History of the Spanish language
Encyclopedia
The language known today as Spanish
is derived from a dialect of spoken Latin
that developed in the north-central part of the Iberian Peninsula
in what is now northern Spain
. Over the past 1,000 years, the language expanded south to the Mediterranean Sea
, and was later transferred to the Spanish colonial empire
, most notably to the Americas
. Today it is the official language of 21 countries and of numerous international organizations, and it is one of the six official languages of the United Nations
.
The development of Spanish phonology
is distinguished from those of other nearby Romance languages
(e.g. Portuguese
, Catalan
) by several features:
The following features are characteristic of Spanish phonology and also of some other Ibero-Romance languages, but not the Romance languages as a whole:
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. FACĔRE > hacer, DICĔRE > decir).
Spanish verbal morphology
continues the use of some Latin synthetic
forms that were replaced by analytic ones in French and 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"), 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, 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
). 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 loanword
s from Basque
, Germanic, 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 — come into use sporadically in the 15th century, and massively in the 16th century. Their use begins to be standardized with the advent of the Spanish Royal Academy
in the 18th century. See also Spanish orthography.
. 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. Castilian Spanish originated, after the decline of the Roman Empire
, as a continuation of spoken Latin
in the Cantabrian Mountains
, in northern Spain, in the 8th and 9th centuries, according to most authorities. With the Reconquista
, this northern dialect spread to the south, where it almost entirely replaced or absorbed the provincial dialects, at the same time as it borrowed massively from the vocabulary of Moorish Arabic and was influenced by Mozarabic
(the Romance speech of Christians living in Moorish territory
) and medieval Judeo-Spanish (Ladino). These languages all but vanished in the Iberian Peninsula by the late 16th century.
The prestige of Old 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.
The "first written Spanish" was traditionally considered to have appeared in the Glosas Emilianenses
. 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. Estimates of their date vary from the late 10th to the early 11th century.. Today they are considered most probably Navarro-Aragonese.
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). He assembled scribes at his court and supervised their writing, in Castilian, of extensive works on history, astronomy, law, and other fields of knowledge.
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
.
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 preserving the "purity" of the language. The Academy published its first dictionary
in six volumes over the period 1726–1739, and its first grammar in 1771, 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.
Beginning in the 16th century, Spanish colonization brought the language to the Americas
(Mexico
, Central America
, and western and southern South America
), where it is spoken today, as well as to several island groups in the Pacific
where it is no longer spoken by any large numbers of people: the Philippines
, Palau
, the Marianas (including Guam
), and what is today the Federated States of Micronesia
.
Use of the language in the Americas
was continued by descendants of the Spaniards, both by Spanish criollos and by what had then become the mixed Spanish-Amerindian (mestizo
) majority. After the wars of independence fought by these colonies in the 19th century, the new ruling elites extended their Spanish to the whole population to strengthen national unity, and the encouragement of all natives to become fluent in Spanish has had a certain amount of success, except in very isolated parts of the former Spanish colonies.
In the late 19th century, the still-Spanish colonies of Cuba
and Puerto Rico
encouraged more immigrants from Spain, and similarly other Latin American 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 (mulato
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 Chicano
s (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 from Latin America to the United States (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.
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. It is also spoken in parts of the United States that had not been part of the Spanish Empire, such as Spanish Harlem
in New York City
, at first by immigrants from Puerto Rico, and later by other Latin American immigrants who arrived there in the late 20th century.
In 1492 Spain expelled its Jewish population. Their Judeo-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.
In the Marianas, the Spanish language was retained until the Pacific War
, but is no longer spoken there by any significant number of people.
Language politics in Francoist Spain declared Spanish as the only official language in Spain, and to this day it is the most preferred language in government, business, public education, the workplace, cultural arts, and the media. But in the 1960s and 1970s, the Spanish parliament agreed to allow provinces to use, speak, and print official documents in three other languages: Catalan
for Catalonia
, Basque
for the
Basque provinces
, and Galician
for Galicia. Since the early 1980s after Spain became a multi-party democracy, these regional and minority languages have rebounded in common usage as secondary languages, but Spanish remains the universal language of the Spanish people.
When the United Nations
organization was founded in 1945, Spanish was designated one of its five official language
s (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
).
and later repopulation campaigns
were of Basque
lineage, and this is evidenced by many place names throughout Spain
. Influence of Basque phonology is credited by some researchers with softening the Spanish labiodentals
: turning labiodental [v] to [β], and ultimately deleting labiodental [f]. Others negate or downplay Basque phonological influence, claiming that these changes occurred in the affected dialects wholly independent of each other as a result of internal change (i.e. linguistic factors, not outside influence). It is also possible that the two forces, internal and external, worked in concert and reinforced each other.
Germanic languages
by most accounts affected the phonological
development very little, many Spanish words of Germanic origin are very common in all varieties of everyday Spanish. The 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. In Old Spanish este and oeste did not exist; oriente (or levante) and occidente (or poniente) were used instead, and are still widely used.
In 711
Spain was invaded by Moors
, who brought the Arabic language
to the Peninsula. From then until the fall of the Emirate of Granada
(1492), Spanish borrowed words from Arabic. Spanish was once written in the Arabic alphabet
in specific geographical areas. (See Aljamiado
)
, such as the abandonment of distinctive vowel length, the loss of the case system for nouns, and the loss of deponent verb
s.
Later, after the time of intervocalic voicing, unstressed vowels were lost between other combinations of consonants:
intervocalic consonants were often voiced, many voiced intervocalic stops (d, g, and occasionally b) were simply dropped from words altogether through a process called elision
.
Many forms with d and g preserved, e.g. ligar, legal, crudo, are learned words (latinism
s); cf. the alternate forms liar, leal and Old Spanish cruo.
, the Latin voiceless
stops
— /p/, /t/, and /k/, which are represented orthographically
as P, T, and C 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.
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).
The verb form digo is an interesting example as it shows different phonetic changes appearing in different verb forms. Notably, some forms of decir will feature the Latin /k/ to Spanish /θ/ change (which occurs when Latin /k/ is followed by /i/ or /e/), but in other verb forms /k/ is voiced and spirantized to /ɡ/. This also occurs in a few other Spanish verbs ending in -cer or -cir, as in the table below:
in the mid-to-late 13th century. Many of these words contained consonant cluster
s which, in oral transmission, had been reduced to simpler consonant clusters or single consonant
s 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-, -ct[i]-, -pt-, -gn-, -mn-, and -mpt-. Most of the simplified forms have since reverted to the learned forms or are now considered to be uneducated.
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 coexistenece (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 nuances of meaning or in idiom
atic usage. afición is a 'fondness of' or 'taste for' while afección is 'illness.' Modern Spanish respeto is 'respect' while con respecto a means 'with regard to.'
. Labials
(b, p) yielded the rounded
glide [w] (which was in turn absorbed by a preceding round vowel
), while the velar
c ([k]) produced the palatal glide
[j] (which could palatalize
a following [t] and be absorbed by the resulting palatal
affricate
). (The forms debda, cobdo, and dubdar are documented in Old Spanish; but the hypothetical forms *oito and *noite had already given way to ocho and noche by the time Castilian became a written language.)
bilabial
stop
and a voiced
, usually labiodental
fricative
, respectively. Instances of the /b/ phoneme could be inherited directly from Latin /b/ (when not between vowels), or they could result from the voicing of Latin /p/ between vowels. The /v/ phoneme was generally derived either from Latin /b/ between vowels, or from the Latin phoneme corresponding to the letter ⟨v⟩ and thought to have been pronounced [w] in Classical Latin (but later "fortified" to fricative consonant
status). In most regions, /v/ had labiodental
articulation, but in Old Spanish (which still distinguished /b/ and /v/), /v/ was actually a bilabial
fricative
[β]. (This pronunciation already existed in the 1st century BC, as shown by Julius Caesar
's famous pun "Beati Hispani quibus vivere bibere est", i.e. "Blessed (are the) Spaniards, for whom to live is to drink".) The similarity between the stop [b] and fricative [β] resulted in them merging entirely by the end of the Old Spanish period. In Modern Spanish orthography the letters ⟨b⟩ and ⟨v⟩ represent the same phoneme, usually transcribed as /b/ — which is generally realized as the fricative [β] except when utterance-initial or after a nasal consonant, in which cases it is realized as the stop [b]. The choice of orthographic ⟨b⟩ or ⟨v⟩ depends mainly on the etymology of the word, and attempts to mimic the Latin spelling of the word rather than continue the Old Spanish pronunciation. (Hence Old Spanish bever "to drink", bivir/vivir "to live" become beber, vivir, respectively, following the Latin spelling bibere, vīvere.)
f in Latin, and that through a series of "softening" changes became, successively, bilabial
ɸ and then glottal
h (hence the modern spelling), before being lost altogether in most varieties. The first written record of the process dates from 863
, when the Latin name Forticius was written as Ortiço, which might have been pronounced with initial /h/ but certainly not /f/. (The same name appears as Hortiço in a document dated 927
.) The replacement of ⟨f⟩ by ⟨h⟩ in spelling is not frequent before the 16th century
; however, this is thought not to reflect preservation of /f/. Rather, ⟨f⟩ was consistently used to represent /h/ until the phoneme /f/ reappeared in the language (around the 16th century, as a result of borrowings from Classical Latin), at which point it was necessary to distinguish the two in spelling.
The change from /f/ to /h/ occurred historically in the Romance speech of Old Castile
and Gascon, but nowhere else nearby. Since these are both areas which were historically bilingual with Basque
, and Basque historically had /h/ but no /f/, it is often suggested that this change is due to Basque influence. However, this is contested by many linguists.
Most current instances of ⟨f⟩ are either learned words (i.e. words influenced by their written Latin form, such as forma, falso, fama) or words whose initial ⟨f⟩ in Old Spanish is followed by a non-vowel
— ⟨r⟩, ⟨l⟩, or the glide
element of a diphthong
— as in frente, flor, fiesta, fuerte.
phonemes — /d͡z/ (voiced
dental affricate
), /z/ (voiced apicoalveolar fricative
), and /ʒ/ (voiced alveopalatal fricative
), as in Old Spanish
fazer, casa, and ojo respectively — lose their voicing and merge with their voiceless
counterparts, /t͡s/, /s/, and ʃ, as in caçar, passar, and baxar respectively. The character ⟨ç
⟩, called ⟨c⟩ cedilla
, originated in Old Spanish
, but is replaced by ⟨z⟩ in the modern language.
Additionally, the affricate
/t͡s/ loses its stop
component, to become a (still sibilant, laminodental) fricative
, /s̪/. As a result, the sound system then contained two sibilant fricative phonemes whose contrast depended entirely on a subtle distinction between their places of articulation
: apicoalveolar
in the case of the /s/ inherited from Latin, and laminodental
in the case of the new fricative sibilant /s̪/ derived from the affricate /t͡s/. The “problem” of this reduced contrast is resolved in the dialects of northern and central Spain by paradigmatic dissimilation, and in those of Andalusia
and the Americas by phonemic merger.
In the northern and central dialects, the laminodental
fricative is displaced forward to an interdental
place of articulation, losing its sibilancy
; the result is interdental
[θ]. This sound is represented in modern spelling by ⟨c⟩ before ⟨e⟩ or ⟨i⟩, and by ⟨z⟩ elsewhere. In the south of Spain
and the Americas
the /s/ and /s̪/ phonemes merge, with the new phoneme being pronounced either as [s] (“seseo
” — in the Americas and parts of Andalusia) or as [θ] (“ceceo
” — in other parts of Andalusia). In general, coastal regions of Andalusia preferred [θ], while more inland regions preferred [s] (see map at ceceo
). During the colonization of the Americas most of the people who were destined to settle the new colonies where from the south of Spain, as a result, language historians believe, the entire Spanish-speaking New World
today speaks a language variety derived largely from the language of Andalusia.
Meanwhile the alveopalatal fricative ʃ — the result of the merger of voiceless /ʃ/ (spelled ⟨x⟩ in Old Spanish) with voiced /ʒ/ (spelled with ⟨j⟩ in some words, and in others with ⟨g⟩ before ⟨e⟩ or ⟨i⟩) — was in all dialects displaced rearward, to become (depending on geographical variety) velar [x], uvular [χ] (in parts of Spain), or glottal [h] (in Andalusia and parts of the Americas, especially the Caribbean region
). This sound is represented in the modern orthography by ⟨j⟩, or by ⟨g⟩ before ⟨e⟩ or ⟨i⟩.
, based on one name for the letter ⟨y⟩. For a long time, this was known as a specifically Andalusia
n trait, and only seems to have reached Madrid
and other cities of central and northern Spain in the last 100 years or so. Since most settlers of Latin America came from Andalusia, most Latin American regions have yeísmo, although there are pockets where the sounds are still distinguished.
A related trait which has also been documented sporadically for several hundred years is rehilamiento (literally "whizzing"), the pronunciation of /ʝ/ as a sibilant fricative [ʒ] or even an affricate [dʒ]. The current pronunciation varies greatly depending on the geographical dialect
and sociolect
(with [dʒ], especially, stigmatized except at the beginning of a word). Rioplatense Spanish
(of Argentina
and Paraguay
) is particularly known for the pronunciation [ʒ] of both /ʝ/ and original /ʎ/. Within the last 50 years or so, however, the unvoiced pronunciation [ʃ] has become dominant in the Argentine capital of Buenos Aires
, and is spreading outward due to the prestige associated with the capital city.
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
is derived from a dialect of spoken Latin
Vulgar Latin
Vulgar Latin is any of the nonstandard forms of Latin from which the Romance languages developed. Because of its nonstandard nature, it had no official orthography. All written works used Classical Latin, with very few exceptions...
that developed in the north-central part of the Iberian Peninsula
Iberian Peninsula
The Iberian Peninsula , sometimes called Iberia, is located in the extreme southwest of Europe and includes the modern-day sovereign states of Spain, Portugal and Andorra, as well as the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar...
in what is now northern Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
. Over the past 1,000 years, the language expanded south to the Mediterranean Sea
Mediterranean Sea
The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean surrounded by the Mediterranean region and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Anatolia and Europe, on the south by North Africa, and on the east by the Levant...
, and was later transferred to the Spanish colonial empire
Spanish Empire
The Spanish Empire comprised territories and colonies administered directly by Spain in Europe, in America, Africa, Asia and Oceania. It originated during the Age of Exploration and was therefore one of the first global empires. At the time of Habsburgs, Spain reached the peak of its world power....
, most notably to the Americas
Hispanic America
Hispanic America or Spanish America is the region comprising the American countries inhabited by Spanish-speaking populations.These countries have significant commonalities with each other and with Spain, whose colonies they formerly were...
. Today it is the official language of 21 countries and of numerous international organizations, and it is one of the six official languages of the United Nations
Official languages of the United Nations
The official languages of the United Nations are the six languages that are used in UN meetings, and in which all official UN documents are written...
.
The development of Spanish phonology
Spanish phonology
This article is about the phonology and phonetics of the Spanish language. Unless otherwise noted, statements refer to Castilian Spanish, the standard dialect used in Spain on radio and television. For historical development of the sound system see History of Spanish...
is distinguished from those of other nearby Romance languages
Romance languages
The Romance languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family, more precisely of the Italic languages subfamily, comprising all the languages that descend from Vulgar Latin, the language of ancient Rome...
(e.g. Portuguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
, Catalan
Catalan language
Catalan is a Romance language, the national and only official language of Andorra and a co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencian Community, where it is known as Valencian , as well as in the city of Alghero, on the Italian island...
) by several features:
- diphthongization of Latin stressed short E and O in closed syllables as well as open (tiempo, puerta)
- devoicingDevoicingIn phonology, voicing and devoicing are sound changes, whereby a consonant changes its type of voicing from voiceless to voiced, or vice versa, due to the influence of a phonological element in its phonological environment...
and further development of the medieval Spanish sibilants, producing (1) the velar fricativeVoiceless velar fricativeThe voiceless velar fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The sound was part of the consonant inventory of Old English and can still be found in some dialects of English, most notably in Scottish English....
[x] in words such as caja, hijo, gente, and (2) — in many dialectsSpanish dialects and varietiesSpanish dialects and varieties are the regional variants of the Spanish language, some of which are quite divergent from one another, especially in pronunciation and vocabulary, and less so in grammar....
of Spain, including the prestige varieties of Madrid, Toledo, etc. — the interdentalVoiceless dental fricativeThe voiceless dental non-sibilant fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. It is familiar to English speakers as the 'th' in thing. Though rather rare as a phoneme in the world's inventory of languages, it is encountered in some of the most widespread and influential...
[θ] in words such as cinco, hacer, and lazo - debuccalizationDebuccalizationDebuccalization is a sound change in which a consonant loses its original place of articulation and becomes or . The pronunciation of a consonant as is sometimes called aspiration, but in phonetics aspiration is the burst of air accompanying a plosive...
and eventual loss of Latin F, marked in modern spelling by the silent ⟨h⟩ of words such as hablar, hilo, hoja - early fricativization of palatal /ʎ/ (from Vulgar LatinVulgar LatinVulgar Latin is any of the nonstandard forms of Latin from which the Romance languages developed. Because of its nonstandard nature, it had no official orthography. All written works used Classical Latin, with very few exceptions...
-LY-, -CL-, -GL-) into /dʒ/ (hijo < FILIU, ojo < OCLU, reja < REGLA; cf. Portuguese filho, olho, relha) - development of initial PL-, CL-, FL- into palatal /ʎ/ (llorar < PLORARE, llamar < CLAMARE, llama < FLAMMA; cf. Portuguese chorar, chamar, chama, Catalan plorar, clamar, flama)
- Vulgar Latin initial /j/ (from J-, DY-, G(E)-, G(I)-) remains before /a/, /e/ and /i/, subsequently disappearing in an unstressed syllable (yace, yeso, helar, enero, echar, hinojo vs. Portuguese jaz, gesso, gelar, janeiro, jeitar, 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:
- palatalizationPalatalizationIn linguistics, palatalization , also palatization, may refer to two different processes by which a sound, usually a consonant, comes to be produced with the tongue in a position in the mouth near the palate....
of Latin -NN- and -LL- (año, silla) (also in Catalan) - 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 hypercorrectionHypercorrectionIn linguistics or usage, hypercorrection is a non-standard usage that results from the over-application of a perceived rule of grammar or a usage prescription...
or spelling pronunciationSpelling pronunciationA spelling pronunciation is a pronunciation that, instead of reflecting the way the word was pronounced by previous generations of speakers, is a rendering in sound of the word's spelling.-Examples of English words with common spelling pronunciations:...
) (also in Galician, Northern European Portuguese and some Catalan and Occitan varieties) - spirantizationLenitionIn linguistics, lenition is a kind of sound change that alters consonants, making them "weaker" in some way. The word lenition itself means "softening" or "weakening" . Lenition can happen both synchronically and diachronically...
of /b/, /d/, and /g/ — not only from original Latin B, D, and G (as in Sp. probar, sudar, legumbre), but also from Latin P, T, and C (as in Sp. sabe, vida, lago) (also in Galician, European Portuguese, Catalan and 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. FACĔRE > hacer, DICĔRE > decir).
Spanish verbal morphology
Morphology (linguistics)
In linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...
continues the use of some Latin synthetic
Synthetic language
In linguistic typology, a synthetic language is a language with a high morpheme-per-word ratio, as opposed to a low morpheme-per-word ratio in what is described as an isolating language...
forms that were replaced by analytic ones in French and Italian (cf. Sp. lavó, Fr. il a lavé), and the Spanish subjunctive mood
Subjunctive mood
In grammar, the subjunctive mood is a verb mood typically used in subordinate clauses to express various states of irreality such as wish, emotion, possibility, judgment, opinion, necessity, or action that has not yet occurred....
maintains separate present
Present tense
The present tense is a grammatical tense that locates a situation or event in present time. This linguistic definition refers to a concept that indicates a feature of the meaning of a verb...
and past-tense
Past tense
The past tense is a grammatical tense that places an action or situation in the past of the current moment , or prior to some specified time that may be in the speaker's past, present, or future...
forms.
Spanish syntax
Syntax
In linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing phrases and sentences in natural languages....
provides overt marking for some direct objects (the so-called "personal a"), and uses clitic doubling
Clitic doubling
In linguistics, clitic doubling, or pronominal reduplication is a phenomenon by which clitic pronouns appear in verb phrases together with the full noun phrases that they refer to .Clitic doubling is found in many languages, including Albanian, Arumanian, Macedonian, Bulgarian,...
with indirect objects, in which a "redundant" pronoun (le, les) appears even in the presence of an explicit noun phrase
Noun phrase
In grammar, a noun phrase, nominal phrase, or nominal group is a phrase based on a noun, pronoun, or other noun-like word optionally accompanied by modifiers such as adjectives....
. (Neither feature occurs in other western Romance languages, but both are features of Romanian
Romanian language
Romanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...
, with pe < PER corresponding to Spanish a.) With regard to subject pronouns, Spanish is a pro-drop language
Pro-drop language
A pro-drop language is a language in which certain classes of pronouns may be omitted when they are in some sense pragmatically inferable...
, meaning that the verb phrase
Verb phrase
In linguistics, a verb phrase or VP is a syntactic unit composed of at least one verb and the dependents of that verb. One can distinguish between two types of VPs, finite VPs and non-finite VPs . While phrase structure grammars acknowledge both, dependency grammars reject the existence of a...
can often stand alone without the use of a subject pronoun (or a subject noun phrase
Noun phrase
In grammar, a noun phrase, nominal phrase, or nominal group is a phrase based on a noun, pronoun, or other noun-like word optionally accompanied by modifiers such as adjectives....
). Compared to other Romance languages, Spanish has a somewhat freer syntax
Syntax
In linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing phrases and sentences in natural languages....
with relatively fewer restrictions on subject-verb-object word order
Word order
In linguistics, word order typology refers to the study of the order of the syntactic constituents of a language, and how different languages can employ different orders. Correlations between orders found in different syntactic subdomains are also of interest...
.
Due to prolonged language contact
Language contact
Language contact occurs when two or more languages or varieties interact. The study of language contact is called contact linguistics.Multilingualism has likely been common throughout much of human history, and today most people in the world are multilingual...
with other languages, the Spanish lexicon contains loanword
Loanword
A loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort,...
s from Basque
Basque language
Basque is the ancestral language of the Basque people, who inhabit the Basque Country, a region spanning an area in northeastern Spain and southwestern France. It is spoken by 25.7% of Basques in all territories...
, Germanic, Arabic
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
, and indigenous languages of the Americas
Indigenous languages of the Americas
Indigenous languages of the Americas are spoken by indigenous peoples from Alaska and Greenland to the southern tip of South America, encompassing the land masses which constitute the Americas. These indigenous languages consist of dozens of distinct language families as well as many language...
.
Accents — used in Modern Spanish to mark the vowel of the stressed syllable in words where stress is not predictable from rules — come into use sporadically in the 15th century, and massively in the 16th century. Their use begins to be standardized with the advent of the Spanish Royal Academy
Real Academia Española
The Royal Spanish Academy is the official royal institution responsible for regulating the Spanish language. It is based in Madrid, Spain, but is affiliated with national language academies in twenty-one other hispanophone nations through the Association of Spanish Language Academies...
in the 18th century. See also Spanish orthography.
External history
The standard Spanish language is also called CastilianNames given to the Spanish language
There are two names given to the Spanish language: Spanish and Castilian . Spanish speakers from different countries or backgrounds can show a preference for one term or the other, or use them indiscriminately, but political issues or common usage might lead speakers to prefer one term over the...
. In its earliest documented form, and up through approximately the 15th century, the language is customarily called Old Spanish
Old Spanish language
Old Spanish, also known as Old Castilian or Mediaeval Spanish , is an early form of the Spanish language that was spoken on the Iberian Peninsula from the tenth century until roughly the beginning of the fifteenth century, before a consonantic readjustment gave rise to the evolution of modern...
. 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
Middle English
Middle English is the stage in the history of the English language during the High and Late Middle Ages, or roughly during the four centuries between the late 11th and the late 15th century....
and French
Middle French
Middle French is a historical division of the French language that covers the period from 1340 to 1611. It is a period of transition during which:...
, it is not customary to speak of a "middle" stage in the development of Spanish. Castilian Spanish originated, after the decline of the Roman Empire
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
, as a continuation of spoken Latin
Vulgar Latin
Vulgar Latin is any of the nonstandard forms of Latin from which the Romance languages developed. Because of its nonstandard nature, it had no official orthography. All written works used Classical Latin, with very few exceptions...
in the Cantabrian Mountains
Cantabrian Mountains
The Cantabrian Mountains or Cantabrian Range are one of the main systems of mountain ranges in Spain.They extend for more than approximately 180 miles across northern Spain, from the western limit of the Pyrenees to the edges of the Galician Massif close to Galicia, along the coast of the...
, in northern Spain, in the 8th and 9th centuries, according to most authorities. With the Reconquista
Reconquista
The Reconquista was a period of almost 800 years in the Middle Ages during which several Christian kingdoms succeeded in retaking the Muslim-controlled areas of the Iberian Peninsula broadly known as Al-Andalus...
, this northern dialect spread to the south, where it almost entirely replaced or absorbed the provincial dialects, at the same time as it borrowed massively from the vocabulary of Moorish Arabic and was influenced by Mozarabic
Mozarabic language
Mozarabic was a continuum of closely related Romance dialects spoken in Muslim-dominated areas of the Iberian Peninsula during the early stages of the Romance languages' development in Iberia. Mozarabic descends from Late Latin and early Romance dialects spoken in the Iberian Peninsula from the 5th...
(the Romance speech of Christians living in Moorish territory
Al-Andalus
Al-Andalus was the Arabic name given to a nation and territorial region also commonly referred to as Moorish Iberia. The name describes parts of the Iberian Peninsula and Septimania governed by Muslims , at various times in the period between 711 and 1492, although the territorial boundaries...
) and medieval Judeo-Spanish (Ladino). These languages all but vanished in the Iberian Peninsula by the late 16th century.
The prestige of Old Castile and its language was propagated partly by the exploits of Castilian heroes in the battles of the Reconquista
Reconquista
The Reconquista was a period of almost 800 years in the Middle Ages during which several Christian kingdoms succeeded in retaking the Muslim-controlled areas of the Iberian Peninsula broadly known as Al-Andalus...
— among them Fernán González and Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar (El Cid
El Cid
Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar , known as El Cid Campeador , was a Castilian nobleman, military leader, and diplomat...
) — and by the narrative poems about them that were recited in Castilian even outside the original territory of that dialect.
The "first written Spanish" was traditionally considered to have appeared in the Glosas Emilianenses
Glosas Emilianenses
The Glosas Emilianenses are glosses written in a Latin codex. These marginalia are important as early examples of writing in Basque and a form of Spanish...
. 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. Estimates of their date vary from the late 10th to the early 11th century.. Today they are considered most probably Navarro-Aragonese.
The first steps toward standardization
Standard language
A standard language is a language variety used by a group of people in their public discourse. Alternatively, varieties become standard by undergoing a process of standardization, during which it is organized for description in grammars and dictionaries and encoded in such reference works...
of written Castilian were taken in the 13th century by King Alfonso X of Castile
Alfonso X of Castile
Alfonso X was a Castilian monarch who ruled as the King of Castile, León and Galicia from 1252 until his death...
, known as Alfonso el Sabio (Alfonso the Wise). He assembled scribes at his court and supervised their writing, in Castilian, of extensive works on history, astronomy, law, and other fields of knowledge.
Antonio de Nebrija
Antonio de Nebrija
Antonio de Lebrija , also known as Antonio de Nebrija, Elio Antonio de Lebrija, Antonius Nebrissensis, and Antonio of Lebrixa, was a Spanish scholar, known for writing a grammar of the Castilian language, credited as one of the first published grammars of a Romance language...
wrote the first grammar of Spanish, Gramática de la lengua castellana
Gramática de la lengua castellana
Gramática de la lengua castellana is a book written by Antonio de Nebrija and published in 1492...
, and presented it, in 1492, to Queen Isabella
Isabella I of Castile
Isabella I was Queen of Castile and León. She and her husband Ferdinand II of Aragon brought stability to both kingdoms that became the basis for the unification of Spain. Later the two laid the foundations for the political unification of Spain under their grandson, Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor...
, 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
Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus was an explorer, colonizer, and navigator, born in the Republic of Genoa, in northwestern Italy. Under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, he completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean that led to general European awareness of the American continents in the...
.
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
Real Academia Española
The Royal Spanish Academy is the official royal institution responsible for regulating the Spanish language. It is based in Madrid, Spain, but is affiliated with national language academies in twenty-one other hispanophone nations through the Association of Spanish Language Academies...
was founded in 1713, largely with the purpose of preserving the "purity" of the language. The Academy published its first dictionary
Diccionario de la lengua española de la Real Academia Española
The Diccionario de la lengua española de la Real Academia Española or DRAE is the most authoritative dictionary of the Spanish language. It is produced, edited, and published by the Real Academia Española ; the first edition was published in 1780...
in six volumes over the period 1726–1739, and its first grammar in 1771, 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
Association of Spanish Language Academies
The Association of Spanish Language Academies is the entity which regulates the Spanish language. It was created in Mexico in 1951 and represents the union of all the separate academies in the Spanish-speaking world....
was created in 1951.
Beginning in the 16th century, Spanish colonization brought the language to the Americas
Americas
The Americas, or America , are lands in the Western hemisphere, also known as the New World. In English, the plural form the Americas is often used to refer to the landmasses of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions, while the singular form America is primarily...
(Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
, Central America
Central America
Central America is the central geographic region of the Americas. It is the southernmost, isthmian portion of the North American continent, which connects with South America on the southeast. When considered part of the unified continental model, it is considered a subcontinent...
, and western and southern South America
South America
South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...
), where it is spoken today, as well as to several island groups in the Pacific
Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east.At 165.2 million square kilometres in area, this largest division of the World...
where it is no longer spoken by any large numbers of people: the Philippines
Philippines
The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...
, Palau
Palau
Palau , officially the Republic of Palau , is an island nation in the Pacific Ocean, east of the Philippines and south of Tokyo. In 1978, after three decades as being part of the United Nations trusteeship, Palau chose independence instead of becoming part of the Federated States of Micronesia, a...
, the Marianas (including Guam
Guam
Guam is an organized, unincorporated territory of the United States located in the western Pacific Ocean. It is one of five U.S. territories with an established civilian government. Guam is listed as one of 16 Non-Self-Governing Territories by the Special Committee on Decolonization of the United...
), and what is today the Federated States of Micronesia
Federated States of Micronesia
The Federated States of Micronesia or FSM is an independent, sovereign island nation, made up of four states from west to east: Yap, Chuuk, Pohnpei and Kosrae. It comprises approximately 607 islands with c...
.
Use of the language in the Americas
Americas
The Americas, or America , are lands in the Western hemisphere, also known as the New World. In English, the plural form the Americas is often used to refer to the landmasses of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions, while the singular form America is primarily...
was continued by descendants of the Spaniards, both by Spanish criollos and by what had then become the mixed Spanish-Amerindian (mestizo
Mestizo
Mestizo is a term traditionally used in Latin America, Philippines and Spain for people of mixed European and Native American heritage or descent...
) majority. After the wars of independence fought by these colonies in the 19th century, the new ruling elites extended their Spanish to the whole population to strengthen national unity, and the encouragement of all natives to become fluent in Spanish has had a certain amount of success, except in very isolated parts of the former Spanish colonies.
In the late 19th century, the still-Spanish colonies of Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
and Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico , officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico , is an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the northeastern Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic and west of both the United States Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands.Puerto Rico comprises an...
encouraged more immigrants from Spain, and similarly other Latin American countries such as Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
, Uruguay
Uruguay
Uruguay ,officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay,sometimes the Eastern Republic of Uruguay; ) is a country in the southeastern part of South America. It is home to some 3.5 million people, of whom 1.8 million live in the capital Montevideo and its metropolitan area...
, and to a lesser extent Chile
Chile
Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...
, Colombia
Colombia
Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...
, Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
, Panama
Panama
Panama , officially the Republic of Panama , is the southernmost country of Central America. Situated on the isthmus connecting North and South America, it is bordered by Costa Rica to the northwest, Colombia to the southeast, the Caribbean Sea to the north and the Pacific Ocean to the south. The...
and Venezuela
Venezuela
Venezuela , officially called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela , is a tropical country on the northern coast of South America. It borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south...
, attracted waves of European
European ethnic groups
The ethnic groups in Europe are the various ethnic groups that reside in the nations of Europe. European ethnology is the field of anthropology focusing on Europe....
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
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico , officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico , is an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the northeastern Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic and west of both the United States Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands.Puerto Rico comprises an...
became a possession of the United States as a consequence of the Spanish-American War
Spanish-American War
The Spanish–American War was a conflict in 1898 between Spain and the United States, effectively the result of American intervention in the ongoing Cuban War of Independence...
, its population — almost entirely of Spanish and mixed Afro-Caribbean/Spanish (mulato
Mulato
The mulato pepper is a mild to medium chile pepper, closely related to the poblano , and usually sold dried. Mexican mulato chiles are part of the famous "trilogy" used in mole as well as other Mexican sauces and stews. The mulato's color while growing is dark green, maturing to red or brown...
and mestizo
Mestizo
Mestizo is a term traditionally used in Latin America, Philippines and Spain for people of mixed European and Native American heritage or descent...
) descent — retained its inherited Spanish language as a mother tongue, in co-existence with the American-imposed English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
as co-official. In the 20th century, more than a million Puerto Ricans
Puerto Rican people
A Puerto Rican is a person who was born in Puerto Rico.Puerto Ricans born and raised in the continental United States are also sometimes referred to as Puerto Ricans, although they were not born in Puerto Rico...
migrated to the mainland U.S. (see Puerto Ricans in the United States
Puerto Ricans in the United States
Stateside Puerto Ricans are American citizens of Puerto Rican origin, including those who migrated from Puerto Rico to the United States and those who were born outside of Puerto Rico in the United States...
).
A similar situation occurred in the American Southwest, including California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
, Arizona
Arizona
Arizona ; is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States. It is also part of the western United States and the mountain west. The capital and largest city is Phoenix...
, New Mexico
New Mexico
New Mexico is a state located in the southwest and western regions of the United States. New Mexico is also usually considered one of the Mountain States. With a population density of 16 per square mile, New Mexico is the sixth-most sparsely inhabited U.S...
and Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
, where Spaniards, then criollos (Tejanos, Californios, etc.) followed by Chicano
Chicano
The terms "Chicano" and "Chicana" are used in reference to U.S. citizens of Mexican descent. However, those terms have a wide range of meanings in various parts of the world. The term began to be widely used during the Chicano Movement, mainly among Mexican Americans, especially in the movement's...
s (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
Mexican–American War
The Mexican–American War, also known as the First American Intervention, the Mexican War, or the U.S.–Mexican War, was an armed conflict between the United States and Mexico from 1846 to 1848 in the wake of the 1845 U.S...
. Spanish continues to be used by millions of citizens and immigrants from Latin America to the United States (for example, many Cubans arrived in Miami, Florida
Miami, Florida
Miami is a city located on the Atlantic coast in southeastern Florida and the county seat of Miami-Dade County, the most populous county in Florida and the eighth-most populous county in the United States with a population of 2,500,625...
, beginning with the Cuban Revolution
Cuban Revolution
The Cuban Revolution was an armed revolt by Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement against the regime of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista between 1953 and 1959. Batista was finally ousted on 1 January 1959, and was replaced by a revolutionary government led by Castro...
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
Latino
The demonyms Latino and Latina , are defined in English language dictionaries as:* "a person of Latin-American descent."* "A Latin American."* "A person of Hispanic, especially Latin-American, descent, often one living in the United States."...
/Hispanic
Hispanic
Hispanic is a term that originally denoted a relationship to Hispania, which is to say the Iberian Peninsula: Andorra, Gibraltar, Portugal and Spain. During the Modern Era, Hispanic sometimes takes on a more limited meaning, particularly in the United States, where the term means a person of ...
Americans are bilingual or also regularly speak English.
The presence of Spanish in Equatorial Guinea
Equatorial Guinea
Equatorial Guinea, officially the Republic of Equatorial Guinea where the capital Malabo is situated.Annobón is the southernmost island of Equatorial Guinea and is situated just south of the equator. Bioko island is the northernmost point of Equatorial Guinea. Between the two islands and to the...
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
Western Sahara
Western Sahara is a disputed territory in North Africa, bordered by Morocco to the north, Algeria to the northeast, Mauritania to the east and south, and the Atlantic Ocean to the west. Its surface area amounts to . It is one of the most sparsely populated territories in the world, mainly...
, which was a protectorate/colony of Spain from the 1880s to the 1970s. It is also spoken in parts of the United States that had not been part of the Spanish Empire, such as Spanish Harlem
Spanish Harlem
East Harlem, also known as Spanish Harlem and El Barrio, is a section of Harlem in the northeastern part of the New York City borough of Manhattan. East Harlem is one of the largest predominantly Latino communities in New York City. It includes the area formerly known as Italian Harlem, in which...
in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, at first by immigrants from Puerto Rico, and later by other Latin American immigrants who arrived there in the late 20th century.
In 1492 Spain expelled its Jewish population. Their Judeo-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.
In the Marianas, the Spanish language was retained until the Pacific War
Pacific War
The Pacific War, also sometimes called the Asia-Pacific War refers broadly to the parts of World War II that took place in the Pacific Ocean, its islands, and in East Asia, then called the Far East...
, but is no longer spoken there by any significant number of people.
Language politics in Francoist Spain declared Spanish as the only official language in Spain, and to this day it is the most preferred language in government, business, public education, the workplace, cultural arts, and the media. But in the 1960s and 1970s, the Spanish parliament agreed to allow provinces to use, speak, and print official documents in three other languages: Catalan
Catalan language
Catalan is a Romance language, the national and only official language of Andorra and a co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencian Community, where it is known as Valencian , as well as in the city of Alghero, on the Italian island...
for Catalonia
Catalonia
Catalonia is an autonomous community in northeastern Spain, with the official status of a "nationality" of Spain. Catalonia comprises four provinces: Barcelona, Girona, Lleida, and Tarragona. Its capital and largest city is Barcelona. Catalonia covers an area of 32,114 km² and has an...
, Basque
Basque language
Basque is the ancestral language of the Basque people, who inhabit the Basque Country, a region spanning an area in northeastern Spain and southwestern France. It is spoken by 25.7% of Basques in all territories...
for the
Basque provinces
Basque Country (autonomous community)
The Basque Country is an autonomous community of northern Spain. It includes the Basque provinces of Álava, Biscay and Gipuzkoa, also called Historical Territories....
, and Galician
Galician language
Galician is a language of the Western Ibero-Romance branch, spoken in Galicia, an autonomous community located in northwestern Spain, where it is co-official with Castilian Spanish, as well as in border zones of the neighbouring territories of Asturias and Castile and León.Modern Galician and...
for Galicia. Since the early 1980s after Spain became a multi-party democracy, these regional and minority languages have rebounded in common usage as secondary languages, but Spanish remains the universal language of the Spanish people.
When the United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
organization was founded in 1945, Spanish was designated one of its five official language
Official language
An official language is a language that is given a special legal status in a particular country, state, or other jurisdiction. Typically a nation's official language will be the one used in that nation's courts, parliament and administration. However, official status can also be used to give a...
s (along with Chinese
Chinese language
The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
, English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, and Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
; a sixth language, Arabic
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
, was added in 1973).
The list of Nobel laureates in Literature includes eleven authors who wrote in Spanish (José Echegaray
José Echegaray
José Echegaray y Eizaguirre was a Spanish civil engineer, mathematician, statesman, and one of the leading Spanish dramatists of the last quarter of the 19th century....
, Jacinto Benavente
Jacinto Benavente
Jacinto Benavente y Martínez was one of the foremost Spanish dramatists of the 20th century. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1922....
, Gabriela Mistral
Gabriela Mistral
Gabriela Mistral was the pseudonym of Lucila de María del Perpetuo Socorro Godoy Alcayaga, a Chilean poet, educator, diplomat, and feminist who was the first Latin American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1945...
, Juan Ramón Jiménez
Juan Ramón Jiménez
Juan Ramón Jiménez Mantecón was a Spanish poet, a prolific writer who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1956. One of Jiménez's most important contributions to modern poetry was his advocacy of the French concept of "pure poetry."-Biography:Jiménez was born in Moguer, near Huelva, in...
, Miguel Ángel Asturias
Miguel Ángel Asturias
Miguel Ángel Asturias Rosales was a Nobel Prize–winning Guatemalan poet, novelist, playwright, journalist and diplomat...
, Pablo Neruda
Pablo Neruda
Pablo Neruda was the pen name and, later, legal name of the Chilean poet, diplomat and politician Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. He chose his pen name after Czech poet Jan Neruda....
, Vicente Aleixandre
Vicente Aleixandre
Vicente Pío Marcelino Cirilo Aleixandre y Merlo was a Spanish poet who was born in Seville. Aleixandre was a Nobel Prize laureate for Literature in 1977. He was part of the Generation of '27. He died in Madrid in 1984....
, Gabriel García Márquez
Gabriel García Márquez
Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez is a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist, known affectionately as Gabo throughout Latin America. He is considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th century. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in...
, Camilo José Cela
Camilo José Cela
Camilo José Cela y Trulock, 1st Marquis of Iria Flavia was a Spanish novelist and short story writer. He was awarded the 1989 Nobel Prize in Literature "for a rich and intensive prose, which with restrained compassion forms a challenging vision of man's vulnerability".-Biography:Cela published his...
, Octavio Paz
Octavio Paz
Octavio Paz Lozano was a Mexican writer, poet, and diplomat, and the winner of the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature.-Early life and writings:...
, and Mario Vargas Llosa
Mario Vargas Llosa
Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa, 1st Marquis of Vargas Llosa is a Peruvian-Spanish writer, politician, journalist, essayist, and Nobel Prize laureate. Vargas Llosa is one of Latin America's most significant novelists and essayists, and one of the leading authors of his generation...
).
Influences
Many Castilians who took part in the reconquistaReconquista
The Reconquista was a period of almost 800 years in the Middle Ages during which several Christian kingdoms succeeded in retaking the Muslim-controlled areas of the Iberian Peninsula broadly known as Al-Andalus...
and later repopulation campaigns
Military campaign
In the military sciences, the term military campaign applies to large scale, long duration, significant military strategy plan incorporating a series of inter-related military operations or battles forming a distinct part of a larger conflict often called a war...
were of Basque
Basque people
The Basques as an ethnic group, primarily inhabit an area traditionally known as the Basque Country , a region that is located around the western end of the Pyrenees on the coast of the Bay of Biscay and straddles parts of north-central Spain and south-western France.The Basques are known in the...
lineage, and this is evidenced by many place names throughout Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
. Influence of Basque phonology is credited by some researchers with softening the Spanish labiodentals
Labiodental consonant
In phonetics, labiodentals are consonants articulated with the lower lip and the upper teeth.-Labiodental consonant in IPA:The labiodental consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:...
: turning labiodental [v] to [β], and ultimately deleting labiodental [f]. Others negate or downplay Basque phonological influence, claiming that these changes occurred in the affected dialects wholly independent of each other as a result of internal change (i.e. linguistic factors, not outside influence). It is also possible that the two forces, internal and external, worked in concert and reinforced each other.
Germanic languages
Germanic languages
The Germanic languages constitute a sub-branch of the Indo-European language family. The common ancestor of all of the languages in this branch is called Proto-Germanic , which was spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe...
by most accounts affected the phonological
Phonology
Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
development very little, many Spanish words of Germanic origin are very common in all varieties of everyday Spanish. The words for the cardinal directions (norte, este, sur, oeste), for example, are all taken from Germanic words (compare north
North
North is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating direction or geography.North is one of the four cardinal directions or compass points. It is the opposite of south and is perpendicular to east and west.By convention, the top side of a map is north....
, east
East
East is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating direction or geography.East is one of the four cardinal directions or compass points. It is the opposite of west and is perpendicular to north and south.By convention, the right side of a map is east....
, south
South
South is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating direction or geography.South is one of the four cardinal directions or compass points. It is the opposite of north and is perpendicular to east and west.By convention, the bottom side of a map is south....
and west
West
West is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating direction or geography.West is one of the four cardinal directions or compass points. It is the opposite of east and is perpendicular to north and south.By convention, the left side of a map is west....
in Modern English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
), after the contact with Atlantic sailors. In Old Spanish este and oeste did not exist; oriente (or levante) and occidente (or poniente) were used instead, and are still widely used.
In 711
711
Year 711 was a common year starting on Thursday of the Julian calendar. The denomination 711 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years.- Europe :* April 30 – Ummayad troops led by...
Spain was invaded by Moors
Moors
The description Moors has referred to several historic and modern populations of the Maghreb region who are predominately of Berber and Arab descent. They came to conquer and rule the Iberian Peninsula for nearly 800 years. At that time they were Muslim, although earlier the people had followed...
, who brought the Arabic language
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
to the Peninsula. From then until the fall of the Emirate of Granada
Emirate of Granada
The Emirate of Granada , also known as the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada , was an emirate established in 1238 following the defeat of Muhammad an-Nasir of the Almohad dynasty by an alliance of Christian kingdoms at the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212...
(1492), Spanish borrowed words from Arabic. Spanish was once written in the Arabic alphabet
Arabic alphabet
The Arabic alphabet or Arabic abjad is the Arabic script as it is codified for writing the Arabic language. It is written from right to left, in a cursive style, and includes 28 letters. Because letters usually stand for consonants, it is classified as an abjad.-Consonants:The Arabic alphabet has...
in specific geographical areas. (See Aljamiado
Aljamiado
Aljamiado or Aljamía texts are manuscripts which use the Arabic script for transcribing Romance languages such as Mozarabic, Berber Spanish or Ladino.According to Anwar G...
)
Internal history
Spanish shares with other Romance languages most of the phonological and grammatical changes that characterized Vulgar LatinVulgar Latin
Vulgar Latin is any of the nonstandard forms of Latin from which the Romance languages developed. Because of its nonstandard nature, it had no official orthography. All written works used Classical Latin, with very few exceptions...
, such as the abandonment of distinctive vowel length, the loss of the case system for nouns, and the loss of deponent verb
Deponent verb
In linguistics, a deponent verb is a verb that is active in meaning but takes its form from a different voice, most commonly the middle or passive. A deponent verb doesn't have active forms; it can be said to have deposited them .-Greek:...
s.
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.| Early syncope in Spanish | ||
|---|---|---|
| Environment | Latin words | Spanish words |
| _r | aperīre, humerum, litteram, operam | abrir, hombro, letra, obra |
| r_ | eremum, viridem | yermo, verde |
| _l | acūculam, fabulam, insulam, populum | aguja, habla, isla, pueblo |
| l_ | sōlitārium | soltero |
| s_t | positum, consūtūram | puesto, costura |
Later, after the time of intervocalic voicing, unstressed vowels were lost between other combinations of consonants:
| Later syncope in Spanish | ||
|---|---|---|
| Environment | Latin Latin Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and... words |
Spanish Spanish language Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the... 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 |
Elision
While voicelessVoice (phonetics)
Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds, with sounds described as either voiceless or voiced. The term, however, is used to refer to two separate concepts. Voicing can refer to the articulatory process in which the vocal cords vibrate...
intervocalic consonants were often voiced, many voiced intervocalic stops (d, g, and occasionally b) were simply dropped from words altogether through a process called elision
Elision
Elision is the omission of one or more sounds in a word or phrase, producing a result that is easier for the speaker to pronounce...
.
| Examples of elision Elision Elision is the omission of one or more sounds in a word or phrase, producing a result that is easier for the speaker to pronounce... in Spanish |
||
|---|---|---|
| Consonant Consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are , pronounced with the lips; , pronounced with the front of the tongue; , pronounced with the back of the tongue; , pronounced in the throat; and ,... |
Latin Latin Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and... word |
Spanish Spanish language Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the... word |
| b → Ø | vendēbat | vendía |
| d → Ø | comedere, vidēre, cadēre, pede, quō modō | comer, ver, caer, pie, cómo |
| g → Ø | cōgitāre, digitum, legere, ligāre, lēgāle | cuidar, dedo, leer, liar, leal |
Many forms with d and g preserved, e.g. ligar, legal, crudo, are learned words (latinism
Latinism
A Latinism is an idiom, structure, or word derived from or suggestive of the Latin language. For Latinistic words in English, see Latin influence in English....
s); cf. the alternate forms liar, leal and Old Spanish cruo.
Voicing and spirantization
In virtually all the Western Romance languagesWestern Romance languages
The Western Romance languages are one of the primary subdivisions of the Romance languages. They include at least the following:* The Pyrenean–Mozarabic group consists of two languages in two separate branches:**Aragonese**Mozarabic...
, the Latin voiceless
Voiceless
In linguistics, voicelessness is the property of sounds being pronounced without the larynx vibrating. Phonologically, this is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word "phonation" implies voicing, and that voicelessness is the lack of...
stops
Stop consonant
In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or an oral stop, is a stop consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be done with the tongue , lips , and &...
— /p/, /t/, and /k/, which are represented orthographically
Orthography
The orthography of a language specifies a standardized way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example Kurdish, Uyghur, Serbian or Inuktitut, there can be more than one orthography...
as P, T, and C respectively — where they occurred in an "intervocalic" environment (qualified below), underwent one, two, or three successive stages of lenition
Lenition
In linguistics, lenition is a kind of sound change that alters consonants, making them "weaker" in some way. The word lenition itself means "softening" or "weakening" . Lenition can happen both synchronically and diachronically...
, from voicing
Voice (phonetics)
Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds, with sounds described as either voiceless or voiced. The term, however, is used to refer to two separate concepts. Voicing can refer to the articulatory process in which the vocal cords vibrate...
to spirantization to, in some cases, elision
Elision
Elision is the omission of one or more sounds in a word or phrase, producing a result that is easier for the speaker to pronounce...
(deletion). In Spanish these three consonants generally undergo both voicing
Voice (phonetics)
Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds, with sounds described as either voiceless or voiced. The term, however, is used to refer to two separate concepts. Voicing can refer to the articulatory process in which the vocal cords vibrate...
and spirantization, resulting in voiced
VOICED
Virtual Organization for Innovative Conceptual Engineering Design is a virtual organization that promotes innovation in engineering design. This project is the collaborative work of researchers at five universities across the United States, and is funded by the National Science Foundation...
fricatives: β, ð, and ɣ, respectively.
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).
| Examples of voicing and spirantization in Spanish | ||
|---|---|---|
| Consonant Consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are , pronounced with the lips; , pronounced with the front of the tongue; , pronounced with the back of the tongue; , pronounced in the throat; and ,... s |
Latin Latin Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and... word |
Spanish Spanish language Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the... word |
| p → b [β] | aperīre, cooperīre, lupum, operam, populum, capram |
abrir [aˈβrir], cubrir [kuˈβrir], lobo [ˈloβo], obra [ˈoβra], pueblo [ˈpweβlo], cabra [ˈkaβra] |
| t → d [ð] | cīvitātem, latum, mūtāre, scūtum, petram |
ciudad [θjuˈðað], lado [ˈlaðo], mudar [muˈðar], escudo [esˈkuðo], piedra [ˈpjeðra] |
| c → g [ɣ] | focum, lacum, locum, pacāre, sacrātum |
fuego [ˈfweɣo], lago [ˈlaɣo], luego [ˈlweɣo], pagar [paˈɣar], sagrado [saˈɣraðo] |
The verb form digo is an interesting example as it shows different phonetic changes appearing in different verb forms. Notably, some forms of decir will feature the Latin /k/ to Spanish /θ/ change (which occurs when Latin /k/ is followed by /i/ or /e/), but in other verb forms /k/ is voiced and spirantized to /ɡ/. This also occurs in a few other Spanish verbs ending in -cer or -cir, as in the table below:
| Forms with /k/ → /θ/ | Forms with voicing of /k/ to /ɡ/ | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| English | Latin | Spanish | English | Latin | Spanish |
| To say, to tell It says, it tells |
dīcere /diːkere/ dīcet /diːket/ |
decir /deˈθiɾ/ dice /ˈdiθe/ |
I say, I tell May it tell |
dīcō /diːkoː/ dīcat /diːkat/ |
digo /ˈdiɡo/ diga /ˈdiɡa/ |
| To do, to make It does, it makes |
facere /fakere/ facit /fakit/ |
hacer /aˈθeɾ/ hace /ˈaθe/ |
I do, I make May it make |
faciō > *facō /fakoː/ faciat > *facat /fakat/ |
hago /ˈaɡo/ haga /ˈaɡa/ |
Diphthongization in open and closed syllables
The stressed short E and O of Latin undergo 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 Catalan and Portuguese — neighboring languages on the Iberian Peninsula — 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 most other Western Romance languages.| Spanish diphthongization in open and closed syllables | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Syllable shape | Latin | Spanish | French | Italian | Catalan | Portuguese |
| Open | petra, focus | piedra, fuego | pierre, feu | pietra, fuoco | pedra, foc | pedra, fogo |
| Closed | festa, porta | fiesta, puerta | fête, porte | festa, porta | festa, porta | festa, porta |
Learned words and consonant cluster simplification
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 XAlfonso X of Castile
Alfonso X was a Castilian monarch who ruled as the King of Castile, León and Galicia from 1252 until his death...
in the mid-to-late 13th century. Many of these words contained consonant cluster
Consonant cluster
In linguistics, a consonant cluster is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups and are consonant clusters in the word splits....
s which, in oral transmission, had been reduced to simpler consonant clusters or single consonant
Consonant
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are , pronounced with the lips; , pronounced with the front of the tongue; , pronounced with the back of the tongue; , pronounced in the throat; and ,...
s in previous centuries
Century
A century is one hundred consecutive years. Centuries are numbered ordinally in English and many other languages .-Start and end in the Gregorian Calendar:...
. 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-, -ct[i]-, -pt-, -gn-, -mn-, and -mpt-. Most of the simplified forms have since reverted to the learned forms or are now considered to be uneducated.
| Reduction of consonant clusters | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Consonant cluster Consonant cluster In linguistics, a consonant cluster is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups and are consonant clusters in the word splits.... |
Latin Latin Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and... form |
Learned form | Old Spanish form Old Spanish language Old Spanish, also known as Old Castilian or Mediaeval Spanish , is an early form of the Spanish language that was spoken on the Iberian Peninsula from the tenth century until roughly the beginning of the fifteenth century, before a consonantic readjustment gave rise to the evolution of modern... |
Modern Spanish form Spanish language Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the... |
| ct → t | effectum, perfectum, respectum, sectam | efecto, perfecto, respecto, secta | efeto, perfeto, respeto, seta | efecto, perfecto, respeto/respecto, secta |
| ct[i] → cc[i] → c[i] | affectiōnem, lectiōnem, perfectiōnem | affección, lección, perfección | afición, lición, perfeción | afición/afección, lección, perfección |
| pt → t | acceptāre, baptismum, conceptum |
aceptar, baptismo, concepto |
acetar, bautismo, conceto |
aceptar, bautismo, concepto |
| gn → n | dignum, magnificum, significāre | digno, magnífico, significar |
dino, manífico, sinificar |
digno, magnífico, significar |
| mn → n | columnam, solemnitātem | columna, solemnidad | coluna, solenidad | columna, solemnidad |
| mpt → nt | promptum, exemptum | prompto, exempto | pronto, exento | pronto, exento |
Most of these words have modern forms which more closely resemble Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
than Old Spanish
Old Spanish language
Old Spanish, also known as Old Castilian or Mediaeval Spanish , is an early form of the Spanish language that was spoken on the Iberian Peninsula from the tenth century until roughly the beginning of the fifteenth century, before a consonantic readjustment gave rise to the evolution of modern...
. In Old Spanish, the simplified forms were acceptable forms which were in coexistenece (and sometimes competition
Competition
Competition is a contest between individuals, groups, animals, etc. for territory, a niche, or a location of resources. It arises whenever two and only two strive for a goal which cannot be shared. Competition occurs naturally between living organisms which co-exist in the same environment. For...
) with the learned forms. The Spanish educational system, and later the Real Academia Española
Real Academia Española
The Royal Spanish Academy is the official royal institution responsible for regulating the Spanish language. It is based in Madrid, Spain, but is affiliated with national language academies in twenty-one other hispanophone nations through the Association of Spanish Language Academies...
, 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
Literature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
works in the Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
and Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
(sometimes intentionally as an archaism
Archaism
In language, an archaism is the use of a form of speech or writing that is no longer current. This can either be done deliberately or as part of a specific jargon or formula...
), but have since been relegated mostly to popular and uneducated speech. Occasionally, both forms exist in Modern Spanish with different nuances of meaning or in idiom
Idiom
Idiom is an expression, word, or phrase that has a figurative meaning that is comprehended in regard to a common use of that expression that is separate from the literal meaning or definition of the words of which it is made...
atic usage. afición is a 'fondness of' or 'taste for' while afección is 'illness.' Modern Spanish respeto is 'respect' while con respecto a means 'with regard to.'
Vocalization
The term "vocalization" refers to the change from a consonant to the vowel-like sound of a glide. Some syllable-final consonants, regardless of whether they were already syllable-final in Latin or brought into that position by syncope, became glidesSemivowel
In phonetics and phonology, a semivowel is a sound, such as English or , that is phonetically similar to a vowel sound but functions as the syllable boundary rather than as the nucleus of a syllable.-Classification:...
. Labials
Labial consonant
Labial consonants are consonants in which one or both lips are the active articulator. This precludes linguolabials, in which the tip of the tongue reaches for the posterior side of the upper lip and which are considered coronals...
(b, p) yielded the rounded
Roundedness
In phonetics, vowel roundedness refers to the amount of rounding in the lips during the articulation of a vowel. That is, it is vocalic labialization. When pronouncing a rounded vowel, the lips form a circular opening, while unrounded vowels are pronounced with the lips relaxed...
glide [w] (which was in turn absorbed by a preceding round vowel
Roundedness
In phonetics, vowel roundedness refers to the amount of rounding in the lips during the articulation of a vowel. That is, it is vocalic labialization. When pronouncing a rounded vowel, the lips form a circular opening, while unrounded vowels are pronounced with the lips relaxed...
), while the velar
Velar consonant
Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum)....
c ([k]) produced the palatal glide
Palatal approximant
The palatal approximant is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is '...
[j] (which could palatalize
Palatalization
In linguistics, palatalization , also palatization, may refer to two different processes by which a sound, usually a consonant, comes to be produced with the tongue in a position in the mouth near the palate....
a following [t] and be absorbed by the resulting palatal
Palatal consonant
Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate...
affricate
Affricate consonant
Affricates are consonants that begin as stops but release as a fricative rather than directly into the following vowel.- Samples :...
). (The forms debda, cobdo, and dubdar are documented in Old Spanish; but the hypothetical forms *oito and *noite had already given way to ocho and noche by the time Castilian became a written language.)
| Syllable-final vocalization | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Change | Latin Latin Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and... word |
Intermediate form | Spanish Spanish language Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the... word |
| p → w | baptistam | — | bautista |
| b → w | dēbitam | debda | deuda |
| b → w → Ø | cubitum, dubitāre | cobdo, dubdar | codo, dudar |
| ct → ch | octō, noctem | *oito, *noite | ocho, noche |
Merger of /b/ and /v/
Most Romance languages have maintained the distinction between a phoneme /b/ and a phoneme /v/ — a voicedVoice (phonetics)
Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds, with sounds described as either voiceless or voiced. The term, however, is used to refer to two separate concepts. Voicing can refer to the articulatory process in which the vocal cords vibrate...
bilabial
Bilabial consonant
In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:...
stop
Stop consonant
In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or an oral stop, is a stop consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be done with the tongue , lips , and &...
and a voiced
Voice (phonetics)
Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds, with sounds described as either voiceless or voiced. The term, however, is used to refer to two separate concepts. Voicing can refer to the articulatory process in which the vocal cords vibrate...
, usually labiodental
Labiodental consonant
In phonetics, labiodentals are consonants articulated with the lower lip and the upper teeth.-Labiodental consonant in IPA:The labiodental consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:...
fricative
Fricative consonant
Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or...
, respectively. Instances of the /b/ phoneme could be inherited directly from Latin /b/ (when not between vowels), or they could result from the voicing of Latin /p/ between vowels. The /v/ phoneme was generally derived either from Latin /b/ between vowels, or from the Latin phoneme corresponding to the letter ⟨v⟩ and thought to have been pronounced [w] in Classical Latin (but later "fortified" to fricative consonant
Fricative consonant
Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or...
status). In most regions, /v/ had labiodental
Labiodental consonant
In phonetics, labiodentals are consonants articulated with the lower lip and the upper teeth.-Labiodental consonant in IPA:The labiodental consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:...
articulation, but in Old Spanish (which still distinguished /b/ and /v/), /v/ was actually a bilabial
Bilabial consonant
In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:...
fricative
Fricative consonant
Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or...
[β]. (This pronunciation already existed in the 1st century BC, as shown by Julius Caesar
Julius Caesar
Gaius Julius Caesar was a Roman general and statesman and a distinguished writer of Latin prose. He played a critical role in the gradual transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire....
's famous pun "Beati Hispani quibus vivere bibere est", i.e. "Blessed (are the) Spaniards, for whom to live is to drink".) The similarity between the stop [b] and fricative [β] resulted in them merging entirely by the end of the Old Spanish period. In Modern Spanish orthography the letters ⟨b⟩ and ⟨v⟩ represent the same phoneme, usually transcribed as /b/ — which is generally realized as the fricative [β] except when utterance-initial or after a nasal consonant, in which cases it is realized as the stop [b]. The choice of orthographic ⟨b⟩ or ⟨v⟩ depends mainly on the etymology of the word, and attempts to mimic the Latin spelling of the word rather than continue the Old Spanish pronunciation. (Hence Old Spanish bever "to drink", bivir/vivir "to live" become beber, vivir, respectively, following the Latin spelling bibere, vīvere.)
Latin f- to Spanish h-
F was almost always initial in Latin words, and most of these words came to be written with initial ⟨h⟩ in Spanish, now for the most part silent. It is thought that the letter ⟨f⟩ originally represented the labiodentalLabiodental consonant
In phonetics, labiodentals are consonants articulated with the lower lip and the upper teeth.-Labiodental consonant in IPA:The labiodental consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:...
f in Latin, and that through a series of "softening" changes became, successively, bilabial
Bilabial consonant
In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a consonant articulated with both lips. The bilabial consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:...
ɸ and then glottal
Glottal consonant
Glottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider...
h (hence the modern spelling), before being lost altogether in most varieties. The first written record of the process dates from 863
863
Year 863 was a common year starting on Friday of the Julian calendar.- Europe :* Constantine I succeeds as king of Scotland ....
, when the Latin name Forticius was written as Ortiço, which might have been pronounced with initial /h/ but certainly not /f/. (The same name appears as Hortiço in a document dated 927
927
Year 927 was a common year starting on Monday of the Julian calendar.- Asia :* The Chu State is founded by Ma Yin....
.) The replacement of ⟨f⟩ by ⟨h⟩ in spelling is not frequent before the 16th century
16th century
As a means of recording the passage of time, the 16th century lasted from 1501 to 1600. It is regarded by historians as the century in which the rise of the West occurred....
; however, this is thought not to reflect preservation of /f/. Rather, ⟨f⟩ was consistently used to represent /h/ until the phoneme /f/ reappeared in the language (around the 16th century, as a result of borrowings from Classical Latin), at which point it was necessary to distinguish the two in spelling.
The change from /f/ to /h/ occurred historically in the Romance speech of Old Castile
Old Castile
Old Castile is a historic region of Spain, which included territory that later corresponded to the provinces of Santander , Burgos, Logroño , Soria, Segovia, Ávila, Valladolid, Palencia....
and Gascon, but nowhere else nearby. Since these are both areas which were historically bilingual with Basque
Basque language
Basque is the ancestral language of the Basque people, who inhabit the Basque Country, a region spanning an area in northeastern Spain and southwestern France. It is spoken by 25.7% of Basques in all territories...
, and Basque historically had /h/ but no /f/, it is often suggested that this change is due to Basque influence. However, this is contested by many linguists.
Most current instances of ⟨f⟩ are either learned words (i.e. words influenced by their written Latin form, such as forma, falso, fama) or words whose initial ⟨f⟩ in Old Spanish is followed by a non-vowel
Vowel
In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...
— ⟨r⟩, ⟨l⟩, or the glide
Semivowel
In phonetics and phonology, a semivowel is a sound, such as English or , that is phonetically similar to a vowel sound but functions as the syllable boundary rather than as the nucleus of a syllable.-Classification:...
element of a diphthong
Diphthong
A diphthong , also known as a gliding vowel, refers to two adjacent vowel sounds occurring within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: That is, the tongue moves during the pronunciation of the vowel...
— as in frente, flor, fiesta, fuerte.
| Examples of Latin 'f-' to Spanish 'h-' | ||
|---|---|---|
| Consonant Consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are , pronounced with the lips; , pronounced with the front of the tongue; , pronounced with the back of the tongue; , pronounced in the throat; and ,... s |
Latin Latin Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and... word |
Spanish Spanish language Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the... word |
| f- → h- | fabulāri, facere, faciendam, factum, faminem, farīnam, fēminam, fīcatum, fīlium, foliam, fōrmōsum, fūmum, fungum, furcam |
hablar, hacer, hacienda, hecho, hambre, harina, hembra, hígado, hijo, hoja, hermoso, humo, hongo, horca |
Modern development of the Old Spanish sibilants
During the 16th century, the three voiced sibilantSibilant consonant
A sibilant is a manner of articulation of fricative and affricate consonants, made by directing a stream of air with the tongue towards the sharp edge of the teeth, which are held close together. Examples of sibilants are the consonants at the beginning of the English words sip, zip, ship, chip,...
phonemes — /d͡z/ (voiced
Voice (phonetics)
Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds, with sounds described as either voiceless or voiced. The term, however, is used to refer to two separate concepts. Voicing can refer to the articulatory process in which the vocal cords vibrate...
dental affricate
Affricate consonant
Affricates are consonants that begin as stops but release as a fricative rather than directly into the following vowel.- Samples :...
), /z/ (voiced apicoalveolar fricative
Voiced alveolar fricative
The voiced alveolar fricatives are consonantal sounds. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents these sounds depends on whether a sibilant or non-sibilant fricative is being described....
), and /ʒ/ (voiced alveopalatal fricative
Voiced postalveolar fricative
The voiced palato-alveolar fricative or voiced domed postalveolar fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is Z. An alternative symbol used in some...
), as in Old Spanish
Old Spanish language
Old Spanish, also known as Old Castilian or Mediaeval Spanish , is an early form of the Spanish language that was spoken on the Iberian Peninsula from the tenth century until roughly the beginning of the fifteenth century, before a consonantic readjustment gave rise to the evolution of modern...
fazer, casa, and ojo respectively — lose their voicing and merge with their voiceless
Voiceless
In linguistics, voicelessness is the property of sounds being pronounced without the larynx vibrating. Phonologically, this is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word "phonation" implies voicing, and that voicelessness is the lack of...
counterparts, /t͡s/, /s/, and ʃ, as in caçar, passar, and baxar respectively. The character ⟨ç
Ç
is a Latin script letter, used in the Albanian, Azerbaijani, Ligurian, Tatar, Turkish, Turkmen, Kurdish and Zazaki alphabets. This letter also appears in Catalan, French, Friulian, Occitan and Portuguese as a variant of the letter “c”...
⟩, called ⟨c⟩ cedilla
Cedilla
A cedilla , also known as cedilha or cédille, is a hook added under certain letters as a diacritical mark to modify their pronunciation.-Origin:...
, originated in Old Spanish
Old Spanish language
Old Spanish, also known as Old Castilian or Mediaeval Spanish , is an early form of the Spanish language that was spoken on the Iberian Peninsula from the tenth century until roughly the beginning of the fifteenth century, before a consonantic readjustment gave rise to the evolution of modern...
, but is replaced by ⟨z⟩ in the modern language.
Additionally, the affricate
Affricate consonant
Affricates are consonants that begin as stops but release as a fricative rather than directly into the following vowel.- Samples :...
/t͡s/ loses its stop
Stop consonant
In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or an oral stop, is a stop consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be done with the tongue , lips , and &...
component, to become a (still sibilant, laminodental) fricative
Fricative consonant
Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or...
, /s̪/. As a result, the sound system then contained two sibilant fricative phonemes whose contrast depended entirely on a subtle distinction between their places of articulation
Place of articulation
In articulatory phonetics, the place of articulation of a consonant is the point of contact where an obstruction occurs in the vocal tract between an articulatory gesture, an active articulator , and a passive location...
: apicoalveolar
Apical consonant
An apical consonant is a phone produced by obstructing the air passage with the apex of the tongue . This contrasts with laminal consonants, which are produced by creating an obstruction with the blade of the tongue .This is not a very common distinction, and typically applied only to fricatives...
in the case of the /s/ inherited from Latin, and laminodental
Laminal consonant
A laminal consonant is a phone produced by obstructing the air passage with the blade of the tongue, which is the flat top front surface just behind the tip of the tongue on the top. This contrasts with apical consonants, which are produced by creating an obstruction with the tongue apex only...
in the case of the new fricative sibilant /s̪/ derived from the affricate /t͡s/. The “problem” of this reduced contrast is resolved in the dialects of northern and central Spain by paradigmatic dissimilation, and in those of Andalusia
Andalusia
Andalusia is the most populous and the second largest in area of the autonomous communities of Spain. The Andalusian autonomous community is officially recognised as a nationality of Spain. The territory is divided into eight provinces: Huelva, Seville, Cádiz, Córdoba, Málaga, Jaén, Granada and...
and the Americas by phonemic merger.
In the northern and central dialects, the laminodental
Laminal consonant
A laminal consonant is a phone produced by obstructing the air passage with the blade of the tongue, which is the flat top front surface just behind the tip of the tongue on the top. This contrasts with apical consonants, which are produced by creating an obstruction with the tongue apex only...
fricative is displaced forward to an interdental
Interdental consonant
Interdental consonants are produced by placing the blade of the tongue against the upper incisors...
place of articulation, losing its sibilancy
Sibilant consonant
A sibilant is a manner of articulation of fricative and affricate consonants, made by directing a stream of air with the tongue towards the sharp edge of the teeth, which are held close together. Examples of sibilants are the consonants at the beginning of the English words sip, zip, ship, chip,...
; the result is interdental
Interdental consonant
Interdental consonants are produced by placing the blade of the tongue against the upper incisors...
[θ]. This sound is represented in modern spelling by ⟨c⟩ before ⟨e⟩ or ⟨i⟩, and by ⟨z⟩ elsewhere. In the south of Spain
Andalusia
Andalusia is the most populous and the second largest in area of the autonomous communities of Spain. The Andalusian autonomous community is officially recognised as a nationality of Spain. The territory is divided into eight provinces: Huelva, Seville, Cádiz, Córdoba, Málaga, Jaén, Granada and...
and the Americas
Americas
The Americas, or America , are lands in the Western hemisphere, also known as the New World. In English, the plural form the Americas is often used to refer to the landmasses of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions, while the singular form America is primarily...
the /s/ and /s̪/ phonemes merge, with the new phoneme being pronounced either as [s] (“seseo
Ceceo
In Spanish dialectology, the terms distinción, seseo and ceceo are used to describe the opposition between dialects that distinguish the phonemes and , and those that exhibit merger of the two sounds into either or .Dialects that distinguish the two sounds, and thus pronounce the words casa...
” — in the Americas and parts of Andalusia) or as [θ] (“ceceo
Ceceo
In Spanish dialectology, the terms distinción, seseo and ceceo are used to describe the opposition between dialects that distinguish the phonemes and , and those that exhibit merger of the two sounds into either or .Dialects that distinguish the two sounds, and thus pronounce the words casa...
” — in other parts of Andalusia). In general, coastal regions of Andalusia preferred [θ], while more inland regions preferred [s] (see map at ceceo
Ceceo
In Spanish dialectology, the terms distinción, seseo and ceceo are used to describe the opposition between dialects that distinguish the phonemes and , and those that exhibit merger of the two sounds into either or .Dialects that distinguish the two sounds, and thus pronounce the words casa...
). During the colonization of the Americas most of the people who were destined to settle the new colonies where from the south of Spain, as a result, language historians believe, the entire Spanish-speaking New World
New World
The New World is one of the names used for the Western Hemisphere, specifically America and sometimes Oceania . The term originated in the late 15th century, when America had been recently discovered by European explorers, expanding the geographical horizon of the people of the European middle...
today speaks a language variety derived largely from the language of Andalusia.
Meanwhile the alveopalatal fricative ʃ — the result of the merger of voiceless /ʃ/ (spelled ⟨x⟩ in Old Spanish) with voiced /ʒ/ (spelled with ⟨j⟩ in some words, and in others with ⟨g⟩ before ⟨e⟩ or ⟨i⟩) — was in all dialects displaced rearward, to become (depending on geographical variety) velar [x], uvular [χ] (in parts of Spain), or glottal [h] (in Andalusia and parts of the Americas, especially the Caribbean region
Caribbean
The Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...
). This sound is represented in the modern orthography by ⟨j⟩, or by ⟨g⟩ before ⟨e⟩ or ⟨i⟩.
Yeísmo
Documents from as early as the 15th century show occasional evidence of sporadic confusion between the phoneme /ʝ/ (generally spelled ⟨y⟩) and the palatal lateral /ʎ/ (spelled ⟨ll⟩). Although the distinction is maintained in spelling, in most dialects of Modern Spanish, the two have merged into the same, non-lateral palatal sound. Thus, for example, most Spanish speakers have the same pronunciation for haya (from the verb haber) as for halla (from hallar). This phonemic merger is called yeísmoYeísmo
Yeísmo is a distinctive feature of many dialects of the Spanish language, which consists of the loss of the traditional palatal lateral approximant phoneme and its merger into the phoneme , usually realized as a palatal fricative or affricate. In other words, ‹ll› and ‹y› represent the same sound...
, based on one name for the letter ⟨y⟩. For a long time, this was known as a specifically Andalusia
Andalusia
Andalusia is the most populous and the second largest in area of the autonomous communities of Spain. The Andalusian autonomous community is officially recognised as a nationality of Spain. The territory is divided into eight provinces: Huelva, Seville, Cádiz, Córdoba, Málaga, Jaén, Granada and...
n trait, and only seems to have reached Madrid
Madrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...
and other cities of central and northern Spain in the last 100 years or so. Since most settlers of Latin America came from Andalusia, most Latin American regions have yeísmo, although there are pockets where the sounds are still distinguished.
A related trait which has also been documented sporadically for several hundred years is rehilamiento (literally "whizzing"), the pronunciation of /ʝ/ as a sibilant fricative [ʒ] or even an affricate [dʒ]. The current pronunciation varies greatly depending on the geographical dialect
Spanish dialects and varieties
Spanish dialects and varieties are the regional variants of the Spanish language, some of which are quite divergent from one another, especially in pronunciation and vocabulary, and less so in grammar....
and sociolect
Sociolect
In sociolinguistics, a sociolect or social dialect is a variety of language associated with a social group such as a socioeconomic class, an ethnic group, an age group, etc....
(with [dʒ], especially, stigmatized except at the beginning of a word). Rioplatense Spanish
Rioplatense Spanish
Rioplatense Spanish or River Plate Spanish is a dialectal variant of the Spanish language spoken mainly in the areas in and around the Río de la Plata basin of Argentina and Uruguay, and also in Rio Grande do Sul, although features of the dialect are shared with the varieties of Spanish spoken...
(of Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
and Paraguay
Paraguay
Paraguay , officially the Republic of Paraguay , is a landlocked country in South America. It is bordered by Argentina to the south and southwest, Brazil to the east and northeast, and Bolivia to the northwest. Paraguay lies on both banks of the Paraguay River, which runs through the center of the...
) is particularly known for the pronunciation [ʒ] of both /ʝ/ and original /ʎ/. Within the last 50 years or so, however, the unvoiced pronunciation [ʃ] has become dominant in the Argentine capital of Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
, and is spreading outward due to the prestige associated with the capital city.
See also
- Cantar de Mio CidCantar de Mio CidEl Cantar de Myo Çid , also known in English as The Lay of the Cid and The Poem of the Cid is the oldest preserved Spanish epic poem...
- Iberian languageIberian languageThe Iberian language was the language of a people identified by Greek and Roman sources who lived in the eastern and southeastern regions of the Iberian peninsula. The ancient Iberians can be identified as a rather nebulous local culture between the 7th and 1st century BC...
- Iberian Romance languagesIberian Romance languagesThe Iberian Romance languages or Ibero-Romance languages are the Romance languages that developed on the Iberian Peninsula, an area consisting primarily of Spain, Portugal, and Andorra....
- Influences on the Spanish languageInfluences on the Spanish languageThe Spanish language has a long history of borrowing words, expressions and subtler features of other languages it has come in contact with.Spanish developed from Vulgar Latin, with influence from Celtiberian , Basque and Arabic, and Visigothic in the north of the Iberian Peninsula.-Formative...
- List of Spanish words of Indigenous American Indian origin
- List of Spanish words of Philippine origin
- List of English words of Spanish origin
- Romance languagesRomance languagesThe Romance languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family, more precisely of the Italic languages subfamily, comprising all the languages that descend from Vulgar Latin, the language of ancient Rome...
- Spanish dialects and varietiesSpanish dialects and varietiesSpanish dialects and varieties are the regional variants of the Spanish language, some of which are quite divergent from one another, especially in pronunciation and vocabulary, and less so in grammar....
- Spanish phonologySpanish phonologyThis article is about the phonology and phonetics of the Spanish language. Unless otherwise noted, statements refer to Castilian Spanish, the standard dialect used in Spain on radio and television. For historical development of the sound system see History of Spanish...
- Old Spanish languageOld Spanish languageOld Spanish, also known as Old Castilian or Mediaeval Spanish , is an early form of the Spanish language that was spoken on the Iberian Peninsula from the tenth century until roughly the beginning of the fifteenth century, before a consonantic readjustment gave rise to the evolution of modern...
- Vulgar LatinVulgar LatinVulgar Latin is any of the nonstandard forms of Latin from which the Romance languages developed. Because of its nonstandard nature, it had no official orthography. All written works used Classical Latin, with very few exceptions...
- Rafael LapesaRafael LapesaRafael Lapesa Melgar was a Spanish philologist, a historian of language and of Spanish literature.-Biography:Born in Valencia, Spain, February 8, 1908, his family moved to Madrid when he was eight. By 1930 he had earned his professorship for his work on the medieval dialect of western Asturias...
External links
- An explanation of the development of Medieval Spanish sibilants in Castile and Andalusia.
- A recording of the sibilants, as they would have been pronounced in medieval Spanish.
- A History of the Spanish language (sample from the second edition, 2002), by Ralph Penny
- Linguistic Time Machine Check the historic evolution of Latin words to modern Spanish.