the use of a subject pronoun (or a subject noun phrase). In some cases, such as with impersonal verbs referring to meteorological (llover, to rain; nevar, to snow) or other natural phenomena (amanecer, to get light out; anochecer, to get dark out), it is ungrammatical to include a subject. Compared to other Romance languages, Spanish has a somewhat freer syntax with relatively fewer restrictions on subject-verb-object word order.
Due to prolonged language contact with other languages, the Spanish lexicon contains loanwords from Basque, Hispano-Celtic (Celtiberian and Gallaecian), Iberian, Germanic (Gothic), Arabic and indigenous languages of the Americas.
Accents—used in Modern Spanish to mark the vowel of the stressed syllable in words where stress is not predictable from rules—came into use sporadically in the 15th century, and massively in the 16th century. Their use began to be standardized with the advent of the Spanish Royal Academy in the 18th century. See also Spanish orthography.
External history
The standard Spanish language is also called Castilian in its original variant, and in order to distinguish it from other languages native to parts of Spain, such as Galician, Catalan, Basque, etc. In its earliest documented form, and up through approximately the 15th century, the language is customarily called Old Spanish. From approximately the 16th century on, it is called Modern Spanish. Spanish of the 16th and 17th centuries is sometimes called "classical" Spanish, referring to the literary accomplishments of that period. Unlike English and French, it is not customary to speak of a "middle" stage in the development of Spanish.
Origins
Castilian Spanish originated (after the decline of the Roman Empire) as a continuation of spoken Latin in several areas of northern and central Spain. Eventually, the variety spoken in the city of Toledo around the 13th century became the basis for the written standard. With the Reconquista, this northern dialect spread to the south, where it almost entirely replaced or absorbed the local Romance dialects, at the same time as it borrowed many words from Andalusi Arabic and was influenced by Mozarabic (the Romance speech of Christians living in Moorish territory) and medieval Judaeo-Spanish (Ladino). These languages had vanished in the Iberian Peninsula by the late 16th century.[9][10]
The prestige of Castile and its language was propagated partly by the exploits of Castilian heroes in the battles of the Reconquista—among them Fernán González and Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar (El Cid)—and by the narrative poems about them that were recited in Castilian even outside the original territory of that dialect.[11]
The "first written Spanish" was traditionally considered to have appeared in the Glosas Emilianenses located in San Millán de la Cogolla, La Rioja. These are "glosses" (translations of isolated words and phrases in a form more like Hispanic Romance than Latin) added between the lines of a manuscript that was written earlier in Latin. Nowadays the language of the Glosas Emilianenses is considered to be closer to the Navarro-Aragonese language than to Spanish proper. Estimates of their date vary from the late 10th to the early 11th century.[12]
The first steps toward standardization of written Castilian were taken in the 13th century by King Alfonso X of Castile, known as Alfonso el Sabio (Alfonso the Wise), in his court in Toledo. He assembled scribes at his court and supervised their writing, in Castilian, of extensive works on history, astronomy, law, and other fields of knowledge.[13][14]
Antonio de Nebrija wrote the first grammar of Spanish, Gramática de la lengua castellana, and presented it, in 1492, to Queen Isabella, who is said to have had an early appreciation of the usefulness of the language as a tool of hegemony, as if anticipating the empire that was about to be founded with the voyages of Columbus.[15]
Because Old Spanish resembles the modern written language to a relatively high degree, a reader of Modern Spanish can learn to read medieval documents without much difficulty.
The Spanish Royal Academy was founded in 1713, largely with the purpose of standardizing the language. The Academy published its first dictionary in six volumes over the period 1726–1739, and its first grammar in 1771,[16] and it continues to produce new editions of both from time to time. (The Academy's dictionary is now accessible on the Internet.) Today, each of the Spanish-speaking countries has an analogous language academy, and an Association of Spanish Language Academies was created in 1951.
America
Beginning in the late fifteenth century, the discovery and colonization of the Americas by Spanish colonizers brought the language across the Atlantic and to Mexico, Central America, and western and southern South America.[17] Under the Spanish Crown, the language was used as a tool for colonization by Spanish soldiers, missionaries, conquistadors, and entrepreneurs. In the coming centuries, their descendants continued to spread the language.[18]
Use of the language in the Americas was continued by descendants of the Spaniards: Spanish criollos and Mestizos. After the wars of independence fought by these colonies in the 19th century, the new ruling elites extended their Spanish to the whole population, including the Amerindian majority, to strengthen national unity, and nowadays it is the first and official language of the resulting republics, except in very isolated parts of the former Spanish colonies.[19]
In the late 19th century, the still-Spanish colonies of Cuba and Puerto Rico encouraged more immigrants from Spain, and similarly other Spanish-speaking countries such as Argentina, Uruguay, and to a lesser extent Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Panama and Venezuela, attracted waves of European immigration, Spanish and non-Spanish, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. There, the countries' large (or sizable minority) population groups of second- and third-generation descendants adopted the Spanish language as part of their governments' official assimilation policies to include Europeans. In some countries, they had to be Catholics and agreed to take an oath of allegiance to their chosen nation's government.
When Puerto Rico became a possession of the United States as a consequence of the Spanish–American War, its population—almost entirely of Spanish and mixed Afro-Caribbean/Spanish (mulatto and mestizo) descent—retained its inherited Spanish language as a mother tongue, in co-existence with the American-imposed English as co-official. In the 20th century, more than a million Puerto Ricans migrated to the mainland U.S. (see Puerto Ricans in the United States).
A similar situation occurred in the American Southwest, including California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, where Spaniards, then criollos (Tejanos, Californios, etc.) followed by Chicanos (Mexican Americans) and later Mexican immigrants, kept the Spanish language alive before, during and after the American appropriation of those territories following the Mexican–American War. Spanish continues to be used by millions of citizens and immigrants to the United States from Spanish-speaking countries of the Americas (for example, many Cubans arrived in Miami, Florida, beginning with the Cuban Revolution in 1959, and followed by other Latin American groups; the local majority is now Spanish-speaking). Spanish is now treated as the country's "second language," and over 5 percent of the U.S. population are Spanish-speaking, but most Latino/Hispanic Americans are bilingual or also regularly speak English.
Africa
The presence of Spanish in Equatorial Guinea dates from the late 18th century, and it was adopted as the official language when independence was granted in 1968.
Spanish is widely spoken in Western Sahara, which was a protectorate/colony of Spain from the 1880s to the 1970s.
Judaeo-Spanish
In 1492 Spain expelled its Jewish population. Their Judaeo-Spanish language, called Ladino, developed along its own lines and continues to be spoken by a dwindling number of speakers, mainly in Israel, Turkey, and Greece.[20][21]
In the Pacific
In the Marianas, the Spanish language was retained until the Pacific War, but is no longer spoken there by any significant number of people. As part of Chile since 1888, Spanish is spoken by most people in Easter Island along with Rapa Nui language.
Spain
Language politics in Francoist Spain declared Spanish as the only official language in Spain, and to this day it is the most widely used language in government, business, public education, the workplace, cultural arts, and the media. But in the 1960s and 1970s,[citation needed] the Spanish parliament agreed to allow provinces to use, speak, and print official documents in three other languages: Catalan for Catalonia, Balearic Islands and Valencia; Basque for the Basque provinces and Navarre, and Galician for Galicia. Since 1975, following the death of Franco, Spain has become a multi-party democracy and decentralized country, constituted in autonomous communities. Under this system, some languages of Spain—such as Aranese (an Occitan language of northwestern Catalonia), Basque, Catalan/Valencian, and Galician—have gained co-official status in their respective geographical areas. Others—such as Aragonese, Asturian and Leonese—have been recognized by regional governments.
International projection
When the United Nations organization was founded in 1945, Spanish was designated one of its five official languages (along with Chinese, English, French, and Russian; a sixth language, Arabic, was added in 1973).
The list of Nobel laureates in Literature includes eleven authors who wrote in Spanish (José Echegaray, Jacinto Benavente, Gabriela Mistral, Juan Ramón Jiménez, Miguel Ángel Asturias, Pablo Neruda, Vicente Aleixandre, Gabriel García Márquez, Camilo José Cela, Octavio Paz, and Mario Vargas Llosa).
Influences
The mention of "influences" on the Spanish language refers primarily to lexical borrowing. Throughout its history, Spanish has accepted loanwords, first from pre-Roman languages (including Basque, Iberian, Celtiberian and Gallaecian), and later from Greek, from Germanic languages, from Arabic, from neighboring Romance languages, from Native American languages[citation needed], and from English.
The most frequently used word that entered Spanish from (or through[22]) Basque is izquierda "left".[23] Basque is perhaps most evident in some common Spanish surnames, including García and Echeverría. Basque place names also are prominent throughout Spain, because many Castilians who took part in the Reconquista and repopulation of Moorish Iberia by Christians were of Basque lineage. Iberian and Celtiberian likewise are thought to have contributed place names to Spain. Words of everyday use that are attributed to Celtic sources include camino "road", carro "cart", colmena "hive", and cerveza "beer".[24] Suffixes such as -iego: mujeriego "womanizer" and -ego: gallego "Galician" are also attributed to Celtic sources.
Influence of Basque phonology is credited by some researchers[who?] with softening the Spanish labiodentals: turning labiodental to bilabial , and ultimately deleting labiodental . Others negate or downplay Basque phonological influence, claiming that these changes occurred in the affected dialects wholly as a result of factors internal to the language, not outside influence.[25] It is also possible that the two forces, internal and external, worked in concert and reinforced each other.
Some words of Greek origin were already present in the spoken Latin that became Spanish. Additionally, many Greek words formed part of the language of the Church. Spanish also borrowed Ancient Greek vocabulary in the areas of medical, technical, and scientific language, beginning as early as the 13th century.[26]
The influence of Germanic languages is very little on phonological development, but rather is found mainly in the Spanish lexicon. Words of Germanic origin are common in all varieties of Spanish. The modern words for the cardinal directions (norte, este, sur, oeste), for example, are all taken from Germanic words (compare north, east, south and west in Modern English), after the contact with Atlantic sailors. These words did not exist in Spanish prior to the 15th century. Instead, "north" and "south" were septentrion and meridion[citation needed] respectively (both virtually obsolete in Modern Spanish as nouns, unlike their not uncommon adjectival counterparts septentrional and meridional), while "east" was oriente (or levante), and "west" was occidente (or poniente). These older words for "east" and "west" continue to have some use in Modern Spanish.
In 711 the Iberian Peninsula was invaded by Moors, who brought in the Arabic language. For about eight hundred years, until the fall of the Emirate of Granada (1492), Spanish borrowed thousands of words from Andalusi Arabic, such as alcalde "mayor", álgebra "algebra", aceite "oil", zanahoria "carrot", alquiler "rent", achacar "to blame", adelfa "oleander", barrio "neighbourhood", chaleco "vest", to name just a few; making up 8% of the Spanish dictionary—the second largest lexical influence on Spanish after Latin.[27][28][29] It is thought that the bilingualism of the Mozarabs facilitated the large transfer of vocabulary from Arabic to Castilian.[30]
The neighboring Romance languages—such as Galician/Portuguese, Catalan, French, and Occitan—contributed greatly to the Spanish lexicon throughout the Middle Ages and into the modern era.[31] Borrowing from Italian occurred most frequently in the 16th and 17th centuries, due largely to the influence of the Italian Renaissance.[32]
The creation of the Spanish Empire in the New World led to lexical borrowing from indigenous languages of the Americas, especially vocabulary dealing with flora, fauna, and cultural concepts unique to the Americas.[33]
Borrowing from English has become especially strong, beginning in the 20th century, with words borrowed from many fields of activity, including sports, technology, and commerce.[34]
The incorporation into Spanish of learned, or "bookish" words from its own ancestor language, Latin, is arguably another form of lexical borrowing through the influence of written language and the liturgical language of the Church. Throughout the Middle Ages and into the early modern period, most literate Spanish-speakers were also literate in Latin; and thus they easily adopted Latin words into their writing—and eventually speech—in Spanish. The form of Latin that Spaniards spoke and the loanwords came from was Classical Latin, but also Renaissance Latin, the form of Latin used in original works of the time.
Internal history
Spanish shares with other Romance languages most of the phonological and grammatical changes that characterized Vulgar Latin, such as the abandonment of distinctive vowel length, the loss of the case system for nouns, and the loss of deponent verbs.
Syncope
Syncope in the history of Spanish refers to the loss of an unstressed vowel from the syllable immediately preceding or following the stressed syllable. Early in its history, Spanish lost such vowels where they preceded or followed R or L, and between S and T.[35][36][37]
| Environment | Latin words | Spanish words |
|---|---|---|
| _r | aperīre, humerum, litteram,[38] operam, honorāre | abrir, hombro, letra, obra, honrar |
| r_ | eremum, viridem | yermo, verde |
| _l | acūculam, fabulam, insulam, populum | aguja, habla, isla, pueblo |
| l_ | sōlitārium | soltero |
| s_t | positum, consūtūram | puesto, costura |
*Solitario, which is derived from sōlitārium, is a learned word; cf. the alternate form soltero. As also "fábula" from "fabulam", although this last one has a different meaning in Spanish.
Later, after the time of intervocalic voicing, unstressed vowels were lost between other combinations of consonants:
| Environment | Latin words | Spanish words |
|---|---|---|
| b_t | cubitum, dēbitam, dūbitam | codo, deuda, duda |
| c_m, c_p, c_t | decimum, acceptōre, recitāre | diezmo, azor, rezar |
| d_c | undecim, vindicāre | once, vengar |
| f_c | advērificāre | averiguar |
| m_c, m_n, m_t | hāmiceolum, hominem, comitem | anzuelo, hombre, conde |
| n_c, n_t | dominicum, bonitāte, cuminitiāre | domingo, bondad, comenzar |
| p_t | capitālem, computāre, hospitālem | caudal, contar, hostal |
| s_c, s_n | quassicāre, rassicāre, asinum, fraxinum | cascar, rascar, asno, fresno |
| t_c, t_n | masticāre, portaticum, trīticum, retinam | mascar/masticar, portazgo, trigo, rienda |
Words capital, computar, hospital, recitar and vindicar are learned words; cf. capitālem, computāre, hospitālem, recitāre, and vindicāre and alternate forms caudal, contar, hostal, rezar, and vengar.
Elision
While voiceless intervocalic consonants regularly became voiced, many voiced intervocalic stops (d, g, and occasionally b) were dropped from words altogether through a process called elision.[39][40] Latin /b/ between vowels usually changed to /v/ in Old Spanish (e.g. habēre > aver), while Latin /p/ became /b/ (sapere > saber). In modern times the two phonemes merged into /b/ (haber, saber), realized as between vowels (see Betacism). Latin voiced stops—/b/, /d/, and /ɡ/, which are represented orthographically as B, D, and G respectively—and also occurred in intervocalic positions also underwent lenition: [β], [ð], and [ɣ], but appeared in Spanish also through learned words from Classical Latin.
| Consonant | Latin word | Spanish word |
|---|---|---|
| b → ∅ | vendēbat | vendía |
| d → ∅ | comedere, vidēre, hodie, cadēre, pede, quō modō | comer, ver, hoy, caer, pie, cómo |
| g → ∅ | cōgitāre, digitum, legere, ligāre, lēgāle | cuidar, dedo, leer, liar, leal |
Many forms with d and g preserved, e.g. ligar, legal, dígito, crudo, are learned words (Latinisms); cf. the alternate forms liar, leal, dedo and Old Spanish cruo and its Latin origin crūdus.
An exemption to the rule: The retention of the d and g is due to the invalidity of the -ao, -aa, -oo, and -oa hiatuses in Old Spanish that would result from dropping it.
| Consonant | Latin word | Spanish word |
|---|---|---|
| d → ð | gradus, vadum, modus | grado, vado, modo |
| g → ɣ | sparagus, agustus, plāga, magus | espárrago, agosto, llaga, mago |
Voicing and spirantizationedit
In virtually all the Western Romance languages, the Latin voiceless stops—/p/, /t/, and /k/, which are represented orthographically as P, T, and C (including Q) respectively—where they occurred in an "intervocalic" environment (qualified below), underwent one, two, or three successive stages of lenition, from voicing to spirantization to, in some cases, elision (deletion). In Spanish these three consonants generally undergo both voicing and spirantization, resulting in voiced fricatives: [β], [ð], and [ɣ], respectively.[41][42] Although it was once speculated that this change came about as a transfer of phonological features from substrate Celtic and Basque languages, which were in geographical proximity to Iberian Vulgar Latin (see Sprachbund), it is now widely recognized that such change is a natural internal development.[43][44] Intervocalic /p/, /t/, and /k/ reappeared in Spanish through learned words from Classical Latin and also appeared in Spanish through consonant cluster simplification from Vulgar Latin (see below), and Latin voiced stops—/b/, /d/, and /ɡ/, which are represented orthographically as B, D, and G respectively—and also occurred in intervocalic positions also underwent lenition: [β], [ð], and [ɣ], but appeared in Spanish also through learned words from Classical Latin and also appeared in Spanish through consonant cluster simplification from Vulgar Latin.
The phonological environment of these changes is not only between vowels but also after a vowel and before a sonorant consonant such as /r/ (Latin patrem > Spanish padre)—but not the reverse (Latin partem > Spanish parte, not *parde).
| Consonants | Latin word | Spanish word |
|---|---|---|
| p → b β | aperīre, cooperīre, lupum, operam, populum, capram, superāre1 |
abrir aˈβɾir, cubrir kuˈβɾir, lobo ˈloβo, obra ˈoβɾa, pueblo ˈpweβlo, cabra ˈkaβɾa, sobrar soβˈɾar |
| t → d ð | cīvitātem, cubitum, latum, mūtāre, scūtum, stātus, petram |
ciudad θjuˈðað, codo ˈkoðo, lado ˈlaðo, mudar muˈðar, escudo esˈkuðo, estado esˈtaðo, piedra ˈpjeðra |
| c → g ɣ | focum, lacum, locum, pacāre, sacrātum, aqua, lucrum2 |
fuego ˈfweɣo, lago ˈlaɣo, luego ˈlweɣo, pagar paˈɣar, sagrado saˈɣɾaðo, agua ˈaɣwa, logro ˈloɣɾo |
1Latin superāre produced both sobrar and its learned doublet superar.
2Latin lucrum produced both logro and its learned doublet lucro.
The verb decir, in its various conjugated forms, exemplifies different phonetic changes, depending on whether the letter <c> (Latin /k/) was followed by a front vowel or not. The Latin /k/ changes ultimately to Spanish /θ/ when followed by the front vowels (/i/ or /e/—thus dice, decimos, etc.), but in other forms, before a back vowel, /k/ is voiced to /ɡ/ and, in the modern language, realized as a spirant ɣ (as in digo, diga). This also is the pattern of a few other Spanish verbs ending in -cer or -cir, as in the table below:
| Forms with /k/ → /θ/,/s/ (before front vowels) | Forms with /k/ → /ɡ/ (before back vowels) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| English | Latin | Spanish | English | Latin | Spanish |
| To say, to tell It says, it tells |
dīcere /ˈdiːkere/ dīcit /ˈdiːkit/ |
decir /deˈθiɾ/,/deˈsiɾ/ dice /ˈdiθe/,/ˈdise/ |
I say, I tell May it tell |
dīcō /ˈdiːkoː/ dīcat /ˈdiːkat/ |
digo /ˈdiɡo/ diga /ˈdiɡa/ |
| To do, to make It does, it makes |
facere /ˈfakere/ facit /ˈfakit/ |
hacer /aˈθeɾ/,/aˈseɾ/ hace /ˈaθe/,/ˈase/ |
I do, I make May it make |
faciō > *facō /ˈfakoː/ faciat > *facat /ˈfakat/ |
hago /ˈaɡo/ haga /ˈaɡa/ |
Diphthongization in open and closed syllablesedit
It is commonly thought that the reflexes of stressed short E and O of Latin were realised, after the loss of phonemic quantity, as the low-mid vowels /ɛ/ and /ɔ/ respectively in the Western Romance languages, contrasting with close-mid /e/ and /o/, which would have originated from the mergers between long E and short I and between long O and short U, respectively; this change would explain the similarity of the vowel systems in modern Romance languages such as Portuguese, Catalan and Italian. These low-mid vowels subsequently would have undergone diphthongization in many of the Western Romance languages. In Spanish this change occurs regardless of syllable shape (open or closed), in contrast to French and Italian, where it takes place only in open syllables, and in greater contrast to Portuguese where this diphthongization does not occur at all. As a result, Spanish phonology exhibits a five-vowel system, not the seven-vowel system that is typical of many other Western Romance languages.[45][46][47] The stressed short e and o reappeared in Spanish through learned words from Classical Latin and also evolved from short vowels /i/ and /u/ from Vulgar Latin, and was retained from long vowels eː and oː from Vulgar Latin.
| Syllable shape | Latin | Spanish | French | Italian | Portuguese | Catalan |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Open | petram, focus | piedra, fuego | pierre, feu | pietra, fuoco | pedra, fogo | pedra, foc |
| Closed | festa, porta | fiesta, puerta | fête, porte | festa, porta | festa, porta | festa, porta |
Learned words and consonant cluster simplificationedit
Learned words—that is, "bookish" words transmitted partly through writing and thus affected by their Latin form—became increasingly frequent with the works of Alfonso X in the mid-to-late 13th century. Many of these words contained consonant clusters which, in oral transmission, had been reduced to simpler consonant clusters or single consonants in previous centuries. This same process affected many of these new, more academic, words, especially when the words extended into popular usage in the Old Spanish period. Some of the consonant clusters affected were -ct-, -cti-, -pt-, -gn-, -mn-, -mpt-, and -nct-. Most of the simplified forms have since reverted to the learned forms or are now considered to be uneducated.[48]
| Consonant cluster | Latin form | Learned form | Old Spanish form | Modern Spanish form |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ct → t | effectum, perfectum, respectum, aspectum, dīstrīctus, sectam | efecto, perfecto, respecto, aspecto, districto, secta | efeto, perfeto, respeto, aspeto, distrito, seta | efecto, perfecto, respeto/respecto, aspecto, distrito, secta |
| cti → cci → ci | affectiōnem, lectiōnem, perfectiōnem | affección, lección, perfección | afición, lición, perfeción | afición/afección, lección, perfección |
| pt → t | acceptāre, baptismum, conceptum, raptus |
aceptar, baptismo, concepto, rapto |
acetar, bautismo, conceto, rato |
aceptar, bautismo, concepto, rato |
| gn → n | dīgnum, magnīficum, signīficāre | digno, magnífico, significar |
dino, manífigo, sinifigar |
digno, magnífico, significar |
| mn → n | columnam, solemnitātem, alūmnus | columna, solemnidad, alumno | coluna, solenidad, aluno | columna, solemnidad, alumno |
| mpt → nt | promptum, exemptum | prompto, exempto | pronto, exento | pronto, exento |
| nct → nt | sanctus, distīnctum | sancto, distincto | santo, distinto | santo, distinto |
Most of these words have modern forms which more closely resemble Latin than Old Spanish. In Old Spanish, the simplified forms were acceptable forms which were in coexistence (and sometimes competition) with the learned forms. The Spanish educational system, and later the Real Academia Española, with their demand that all consonants of a word be pronounced, steadily drove most simplified forms from existence. Many of the simplified forms were used in literary works in the Middle Ages and Renaissance (sometimes intentionally as an archaism), but have since been relegated mostly to popular and uneducated speech. Occasionally, both forms exist in Modern Spanish with different meanings or in idiomatic usage: for example afición is a 'fondness (of)' or 'taste (for)', while afección is 'illness'; Modern Spanish respeto is '(attitude of) respect', while con respecto a means 'with regard to'.
Most words with consonant clusters in syllable-final position are loanwords from Classical Latin, examples are: transporte tɾansˈpor.te, transmitir tɾanz.miˈtir, instalar ins.taˈlar, constante konsˈtante, obstante oβsˈtante, obstruir oβsˈtɾwir, perspectiva pers.pekˈti.βa, istmo ˈist.mo. A syllable-final position cannot be more than one consonant (one of n, r, l, s or z) in most (or all) dialects in colloquial speech, reflecting Vulgar Latin background. Realizations like trasˈpor.te, tɾaz.miˈtir, is.taˈlar, kosˈtante, osˈtante, osˈtɾwir, and ˈiz.mo are very common, and in many cases, they are considered acceptable even in formal speech.
Another type of consonant cluster simplification involves "double" (geminate) plosives that reduced to single: -pp-, -tt-, -cc-, -bb-, -dd-, -gg- /pː, tː, kː, bː, dː, gː/ > -p-, -t-, -c-, -b-, -d-, -g- /p, t, k, b, d, g/. The simplified Spanish outcomes of the Latin voiced series -bb-, -dd-, -gg- /bː, dː, gː/ remain voiced, inducing phonemic merger with intervocalic /b/, /d/, /g/ that issued from voicing of Latin /p/, /t/, /k/, so that all are subject to the same phonetic realization as voiced fricatives: [β], [ð], and [ɣ], respectively.