Talk:Influences on the Spanish language

Expansion request
The sections on modern and recent borrowings are stubs, and marked as such. I started the article mostly to give a background about the formative influences and the early borrowings from Native American languages, but the article would be awfully lacking if it didn't include the myriad borrowings from French, and later from English, especially the recent ones.

The idea is NOT having a list of borrowings, repeat, NOT A LIST, but an overview with some examples, focused on general influences (for example, "English has loaned many words pertaining to the field of computers"). Opinions of the RAE should be tucked in there (somewhere), as well as Spanglish (focused on the Span- part, not the -glish part).

--Pablo D. Flores 12:39, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

You should also link more prominently from Spanish language --MarSch 12:45, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Modern influence
I found a couple of words and checked them with the RAE, please extend the list.


 * French:
 * casete (cassette), boîte, Burdel (fr:bordel, ca:bordell)


 * Italian:
 * Bocha (boccia)


 * English:
 * Fútbol (football), voleibol (voleyball), básquet (basketball), escáner

Influences from Native American languages
I am not 100% sure, but I believe that the repetition of syllables for adding degrees of magnitude is derived from Nahuatl grammar. Example; in Nahuatl, "Choca" means to cry, Chochoca means to cry profusely. "Chiquito" in spanish means "Smal", but "Chiquitito" means very small, while "Chiquititito" means even smaller still. Can someone confirm this and include? Pozole 15:34, 22 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Man, I have no idea what chochoca means, but I can tell you that chiquitito has nothing to do with Nahuatl, and that the concatenation of augmentatives and diminutives are just that. Mariano (t/c) 15:40, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

5,000 Arabic words?

 * Please point it out if I missed it while perusing the sources provided, but what is the source for saying there are 5,000 Spanish words of Arabic origin? Every source I've read has never been this high, and the List of Spanish words of Arabic origin is certainly much lower.  Many of the words listed at the about.com source are not even ultimatly from Arabic (paraiso comes to mind).--Hraefen 16:18, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

It is missing thw greek influence
Spanish has 10% words from greek, and greek is not even mentioned here. It is needed to talk about the greek influence. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.144.130.21 (talk) 05:40, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Deleted section which says that less than 100 word of arabic origin are frequently used today
This statement is blatantly untrue as well as poorly sourced... (wiktionary most commonly dubbed words on movies?) Its a waste of my time for me to disprove this as a native spanish speaker. But, to avoid further argument, here is a list of ONLY very frequently used words in Spanish of Arabic origin which I would expect a second-language speaker with a reasonable command of the languahe to know and hear regularly:

aceite, aceituna, acelga, acicalar, achacar, ademán, adoquín, aduana, afán, ahorrar, ajedrez, alacrán, alardear, albahaca, albañil, albaricoque, albóndiga, albornoz, alboroto, alcachofa, alcaide, alcalde, alcantarilla, alcaparra, alcatraz, alcoba, alcohol, aldea, alféizar, alfil, alfombra, algodón, alhaja, alicate, almacén, almanaque, almizcle, almohada, almuerzo, alpargata, alquilar/alquiler, alquitrán, alubia, argolla, arrabal, arrecife, arroz, asesino, ataúd, atún, auge, avería, azabache, azafata, azafrán, azar, azote, azotea, azucar, azul, azulejo, babucha, balde, badén, barrio, bata, bazar, bellota, berenjena, bujía, café, calabaza, caravana, carcajada, carmesí, cazurro, cenit, cerbatana, cero, chaleco,chisme, dado, daga, droga, enchufar, escaquearse, espinaca, fanfarrón, fideo, fulano, gandul, gañan, garra, gazpacho, hasta, hazaña, he, holgazán, jaqueca, jarabe, jazmín, jinete, jirafa, joroba, laca, lima, limón, loco, macabro, mamarracho, marfil, marrano, máscara, matarife, matraca, mazapán, mazmorra, mazorca, mengano, mequetrefe, mezquino, naipe, naranja, nenúfar, noria, nuca, ojalá, olé, papagayo, rehén, rincón, sandía, taza, toronja, zanahoria, zarandear, zumo.

Of course, there are many other words which are used frequently, just a selection, well over 100!.

G —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.150.179.160 (talk) 00:57, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Article needs revamp
Mention of Umbrian influence in the intro section??? No mention of basque lexical influence (izquierda for example?), no mention of Greek or explanation of Latin basis of language, illogical listing order (should be either based on importance or chronological...

Lots of work needed here by someone who knows about the topic.... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.122.231.112 (talk) 17:54, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

I agree about the need for revamp. I came to the page looking for info on the Basque influence on Spanish. There's a good-sized section on this which basically says that the attribution of the f to h transformation to the Basque substrate is unfounded, but no other effects of the Basque substrate are mentioned and the information has no source cited. (And, Geez, it's been over two years!)Lisapaloma (talk) 23:06, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Pistola from German Pistole.
I think, the word Pistole in German came from Slavic languages. See for example in article Deutsche Sprache (Einflüsse anderer Sprachen auf die deutsche Sprache): Auch aus den slawischen Sprachen (beispielsweise Grenze, Gurke, Pistole).... Perhaps, we should specify a primary origin? Alexander Hoffmann (talk) 02:35, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Broken English
I don't like to embarrass an individual, but an editor known only as "79.159.238.252" has recently been making this article (and others) incomprehensible by inserting language that can only be called "broken English". I think "79" means well, but his/her English isn't up to the job of editing in English. For example, words have come into Spanish "since" Mexico and "since" the Philippines ("since" = Sp. "desde" = "from"). See the "View History" of Influences on the Spanish language and History of Spanish for many more examples. Can we—those of us who care about these articles—together ask "79" to get some help with his/her English, or to go to the Wikipedia in his/her native language and edit there? Kotabatubara (talk) 15:09, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, User:PaleCloudedWhite made an insightful observation in an edit summary on Conquistador that the person making these edits appears to be yet another sockpuppet of blocked User:Sonia Murillo Perales. Please see the investigation archive. There is a distinctive style to these edits, this IP (like the previous ones) is extremely prolific with unsourced additions, so poorly written that many ludicrous statements have resulted, and the IP comes from the same city as the previous sockpuppets. I'm convinced that PCW is correct, and will revert to the last good version of this page before that person started working on it. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 00:38, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I support Sminthopsis84's reversion, and likewise am convinced this IP editor is an anonymous sockpuppet of Sonia Murillo Perales, who has been blocked indefinitely. If correct, that in itself is sufficient reason to remove all their edits, but even without such policy, long experience with this editor has taught that it just isn't worth taking time to analyse, copyedit and correct the poor English of their edits, as not only will the editor most likely just revert it all back to the nonsensical 'broken English' version (don't ask why, it's a mystery), but a lot of what they add is either uncited and therefore unverifiable, or - worse - based on a misreading of sources, so that the information is actually factually incorrect, and anyone trying to copyedit and assimilate the additions of this editor, is possibly just making many falsehoods more legible. If they persist in trying to edit articles in this fashion, consider re-opening the sockpuppet investigation. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 01:41, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, in chasing this sort of problem, one of my favourite edit summaries has become "not so" (for example, a page that I worked on recently is Endlicheria).
 * The problem from this one set of sock-puppets is clearly bigger than we have been able to deal with so far, and more contributors would be very welcome. For example, there is an interesting discussion on Talk:Almogavars about what "dirt people" could possibly mean that reveals yet another IP that geolocates to the same city, 95.120.186.189, added a big block of text on 23:01, 29 December 2011 that includes the "dirt people" statement that has since taken up the time of several thoughtful editors.
 * The current IP has been inactive for almost a day, but even if the person has moved on to another address, I wonder if reopening the sockpuppet investigation may be a necessary component of speedily justifying the mass removal of this time-wasting material. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 16:25, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Looking at the discussion at Talk:Almogavars makes me think that, yes, a reopening of the sockpuppet investigation would probably be a good idea for any IP addresses from Zaragoza that are currently actively editing. It's alarming to read at that discussion that editors have found what myself and other plant-orientated editors have found with edits by this editor on articles about the Lauraceae family: copyvio issues, probable machine translations and hence poor quality English, additions of text that contradict the cited sources etc. It's a problem that spans several areas of the wiki and, if possible, needs addressing in a more systematic way than has been done previously, seeing as the problem editor keeps on popping up like a phoenix. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 20:59, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
 * That IP is blocked, which doesn't do very much good in the short term because the perpetrator can move to another address. Vigilance for more IPs with this behaviour could help in the long term to build a case for more drastic action, however. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 23:27, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Merger?
On another topic that a mention in the above discussion brought to my mind, couldn't this page be usefully merged with History of Spanish? Sminthopsis84 (talk) 22:02, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
 * More discussion is at Talk:History of Spanish. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 23:27, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Copyright problem removed
Prior content in this article duplicated one or more previously published sources. The material was copied from: http://www.finaldestination.herobo.com/?media=History_of_Spanish. Copied or closely paraphrased material has been rewritten or removed and must not be restored, unless it is duly released under a compatible license. (For more information, please see "using copyrighted works from others" if you are not the copyright holder of this material, or "donating copyrighted materials" if you are.) For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or published material; such additions will be deleted. Contributors may use copyrighted publications as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences or phrases. Accordingly, the material may be rewritten, but only if it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously, and persistent violators will be blocked from editing. While we appreciate contributions, we must require all contributors to understand and comply with these policies. Thank you. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 20:16, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

"Hermano/a"
The above Spanish words are definitely from the German, with only a slight change of Romaniztaion. They mean "Brother (o)", and "Sister (a)" They need to be included in the section of Germanic influences. Changarose46ers (talk) 18:34, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
 * A statement like this needs to be supported by reference to an authoritative source, and I doubt you will find a source more authoritative than the Dictionary of the Spanish Royal Academy or the etymological dictionaries of Joan Corominas, all of which derive "hermano" from the Latin source "[frater] germanus". "Germanus", although it is cognate with the English word "German", is originally a Latin word, not a German word. Kotabatubara (talk) 18:58, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Influence of Gothic
Just to say that according to "Nueva Enciclopedia Autodidáctica Quillet, 15th Edition, Editorial Cumbre S.A., Mexico, 1979, Volume I, Page 14", 60% of Spanish vocabulary come from Latin, 10% from Greek, 10% from Gothic, 10% from Oriental and Arabic and 10% from other languages. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.57.124.107 (talk) 20:35, 17 September 2013 (UTC)
 * 10% from Gothic seems like an awful lot. Is it really that much? Also, the vocabulary may be like that but not all words are used as much, so the real percentage of words used by people is much different. I think Latin may account for well over 90% of all words used, because it includes very frequently used words. CodeCat (talk) 20:51, 17 September 2013 (UTC)
 * I think that the 10% from Gothic is enough to dismiss the source altogether. Jotamar (talk) 16:39, 23 September 2013 (UTC)