Talk:Linguistic history of Spanish

This is a work in progress. The History of Spanish is almost entirely about the cultural (i.e. non-linguistic) history of the Spanish language and that is why this page is being created.--Hraefen 23:58, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
 * If anyone wants to add info, feel fee, but please cite your source and add it to the reference list.--Hraefen 00:00, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
 * If any one section of this page becomes too long I may give it its own page. Spanish words from Arabic might be in need of this fairly soon.--Hraefen 00:55, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Explanation of etymology inclusion standards

 * This info was originally in the article, but I think it belongs here instead. The inclusion standards are too detailed to be of interest to most readers.--Hraefen 21:05, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
 * These words are grouped by the source language, even though many of them entered Spanish from an intermediary (example: albergue is ultimately from Germanic, but entered Spanish by way of Old Provencal). Personal names, names of ancient tribes, names of languages, and words denoting a person's ethnic group or nationality are included.  Words not included are place names, names of mountains, rivers, cities, etc. as the list would become too expansive and there are other lists which can cover these lexical items.  Many of these words have related forms (estampar and estampada) which are not included here unless, for various reasons, their relationship to each other is not obvious.  Many of these words also contain Latinate affixes (example: in "alcantarilla," -illa is a dimunutive suffix) and components but have at least one component from another language (example: béisbol).  Latin contained many words of Ancient Greek by the the time the Romans became involved in Iberia and those words are not included here except when 1. they were introduced to Spanish through a language other than Latin (example: albaricoque is from Ancient Greek but enter Spansih through Arabic) or 2. the word is attested in Greek, but is thought to stem from some other language (example: celta).  Words which derived from attested Latin words are only included when 1. The Latin word is known to derive from another language except Ancient Greek (example: barca) 2. The Latin word is thought to have dervied from another language (example: batir).  The Greek and Latin words will be grouped under "uncertain derivation."   Some of the words grouped under "uncertain derivation" are documented, but are examples of onomatopoeic creations which can't be definitively attributed to a particular region or timeframe.--Hraefen

Further explanation/ lack of definitions for spanish words

 * Once the lists of Spanish words of each individual language are "complete" (i.e. after I'm done going through the "Breve diccionario") most if not all of the languages will have their own page, similar to the way in which the English etymology pages currently work. Definitions and detailed etymologies can then be given for each word.  Until then, the Spanish words will remain undefined.--Hraefen 19:00, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

A note about alphabetical order
Since this is an English encyclopedia, English rules of alphabetizing will apply rather than Spanish on this page as well as all lists stemming from this article. Examples: words beginning with ch- will come before ci-. Also, letters with diacritics (including stress symbols) will not be treated as separate letters as they are in Spanish, but a word with a letter with a diacriric will always FOLLOW the otherwise identical word without a diacritic. (example: canon will precede cañon).--Hraefen 19:27, 7 December 2005 (UTC)


 * 1. Modern Spanish language rules allow for ch- after ci- and ll- after lk- (e. g. )
 * 2. Spanish does not treat accented letters as different i.e. á and a is the same letter, with or without a diacritic. Same thing wrt diéresis (umlaut) agudo < agüero < aguerrido
 * 3. On the other hand, ~ in ñ is not a diacritic. Ñ is different from N and goes always after it in lexicographical order. There are plenty of words between canon and cañón.

User:Ejrrjs says What? 21:04, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Everything you say is true, but the point of including this paragraph is to point out that English rules of alphabetization will be followed because it's an English encyclopedia. I just knew that sooner or later some Spanish major would try to realphabetize things based on Spanish customs and then everyone would be confused.  Put simply, follow English rules and anything with any mark over it comes after that same letter without a mark i.e. cañón after canon.--Hraefen 22:02, 16 December 2005 (UTC)


 * IMO, as an argentine that has gone to school, "ñ" is a differen letter than "n", and it is NOT a modification, like in portugese "ã" and "a". I'm not going to waste time because you don't seem much eager to change your point of view so looking for sources is useless. Argentino 20:37, 25 April 2006 (UTC)


 * In spanish, Ñ is a different letter and comes after N. As a Spanish language related article, it should follow that ordering. For isntance, List of Slovenian language poets doesn't mix lastnames that start with C with those that start with Č, S with Š, nor Z with Ž. Being one right after prevents any confusion. Mariano (t/c) 08:05, 26 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Marianocecowski & Argentino would both be right if this was an article written in Spanish written for a Spanish audience. But it is not.  It is an article written in English in an English encyclopedia that deals with the etymology of the Spanish language, a subject which can difficult to access without knowledge of Spanish.  I want to make it as easy as possible for an Engliosh speaker to do that  Go copy these pages into the Spanish Wikipedia and order the words in the traditional way if you so wish.--Hraefen 17:19, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Mmm, I still believe it should be sorted Spanishly. As I said before, the fact that they are consecutive avoid any confusion, and lists in other languages followin the language's sorting of latin letters. Mariano (t/c) 07:34, 28 April 2006 (UTC)


 * "the fact that they are consecutive" makes perfect sense to someone familiar with Spanish, but not necessarily to an English speaker reading an English article in an English encyclopedia. How many languages should a person need to be familiar with to easily navigate an encyclopedia in their native language?  I think one. --Hraefen 15:01, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Order of sections
The sections are not currently in the order in which they ultimately will be.--Hraefen 00:05, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Initial F-
I don't have a source for this right now... Initial Latin /f/ changed to /h/ and then to zero, but not before /u/ (often [w]), as in fuego (Latin focus I think, with /o/ diphthongized to /ue/ as usual). Latin /f/ was also bilabial, not labiodental (therefore actually [&phi;], not [f]). The closest thing I can remember is the allophonic alternation in Japanese: Old Jap. /p/ &rarr; /h/, pronounced [ç] before /i/ and /j/, [&phi;] before /u/, and /h/ elsewhere. In both cases the labial element seems to preserve the labial feature in the allophonic realization of /h/. Just my 2 cents. --Pablo D. Flores (Talk) 18:12, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your 2 cents, but don't worry about finding a source for that as I already have one. I'm still working out a way of talking about f > h as a general rule while explaining the exceptions (such as fuego) in a way that flows well and is readable to people without a background in linguistics.  While most scholars agree that Latin f was bilabial, some think it was labiodental and I included both theories for the sake of balance and NPOV.  Thanks for your input, you obviously know a thing or three about Spanish etymology and I look forward to having more input.  I will be expanding this page off and on for a long time, but right now it's more "off" because I'm concentrating on the Spanish etymology pages.  Salere iubeo, amicus.--Hraefen 19:20, 17 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Mmmm, what about Humo (Fume)?? ... Mariano (t/c) 08:08, 26 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes, that is an accurate example, but I think that the list is complete enough. If were to be "complete," this list alone would be as long as this whole page.--Hraefen 17:19, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Hi! About the case, I also suggest reading the following article (section) form the classical Latin version of Wikipedia: H venit a littera F (H which comes from the letter F). The article explains that some classical latin words beginning with H (HOSTIA, HOSTIS) had an initial F in their oldest form. From this point, supposed Basque substrate can be also questionated. —Zoltan

Arabic?
During the Muslim rule in Spain, the majority of the population was Muslim and spoke Arabic. So does that legacy last today? Other than Latin, is Arabic the largest contributor to Spanish? Stallions2010 20:42, 7 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm not extremely familiar with the history of Spain, but I do know that Arabic affected Spanish vocabulary and little else. I haven't read that any other area of language (phonology, syntax, etc.) was affected, but the List of Spanish words of Arabic origin contains the most words of any such Spanish list (I think...I haven't made an exact count) and it is rivaled in length only by the List of Spanish words of Germanic origin and the List of Spanish words of Indigenous American Indian origin.  Part of the reason (the article will include more info about this eventually) that Arabic had so little effect on other areas of the language is due to the fact that the area of Castile was largely outside of the sphere of influence of the Moors as compared to the areas of southern and eastern Spain.  Also, if you compare the types of borrowed words from each language, you'll notice a variety of words (adjectives, verbs and nouns) in Germanic, but Arabic borrowed words are almost all nouns.  This type of borrowing (as from Arabic) usually indicates that cultural contact was much more minimal.--Whew...my fingers are tired.--Hraefen 21:46, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Hi everyone. If anyone knows anything on arabic influence on Spanish I wouldnt mind some help with the article List of Spanish words of Arabic origin. So far I have some 1500 words and I am having trouble reaching the 3000-4000 word estimates I have seen in various sources. All the lists I have found on the internet are incomplete and I am now reduced to thinking of words which sound arabic and checking their etymologies. Actually I have found quite a few this way. Anyways if anyone has a more complete list somewhere it would be useful to finish the article.

Hraefen, (unfortunately for me, since I embarked on this task) Arabic is the strongest influence on the Spanish language after Latin, which is the basis of the language. Germanic influence is much weaker. It is true that a majority of words are nouns but there are also many adjectives, adverbs and verbs which are of arabic origin.

Verbs out of the top of my head: Alquilar (to rent), acicalar (to comb one's hair), encaramar (to climb) , ahorrar (to save) ,achacar (to blame) etc... all very commonly used verbs. --Guzman ramirez 21:17, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
 * The point of my paragraph above (7 January 2006) was not to downplay the Arabic influence on Spanish, but since it was the only language that I was addressing at the time, you seem to have inferred that that was my intent. To be clear:  Spanish, for all its layers of borrowings, is still a very identifiably Latinate language.  To my knowledge, it has not borrowed any suffixes or prefixes from any language (although the surname suffix -ez was possibly borrowed from Germanic).  We can argue over what type of semantic/noun borrowing is more of an "important" influence, (there's no clear answer that doesn't involve some kind of personal opinion), but it's all essentially just semantic i.e. syntax was not affected by any other language (not conclusively anyway) and no phonological changes have been conclusively attributed to any other language (but read about the possible Celtic influence on voicing and the possible Basque influence on the f > h phenomenon).  Now, I believe that borrowing adjectives and verbs (verbs that don't come from an already-borrowed noun) indicates a stronger influence than borrowing nouns, many of which are just names for things that the "Spaniards" (and Europe, for that matter) had never seen before.  There are verbs and adjectives that come from Arabic, but they account for a very small part of the corpus of borrowed Arabic words.  Overall, the Spaniards borrowed words for things from Arabic, not words for ideas, actions, concepts etc.  As far as growing your list, do it the hard way like I did: read the dictionary page by page.  It's boring, but you seemed to have exhausted the other options.  Good luck.--Hraefen 16:27, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your input Hraefen. I did not infer anything at all:-) Just exchanging ideas... I pretty much agree with you on everything you said. Just a few points: A very noticeable suffix in Spanish borrowed from Arabic is the Suffix -í meaning "from". e.g. in Arabic Al Zarqawi (from Zarqa),Yemeni (from Yemen), Masri (from Masr or Egypt). This exists in Spanish as well in words such as Marbellí (from Marbella), Ceutí (from Ceuta) or Baladí, Jabalí etc... Phonetically, the lack of a difference between the letter b and the letter v is unique among latin languages. In Spanish (as in Arabic) the letter v is not pronounced. The frequency of the "Jota" letter (Kha in arabic) can also be the result of Arabic influence (it does not exist in any other Latin language). I would also like to point out that the Arabic language is very weak in verbs. Also, as all semitic languages, it is based on root letters. In this sense the difference between nouns, verbs and adjectives is very diffuse. --Guzman ramirez 19:41, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

ellision of T
From the article:
 * While unvoiced intervocalic consonants were often voiced, many voiced intervocalic consonants were simply dropped from words altogether through a process called elision. This process usually affected voiced intervocalic consonants (b, d and g) it also sometimes affected unvoiced intervocalic consonants'' (see mascar < masticare below).

Would it not make sense if these "unvoiced" Latin consonants were first voiced before ellided? For example, Andrés Bello attests to an "archaic" vosotros conjugation with a D where Latin had a T:
 * Latin: vos amatis, stabatis
 * Attested by Bello: vosotros amades, estábades
 * Modern Spanish: vosotros amáis, estábais

–Andyluciano 17:38, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Yes, I think that process did happen. The problem is finding written sources to back it up.  If you have a credible source, please add it in the article.  Just be careful not to claim that it happened to a particular word (mascar < masticare) by extrapolation from a extant case (amatis > amades).  The vocalization of the t to d (and later elision, of course) in masticare is unlikely due to the s (unvoiced... still retained as s', not z) directly preceding it.--Hraefen Talk 18:11, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Proposed merger into History of the Spanish language
For discussion of the merge, please see Talk:History of the Spanish language so that the discussion can take place on one page rather than two.--Hraefen Talk 16:30, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Arabic influence on Spanish language
This section needs to be improved. See corresponding article :Arabic influence on Spanish language--Guzman ramirez 13:42, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
 * So do it. Lead with the link to :Arabic influence on Spanish language and then write up a one to two paragraph summary of info found there and that should suffice.--Hraefen Talk 15:19, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Actually, I would recommend ditching (or at the very least trimming) the al- list in favor of a few paragraphs about the types of words/names that were borrowed. For anyone actullay interested in the lists, they know where to find it. I think the info on this page should ideally be more of an overview with generalized statements and info rather than word lists.--Hraefen Talk 16:45, 15 November 2006 (UTC)