Talk:Old Spanish

Untitled
That is understandable - some of the grammar, for instance, resembles French (i.e., the usage of "ser" similar to "être" in French vis-à-vis the similarity between the conjugation of the past tenses in Old Spanish and the passé composé in Modern Standard French), which is my second language. --64.222.62.131 (talk) 16:53, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Who Knows...A Suggestion?
I noticed a little problem between the Latin and Spanish. The translations are not exactly literal, maybe they're not meant to be, but I thought I'd point it out...When it says:

et, non, nos, hic e, et; non, no; nós; í y, e; no; nosotros; ahí

I'm not sure that's quite correct. "Et" means "y," which is right, and "non" means "no," while "nos" means "nosotros/as." But "hic" actually means "esto," not "alli." "Alli" means "there" in Spanish. But "hic" means "this" in English and Spanish. The Spanish equivalent is "esto" in the masculine--remember "hic, haec, hoc..." (singular). But I think you are right that "hic" can point out "alli" as in Spanish, but I think its main usage is as "esto/a," this...or this man, woman, thing, etc.

Also:

stabat; habui, habebat; facere, fecisti estava; ove, avié; far/fer/fazer, fezist(e)/fizist(e) estaba; hube, había; hacer, hiciste

...is not quite right either. "Stabat" means "was standing" or "was remaining" in English and "estava parado/a" in Spanish, not just "estava." "Habui" means "I had" which is more like "tenia" than "habia" in Spanish.

They're just small things I noticed. Take them with as much salt as you wish. You know more than I do!

I want to know more about the transition between Latin, Old Spanish, and Spanish, so feel free to expand the article. It's a little short and unelaborated as it stands (though I like it).

70.72.45.131 (talk) 00:45, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

Fondo and hondo
The word hondo in modern Spanish means deep. Fondo most commonly means bottom. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.170.198.158 (talk) 02:54, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Ok, fixed. --Jotamar (talk) 16:11, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

Status of /d, g/, status of b/v
It is claimed that /b/ and /v/ remained distinct phonemes in the medieval period. Is there any orthographic evidence as to when they merged, presuming that this change was generalized during the later medieval period? Most importantly, considering that this distinction was maintained, is there anything on when fricative/approximate intervocalic allophones of /d, g/ developed? This is universal in all dialects, so we'd suppose this had occurred by the Early Modern period.

Iotacist (talk) 00:09, 30 January 2018 (UTC)Iotacist


 * The questions you ask cannot be answered without a thorough review of the main works about the History of Spanish. My impression is that there are no clear answers, and probably different theories. --Jotamar (talk) 22:38, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Now I remember that Spanish loanwords in Amerindian languages do reflect a b/v distinction, therefore the 2 sounds didn't merge before the 16th century. --Jotamar (talk) 23:05, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Phonemes /kʷ, gʷ/ in Old Spanish?
I don't recall reading anywhere that Old Spanish had the phonemes /kʷ/ or /gʷ/. Can anyone comment? --Jotamar (talk) 23:15, 21 October 2021 (UTC)--Jotamar (talk) 23:15, 21 October 2021 (UTC)


 * Probably about as valid or invalid as modern Spanish having those, or Classical Latin. Should probably just put them in parentheses. Nicodene (talk) 05:40, 10 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Portuguese is also argued to have /kʷ/ and /gʷ/, and this is based on the fact that other consonant+glide+vowel sequences alternate with consonant+vowel+vowel sequences with hiatus, whereas, say, [kwa] never alternates with [ku.a]. The same may be true of Classical Latin? For example, 'suavis' has been attested both with [wa] and [u.a], and the Catalan (suar), Portuguese (suave) and Italian (soave) forms maintain a hiatus. Also, I think Latin /kʷ/ and /gʷ/ are also treated as single consonants because of the way they evolved as Latin turned into the various Romance languages.
 * With modern Spanish, I don't think you could make a case for /kʷ/ and /gʷ/ being separate phonemes. There's also no citation here establishing /kʷ/ and /gʷ/ as separate phonemes in Old Spanish, so I think I'll delete them from the table. Erinius (talk) 19:21, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

Cedilla
Does anyone know the rules on how to use cedilla, 'ç' in Old Spanish. I thought it was the equivalent of modern Spanish z before an a, u, and o. For example modern day Spanish for apple is manzana while in Old Spanish it's maçana. But heavens, cielos, is written as çielos in El Cid. JamesCook1728 (talk) 13:52, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
 * In old Spanish there were no spelling standards; as in most languages, the writing conventions developed gradually over many centuries. --Jotamar (talk) 22:16, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

9th century
Hi @Mr. Information1409.

The oldest attestation of Spanish that I am aware of is the tenth-century Nodicia de kesos. Even that could be challenged on the grounds that it is rather Leonese, but nevermind that. I am not aware of a ninth-century attestation; could you name the document in question?

- Nicodene (talk) 14:09, 29 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Hello, yes, I have prove: here, in the Spanish language article: Spanish is part of the Ibero-Romance language group, in which the language is also known as Castilian (castellano). The group evolved from several dialects of Vulgar Latin in Iberia after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century. The oldest Latin texts with traces of Spanish come from mid-northern Iberia in the 9th century, and the first systematic written use of the language happened in Toledo, a prominent city of the Kingdom of Castile, in the 13th century. Spanish colonialism in the early modern period spurred on the introduction of the language to overseas locations, most notably to the Americas. Mr. Information1409 (talk) 14:47, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * https://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2010/11/07/castillayleon/1289123856.html Mr. Information1409 (talk) 14:47, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Unexplained removals
@2406:3003:2000:43FA:5872:95B1:7E20:92DD, could you please comment here about why you want to remove the use of the symbols and  from the description of the phonology, and the use of $\langlez\rangle$ to represent  from the description of the spelling system? None of these are typos, and I believe all are accurate. I've added a citation for the third, and I can add a citation soon for the second as well. It might take me longer to find a citation for the first, but I think this also is citable. We need to discuss this and come to a consensus to avoid an edit war. @Nicodene if you can weigh in as a third party who has recently edited the article, that would also be helpful. Urszag (talk) 02:18, 13 June 2024 (UTC)


 * @Urszag I'm not aware of a source that discusses whether Old Spanish /j/ would have been [j] or [ʝ] and am not sure how it could be ascertained.
 * There is a theory, incidentally, that at an archaic stage /j/ would have had a fortis allophone [ʒ], hence some of the variation in outcomes of Latin /j-/. This might have looked like, for instance, [ʒ] in elos juezes versus [j] in elo juez (Lloyd 1984: 252).
 * In any case I would much prefer having the consonant table show j (not ʝ ~ j) and discussing phonetics in the section below. Nicodene (talk) 04:28, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Leaving [ʝ] out of the table is one change that I wouldn't necessarily oppose, if discussed below. While reconstructing the quality of Old Spanish y isn't simple, it having a fricative value in at least some contexts is discussed by Ralph Penny's History of the Spanish Language (page 64) and Zampaulo's Palatal Sound Change in the Romance Languages (pages 193-195; Zampaulo also brings up a palatal plosive or affricate as potential realizations).--Urszag (talk) 04:48, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Zampaulo (2019: p. 84) supposes Old Spanish would have had [ɟ]azer, [ɟ]anero; [ʒ]unio, [ʒ]urar (<, ; , ). He also supposes (p. 88) that ‘Proto-Spanish’ had *po[ɟ]o, *fa[ɟ]a, *ma[ɟ]ore (< , , ), which he describes in the footnote as yielding [ʝ] in Old Spanish. So no less than three allophones – if I've read him correctly – determined by position and the following vowel. One could ask whether [ʒ-] should be assigned, as the orthography suggests, to the otherwise-only-intervocalic phoneme /ʒ/ (< Latin /lj/). Nicodene (talk) 04:55, 13 June 2024 (UTC)