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THE See also:SPANISH See also:LANGUAGE
The Iberian See also:Peninsula is not a linguistic unit. Not to speak of the Basque, which still forms an See also:island of some importance in the See also:north-See also:west, three See also:Romance See also:languages See also:share this extensive territory: (I) Portuguese-Galician, spoken in See also:Portugal, See also:Galicia, and a small portion of the See also:province of See also:Leon; (2) Castilian, covering about two-thirds of the Peninsula in the north, centre, and See also:south; (3) Catalan, occupying a See also:long See also:strip of territory to the See also:east and south-east.
These three varieties of the See also:Romana rustica are marked off from one another more distinctly than is the See also:case with, say the Romance dialects of See also:Italy; they do not interpenetrate one another, but where the one ends the other begins. It has only been possible to establish at the points of junction of two linguistic regions the existence of certain mixed jargons in which certain forms of each language are intermingled; but these jargons, called into existence for the necessities of social relations by bilinguists, have an essentially individualistic and artificial See also:character. The See also:special development of the vulgar Latin See also:tongue in See also:Spain, and the formation of the three linguistic types just enumerated, were promoted by See also:political circumstances. From the 9th See also:century onwards Spain was slowly recaptured from the Mahommedans, and the Latin spoken by the Christians who had taken See also:refuge on the slopes of the See also:Pyrenees was gradually carried back to the centre and ultimately to the south of the Peninsula, whence it had been driven by the Arab invasion. See also:Medieval Spain divides itself into three conquistas—that of See also:Castile (much the most considerable), that of Portugal, and that of See also:Aragon. If a given province now speaks Catalan rather than Castilian, the explanation is to be sought simply and solely in the fact that it was conquered by a See also: From the 9th to the 12th century Catalan spread farther and farther within the limits of Catalonia, properly so called; in 1229 it was brought to Majorca by Jaime el Conquistador, and in 1238 the same See also:sovereign carried it to Valencia also. Even See also:Murcia was peopled by Catalans in 1266, but this province really is See also:part of the Castilian conquest, and accordingly the Castilian See also:element took the upper See also:hand and absorbed the dialect of the earlier colonists. The See also:river See also:Segura, which falls into the Mediterranean in the neighbourhood of See also:Orihuela, a little to the north of Murcia, is as nearly as possible the southern boundary of the Catalan domain; westward the boundary coincides See also:pretty exactly with the political frontier, the provinces of New Castile and Aragon not being at all encroached on. Catalan, which by the See also:reunion of Aragon and the countship of Barcelona in 1137 became the See also:official language of the Aragonese See also:monarchy—although the kingdom of Aragon, consisting of the See also:present provinces of See also:Saragossa, See also:Huesca and See also:Teruel, has always been Castilian in speech—established a footing in Italy also, in all parts where the domination of the See also:kings of Aragon extended, viz. in See also:Sicily, See also:Naples, See also:Corsica and See also:Sardinia, but it has not maintained itself here except in a single See also:district of the last-named island (See also:Alghero); everywhere else in Italy, where it was not spoken except by the conquerors, nor written except in the royal See also:chancery, it has disappeared without leaving a trace. In the 13th century the name given to the vulgar tongue of eastern Spain was Catalanesch (Catalaniscus) or Catald (Cata-lanus)—the See also:idiom of the Catalans.' By Catalanesch or Catala was understood, essentially, the spoken language and the language of See also:prose, while that of See also:poetry, with a large admixture of Provencal forms, was See also:early called Lemosi, Limosi or language of See also:Limousin—Catalan grammarians, and particularly the most celebrated of them, Ramon Vidal de Besalfl, having adopted Lemosi as the generic name of the language of the troubadours. These grammarians carefully distinguish the vulgar speech, or pla Ca/aid, from the refined trobar idiom, which originally is a modified See also:form of Provencal. Afterwards, and especially in these parts of the Catalan domain outside of Catalonia which did not acknowledge that they derived their language from that province, Lemosi received a more extensive signification, so as to mean the See also:literary language in See also:general, whether of See also:verse or of prose. To this See also:hour, particularly in Valencia and the Balearics, Lemosi is employed to designate on the one hand the old Catalan and on the other the very artificial and somewhat archaizing idiom which is current in the jocks florals; while the spoken dialect is called, according to the localities, Valencia (in Valencia), Majorqu£ and Menorqui (in Majorca and See also:Minorca), or Ca/aid (in Catalonia); the form Catalanesch is obsolete. The See also:principal features which connect Catalan with the Romance of France and See also:separate it from that of Spain are the following: (I) To take first its treatment of the final vowels—Catalan, like French and Provencal, having only oxytones and paroxytones, does not admit more than one syllable after the tonic See also:accent: thus anima gives arma, See also:camera gives cambra. All the proparoxytones of See also:modern Catalan are of See also:recent introduction and due to Castilian See also:influence. Further, the only See also:post-tonic Latin vowel preserved ',y the Catalan is, as in Gallo-See also:Roman, a : See also:mare gives See also:mar, gratu (s) gives grat, but anima gives arma; and, when the word terminates in a See also:group of consonants requiring a supporting vowel, that vowel is represented by an e : arb(o)rem, See also:Cat. abre (Prov. and Fr. arbre, but See also:Cast. drbol); pop(u)l(us), Cat. poble (Prov. poble, Fr. peuple, but Cast. See also:pueblo); sometimes, when it is inserted between the two consonants instead of being made to follow them, the supporting vowel is represented by an o escdndol (s c a n d a l u m), frevol (f r i v o l u s), circol (c i r c u lu s). In some cases a post-tonic vowel other than a is preserved in Catalan, as, for example, when that vowel forms a diphthong with the tonic (Deu, See also:Deus; Ebriu, He b r e u s) ; or, again, it sometimes happens, when the tonic is followed by an i in See also:hiatus, that the i persists (dildvi, dilfIvium; servici, servicium; ldbi, labium; ciri, cereus); but in many cases these ought to be regarded as learned forms, as is shown by the existence of parallel ones, such as servey, where the atonic i has been attracted by the tonic and forms a diphthong with it (servici, servii, servey). What has just been said as to the treatment of the final vowels in Catalan must be understood as applying only to pure Catalan, unaltered by the predominance of the Castilian, for the actual language is no longer faithful to the principle we have laid down; it allows the.final o atonic in a number of substantives and adjectives, and in the verb it now conjugates See also:canto, temo, sento—a thing unknown in the See also:ancient language. (2) As regards conjugation only two points need be noted here: (a) it employs the form known as the inchoative, that is to say, the lengthening of the See also:radical of the present in verbs of the third conjugation by means of the syllable ex or ix, a proceeding See also:common to See also:Italian, Walachian, Provencal and French, but altogether unknown in Hispanic Romance; (b) the formation of a See also:great number of past participles in which the termination is added,' as in Provencal, not to the radical of the verb, but to that of the perfect: tingut from tinch, pogut from pock, conegut from conech, while in Castilian tenido (formerly also tenudo), podido, conocido, are participles formed from the See also:infinitive. As for features common to Catalan and Hispanic (Castilian and Portuguese) Romance, on the other hand, and which are unknown to French Romance, only one is of importance; the conservation, namely, of the Latin u with its See also:original See also:sound, while the same vowel has assumed in French and Provencal, 1 The origin of the name Catalanus is unknown. from a very early See also:period—earlier doubtless than the See also:oldest existing monuments of those languages--a labio-palatal See also:pronunciation (u). It is not to be supposed that the separation of Catalan from the Gallo-Roman' See also:family occurred before the transformation had taken See also:place; there is See also:good See also:reason to believe that Catalan possessed the ii at one See also:time, but afterwards lost it in its contact with the Spanish dialects. Catalan being a variety of the langue d'oc, it will be convenient to See also:note the peculiarities of its See also:phonetics and See also:inflexion as compared with See also:ordinary Provencal. Tonic Vowels.—With regard to a, which is pronounced alike in open and See also:close syllables (amar, a m a r e ; abre, a r b o r), there is nothing to remark. The Latin e, which is treated like i, gives e, sometimes close, sometimes open. On this point Catalan is more hesitating than Provencal; it does not distinguish so clearly the pronunciation of e according to its origin; while e (i) is capable of yielding an open e, the a is often pronounced close, and the poets have no difficulty in making words in e close and in e open See also:rhyme together, which is not the case in. Provencal. The Latin e never yields ie in Catalan as it does in French and occasionally in Provencal; s e d e t becomes seu (where u represents the final d), p e d e m makes peu, and e g o eu; in some words where the tonic e is followed by a syllable in which an i occurs, it may become i (ir, h e r i ; mig, m e d i a s ; mils, m e l i u s) ; and the same holds good fore in a similar situation (ciri, c e r i u s, c e r e u s; fira, f e r ia), and for e in a close syllable before a nasal (eximpli, e x e m p l u m ; mintre for mentire, gint for gent). I tonic long and i See also:short, when in hiatus with another vowel, produce i (amich, a in i c u s; via, v I a). O tonic long and o short are represented by o close and o. open (amor, a m o r e m; poble, p o p u l u s). 0 short is never diphthongized into uo or ue; such a treatment is as See also:foreign to Catalan as the diphthongization of e into ie. just as e before a syllable in which an i occurs is changed into i, so in the same circumstances o becomes u (full,See also:folium;See also:van, volio forvoleo)andalsowhentheaccented vowel precedes a group of consonants like cl, pl, and the like full, o c' l u s; escull, s c o p' l u s). Latin u persists with the Latin ppronunciation, and, as already said, does not take the Franco-Provencal pronunciation ii. Latin au becomes o (See also:coca, c a u s a; or, a u r a m) ; Old Catalan has kept the diphthong better, but possibly we- should attribute the examples of au which are met with in texts of the 13th and I4th centuries to the literary influence of See also:Provence. Latin ua tends to become o (See also:cor, q u a r e). Atonic Vowels.—As for the Latin post-tonic vowels already spoken of, it remains to be noted that a is often represented in writhng by e, especially before s; in. old Catalan, the substantives, adjectives and participles readily form their singular in a and their plural in es : arma, armes (a n i m a, anima s) ; See also:bona, bones (b on a, bona s); amada, amades (a m a t a, am a t a s). This e is neither open nor close, but a surd e the pronunciation of which comes very near a. In the same way the supporting vowel, which is regularly an e in Catalan, is often written a, especially after r (abra, a r b o r e m; astra, a s t r u m; See also:Para, p a t r e m) ; one may say that in the actual See also:state of the language post-tonic e and a become indistinguishable in a surd sound intermediate between the French a and See also:mute e. Before the tonic the same See also:change between a and e constantly takes place; one finds in See also:manuscripts enar, emor for anar, amor (the same extends even to the case of the tonic syllable, ten and sent from t a n t u m and sanctum being far from rare), and, on the other hand, centre, arrar, for entre, errar. I atonic is often represented by e even when it is long (vehi, v i c i n u s). 0 atonic close, which in genuine Catalan exists only before the tonic, has become u; at the present See also:day truvar, contradir is the real pronunciation of the words spelt frovar, contradir, and in the final syllables, verbal or other, where under Castilian influence an o has come to be added to the normal Catalan form, this o has the value of a u: trovo (genuine Catalan, See also:trap) is pronounced trovu; See also:bravo (genuine Catalan, beau) is pronounced brava. U atonic keeps its ground. The only strong diphthongs of the spoken language are di, du (rather rare), ei, See also:ea, iu, oi, ou, di, uu.• Ai produced by a+i or by a+a palatal consonant has for the greater part of the time became an e in the modern language; factum has yielded fait, feit, and then fet, the last being the actual form; arias has given er alongside of are, See also:ari, which are learned or semi-learned forms. Of the two weak diphthongs io and ud, the latter, as has been seen, tends to become o close in the atonic syllable, and is pronounced u: quaranta has become coranta, then curanta. After the tonic ua often becomes a in the Catalan of the mainland (ay a, a q u a, llenga, 1 i n g u a), while in Majorca it becomes o (aygo, See also:lien go). Consonants.—Final t readily disappears after nor l (tan, t See also:ant um; aman, venin, Partin, for amant,'venint, &c.; mol, m u 1 to m; ocul, o.c u 1 t u m); the t reappears in See also:composition before a vowel (fon, f o n t e m, but See also:Font-See also:alba). On the other hand, a t without etymological origin is frequently added to words ending in r (See also:cart for See also:car; quare; mart for mar, mare; amart, ohist, infinitive for amar, ohir), and even to some words terminating in a vowel (genii, in g e n i u m; premit, p r e m i u m), or the addition of the t has taken place byassimilation to past participles in it. The phenomenon occurs also in Provencal (see Romania, vii. 107, viii. See also:Ito). Median intervocal d, represented by s (z) in the first See also:stage of the language, has disappeared : f i d e hi s gave fesel, then feel, and finally fel; v i d e t i s became vezets, then veets, vets and vets. Final d after a vowel has produced u (peu, p e d e in; niu, n i d u m; mou, in o d u m); but when the d, in consequence of the disappearance of the preceding vowel, rests upon a consonant, it remains and passes into the corresponding surd; f r i g i d u s gives feed (pronounced See also:fret). The group: dr, when produced by the disappearance of the intermediate vowel, becomes ur (creure, c r e d e r e ; ociure, o c c i d e r e; veure, v i d e r e; seure, seder e). Final n, if originally it stood between two vowels, drops away (bo, b o n u m ; vi, v i n u m), but not when it answers to mn (thus d o n u in makes do, but d o m n u m See also:don; s o n u m makes so, but s o m n u m son). Nd is reduced ton (demanar, comanar for demandar, comandar). Assibilated c before e, i is treated like d ; within a word it disappears after having been represented for a while by s (1 u c e r e gives llusir, lluhir ; r e c i p e r e gives resebre, reebre, retire) • at the end of a word it is replaced by u (veu,' v i c e in ; See also:feu, f e c i t). The group c'r gives ur, just like d'r (jaure, jacere; naure, nocere; plaure, plae'er e; but facere, d i c e r e, d u c e r e, make far (See also:fee), See also:die due. Initial l has been preserved only in certain monosyllables (the See also:article lo, los) ; every-where else it has been replaced by 1 mouillee (Prov. 1h), which in the present See also:orthography is written 11 as in Castilian, but formerly used to be ,represented by ly or yl (Vella, l i t e r a llengua, l i n g u a). P readily disappears after m, like t after n (See also:cam, c a rn p u m; tems, temp it s). B is replaced by the surd pat the end of a word (trobar in the infinitive, but trop in the present tense) ; so also in the interior of a word when it precedes a consonant (supvenir, s u b v e n i r e, sopte, s ub ' t o). Median intervocalic f gives v (Esteve, S t e - p h a n u s) ; it has disappeared from pr of u n d u s, which yielded the form preon, then pregon (g being introduced to obviate the hiatus). V, wherever it has been preserved, has the same pronunciation as b; at the end of a word and between vowels it becomes vocalized into u (suau, s u a v i s ; viure, v i v e r e). C guttural, written qu before e and. i, keeps its ground as a central and as a final See also:letter; in the latter position it is generally written ch (amich, a in i c u m ; josh, j o c u m). G guttural is replaced as a final letter by surd c (longa, but lone; trigar, but 'See also:rich). Tj after a consonant gives ss (cassar, ca p t i a r e) ; between vowels, after having been represented by soft s, it has disappeared (r a t i o n e in gave razo, rayso, then rahe) ; at the end of every word it behaves like ts, that is to say, changes into u (preu, p r e t i u m) ; instead of ts the second See also:person plural of the verb—a t(i)s, e t(i)s, it(i)s—now has au, eu, iu after having had ats, ets its.. D j gives between vowels (See also:verger, v i r i d i a r u m), and c as a terminal (written either ig or tor : goig, g a u d i u m mig, mitx, See also:media in). Stj and sc before e and i, as well as x and ps, yield the sound sh, represented in Catalan by x (angoxa, a n g u s t i a; coneixer, cognoscere; See also:dix, dixit; niatesx, metipse). 3 almost everywhere has taken the sound of the French j (jutge, &c.). Lj and 11 give 1 mouillee (11 in the present orthography fill, eilium; consell, c o n s i l i u m; null, n u l l u m). In the larger portion of the Catalan domain this l mouillee has become y. almost everywhere See also:fly is pronounced for fill, consey for consell. Nj and nn give n mouillee (ny in both old and modern spelling: senyor s e n i o r e m ; any, a n n u in). Sometimes the ny becomes reduced to y; one occasionally meets in manuscripts with seyor, ay, for senyor, any, but this pronunciation has not become general, as has been the case with the y having its origin in ll.' Lingual r at the end of a word has a tendency to disappear when preceded by a vowel : thus the infinitives a m a r e, t e m e r e, *1 e g i r e are pronounced amd, teme, llegi. It is never preserved except when protected by the non-etymological t already spoken of (llegirt or llegi, but never llegir) ; the r reappears, nevertheless, whenever the infinitive is followed by a pronoun (donarme, dirho). Rs is reduced to s (See also:cos for cars, c o r p u s). H is merely an orthographic sign; it is used to indicate that two consecutive vowels do not form a diphthong (vehi raho), and, added to c, it denotes the pronunciation of the guttural c at the end of a word (amich). Inflexion.-Catalan, unlike Old Provencal and Old French, has never had declensions. It is true that in certain texts (especially metrical, texts) certain traces of case-endings are to be met with, as, for example Deus and Deu, amors and amor, clars and clar, forts and fort, tuyt and tots, abduy and abdos, senyer and senyor, emperaire and emperador; but, since these forms are used convertibly, the nominative form when the word is in the See also:objective, and the See also:accusative form, when the word is the subject, we can only recognize in these cases a confused recollection of the Provencal rules known only to the literate but of which the transcribers of manuscripts took no See also:account. Catalan, then, makes no distinctions See also:save in the gender and the number of its nouns. As regards the formation of the plural only two observations are necessary. (I) Words which have their radical termination in n but which in the singular drop that n, resume it in the plural before s:homin-em makes ome in the singular and omens in the plural ; asin-um makes ase and asens. (2) Words terminating in s surd or sonant and in x anciently formed their plural by adding to the singular the syllable es (See also:bras, See also:brasses; pees,preses; mateix, mateixes), but subsequently, from about the 15th century, the Castilian influence substituted os, so that one now hears brassos, presos, mateixos. The words in tx, sc, st have been assimilated to words in s (x) ; from See also:bosch we originally had the plural bosches; but now boscos; from trist, tristes, but now tristes. For these last in st there exists a plural formation which is more in accordance with the See also:genius of the language, and consists in the suppression of the s before the t; from agues', for example, we have now See also:side by side the two plurals aquestos, in the Castilian manner, and aquets. The article is lo, los (pronounced lu, lus in a portion of the domain), See also:fern. la, See also:les (See also:las). Some instances of li occur in the ancient tongue, applying indifferently to the nominative and the objective case; el applying to the singular is also not wholly unknown. On the north-western border of Catalonia, and in the island of Majorca, the article is not a derivative from site but from ipse (sing. masc. es or so, fern. sa; pl. masc. es, and also ets, which appears to come from istos—ets for ests, like aquets for aquests—fem. sas). Compare the corresponding Sardinian forms sit, sa, pl. sos, sas. On the. pronouns it has only to be remarked that the modern language has borrowed from Castilian the composite forms nosaltres and vosaltres (pronounced also nosaltros and nosatrus), as also the form voste, vuste (Castilian usted for vuestra merced). Conjugation.—Catalan, and especially modern Catalan, has greatly narrowed the domain of the 2nd conjugation in e r e; a large number of verbs of this conjugation have been treated as if they belonged to the 3rd in e r e ; d e b e r e makes deure, v i d e r e, veure, and alongside of haber, which answers to h a b e r e, there is a form heure which points to h a b e r e. A curious fact, and one which has arisen since the 15th century, is the addition of a paragogic r to those infinitives which are accented on the radical; in a portion of the Catalan domain one hears creurer, veurer. Some verbs originally belonging to the conjugation in e r e have, passed over into that in ir; for example t e n e r e gives tenir alongside of tindre, r e m a-n e r e romanir and romandre. In the gerundive and in the present participle Catalan differs from Provencal in still distinguishing the conjugation in ir from that in er, re—saying, for example, sentint. As in Provencal, the past participle of a large number of verbs of the 2nd and 3rd conjugations is formed, not from the infinitive, but from the perfect (pogut, volgut, tingut suggest the perfects poch, volch, tinch, and not the infinitives poder, voter, tenir). In the present indicative and subjunctive many verbs in it take the inchoative form already described, by lengthening the 'radical in the three persons of the singular and in the third person of the plural by means of the syllable esc (isc). agrahir has the present indicative agraesch, agraheixes, agraheix, agraheixen, the present subjunctive agraesca, -as, -a, -an (or more usually now agraesqui, -is, -i, -in). The old perfect of the conjugation in ar had e (also i) in the 1st pers. sing. and -din the 3rd; alongside of the -d, which is proper to Catalan exclusively, we also find, in the first period of the language, -et as in Provencal. Subsequently the perfect of the three conjugations has admitted forms in -r (amdres, amdrem, amdreu, ametren), derived from the ancient pluperfect amara, &c., which has held its ground down to the present day, with the meaning of a conditional in some verbs (one still hears fora, haguera). But the See also:simple perfect is no longer employed in the spoken language, which has substituted for it a periphrastic perfect, composed of the infinitive of the verb and the present of the See also:auxiliary anar: vaig pendre, for example, does not mean " I am going to take," but ' I have taken." The earliest example of this periphrastic perfect carries us back to the 15th century. The most usual form of the subj. pres. in spoken Catalan is that in -i for all the three conjugations (ami, -is, -i, -em, -eu -in; temi, -is, &c.; senti, -is, &c.); it appears to be an See also:abbreviation from -ia, and in effect certain subjunctives, such as cantia, temia, tinguia, vinguia (for cante, tema, tinga, vingia), evidently formed upon sia (subj. of esser), have been and still are used. The same i of the pre-sent subjunctive, whatever may be its origin, is still found in the imperfect : antes, -essis, -es, -essium, &c. Catalan Dialect of Alghero (Sardinia).-As compared with that of the mainland, the Catalan of Alghero, introduced into this portion of Sardinia by the Aragonese conquerors and colonists, does not present any very important See also:differences; some of them, such as they are, are explicable by the influence of the indigenous dialects of See also:Sassari and Logudoro. In phonetics one observes—(1) the change of lj into y as an initial before i (yitx, yigis; lego, legis), a change which does not take place in the Catalan of the mainland except in the interior, or at the end of the word; (2) the frequent change of 1 between vowels and of I after c, g, f, p or b into r (laura tabula; candera, candela; sangrot, singultum; frama, flama). In conjugation there are some notable peculiarities. The 1st pers. sing. does not take the o which See also:continental Catalan has borrowed from Castilian (cant, not canto, &c.) ; the See also:imp. incl. of verbs of the 2nd and 3rd conjugations has eva, iva instead of ia, a form which also occurs in the conditional (cantariva, drumiriva) ; the simple perfect, of which some types are still preserved in the actual language (e.g. anighe, aghe), has likewise served for the formation not only of the past participle but also of the infinitive (agher, habere, can only be explained by ach, 3rd person of the perfect) ; the infinitives with r paragogic (iiurer, seurer, plourer) are not used (viure, seure, ploure instead) ; in the conjugation of the present of the verb essar or esser, the end pers. sing. ses formed upon the persons of the plural, whilecontinental Catalan says ets (anciently est), as also, in the plural, sem, seu, instead of som, See also:sou, are to.be noted; tenere has passed over to the conjugation in re (trenda=tendre), but it is at the same time true that in ordinary Catalan also we have tindrer alongside of tenir the habitual form; dicere gives not See also:dir but diure, which is more See also:regular. 2. Castilian.—This name is the most convenient designation to apply to the linguistic domain which comprises the whole of central Spain and the vast regions of See also:America and See also:Asia colonized from the 16th century onwards by the Spaniards. We might also indeed See also:call it the Spanish domain, narrowing the essentially See also:geographical meaning of the word Espanol (derived, like the other old form Espanon, from Hispania), and using it in a purely political sense. But the first expression is to be preferred, all the more because it has been long in use, and even the inhabitants of the domain outside the two Castiles fully accept it and are indeed the first to call their idiom Castellano. It is agreed on all hands that Castilian is one of the two branches of the vulgar Latin of Spain, Portuguese-Galician being the other; both idioms, now separated by very marked differences, can be traced back directly to one common source—the Hispanic Romance. One and the same vulgar tongue, diversely modified in the See also:lapse of time, has produced Castilian and Portuguese as two varieties, while Catalan, the third language of the Peninsula, connects itself, as has already been pointed out, with the Gallo-Roman. Within the Castilian domain, thus embracing all in Spain that is neither Portuguese nor Catalan, there exist linguistic varieties which it would perhaps be an exaggeration to call dialects, considering the meaning ordinarily attached to that word, but which are none the less worthy of See also:attention. Generally speaking, from various circumstances, and especially that of the reconquest, by which the already-formed idiom of the See also:Christian conquerors and colonists was gradually conveyed from north to south, Castilian has maintained a uniformity of which the Romance languages afford no other example. We shall proceed in the first instance to examine the most salient features of the normal Castilian, spoken in the provinces more or less closely corresponding to the old limits of Old and New Castile, so as to be able afterwards to note the peculiarities of what, for want of a better expression, we must call the Castilian dialects. In some respects Castilian is hardly further removed from classical Latin than is Italian; in others it has approximately reached the same stage as Provencal. As regards the tonic, accent and the treatment of the vowels which come after it, Castilian may be said to be essentially a paroxytonic language, though it does not altogether refuse proparoxytonic accentuation and it would be a See also:mistake to regard vocables like ldmpara, lhgrima, rdpido, &c., as learned words. In this feature, and in its almost universal conservation of the final vowels e, i, u (o), Castilian comes very near Italian, while it separates from it and approaches the Gallo-Roman by its modification of the consonants. Vowels.—Normal Castilian faithfully preserves the vowels e, i, o, u; the comparatively infrequent instances in which e and a are treated like e and o must be attributed to the working of See also:analogy. It diphthongizes a in ie, o in ue, which may be regarded as a weakening of uo (seeRomania, iv. 30). Sometimes ie and ue in the modern language are changed into i and e : silla from s e l l a (Old Cast. siella), vispera from v e s p e r a (Old Cast. viespera), See also:castillo from c a s t See also:hit u rn (Old Cast. castiello), frente from f r o n t e 1n (Old Cast. fruente), fleco from f 1 o c c u s (Old Cast. flueco). The words in which e and o have kept their ground are either learned words like medico,merito, or have been borrowed from dialects which do not suffer diphthongization. In many cases the old language is more rigorous; thus, while modern Castilian has given the preference to mente, See also:como, modo, we find in old texts miente, cuemo, muedo. See also:Lat. a u makes o in all words of popular origin (coca, oro, &c.). Consonants.—On the liquids 1, m, n, r there is little to be remarked, except that the last-named letter has two pronunciations—one soft (voiced), as in amor, burla, the other hard (voiceless), as in rendir, tierra (Old Cast. in this case goes so far as to See also:double the initial consonant: trend jr)—and that n is often inserted before s and d : ensayo, mensage, rendir (redder a). L mouillee (written It) represents not only the Latin 1, ii, 1j, but also, at the beginning of words, the combinations cl, gl, pl, bl, fl: See also:llama (f l a m m a), ilave (c I a v i s), llorar (p l o r a r e) ; the tendency of the modern language is, as in Catalan, to reduce 11 to y; thus one readily hears yeno (p 1 e n u m). N mouillee (n) corresponds to the Lat. nn, mn, nj, and sometimes to initial n : aft (a n n u m), data (d a m n u m), nnudo (n o d u m). Passing to the dentals, except as an initial, See also:tin words that are popularly current and belong to the old stock of the language, can only be derived from Lat. tt, pt, and sometimes cl, as in See also:meter (mittere), catar (captare), punto (punctum); but it is to be observed that the habitual mode of representing ct in normal Castilian is by ch (pron. tch), as in derecho (d i r e c t u m), pecho (p e c t u s), so that we may take those words in which t alone represents ct as secondary forms of learned words; thus we have bendito, otubre, santo as secondary forms of the learned words bendicto, octubre, sancto, alongside of the old popular forms bendicho, ochubre, sancho. D corresponds in Castilian to Latin t between vowels, or t before r: amado (a See also:mat u s), padre (pat rem). At the present day the d of the suffixes See also:ado, ido is no longer pronounced throughout the whole extent of the domain, and the same holds good also of the final d : said, pone, for salud, paned (from s a l u t e m, p o n i t e). Sometimes d takes the interdental sound of z (See also:English th), or is changed into 1; See also:witness the two pronunciations of the name of the See also:capital—Madriz and Madril (adj. Madrilen`o). The study of the spirants, c, z, s; g, j is made a very delicate one by the circumstance that the interdental pronunciation of c, z on the one hand, and the guttural pronunciation of g, j on the other, are of comparatively recent date, and convey no notion of the value of these letters before the 17th century. It is admitted, not without reason, that the spirants c, z, which at present represent but one interdental sound (a lisped s, or a sound between s and Eng. th in thing), had down till about the See also:middle of the 16th century the voiceless sound is and the voiced sound dz respectively, and that in like manner the palatal spirants g, j, x, before assuming the See also:uniform pronunciation of the guttural spirant (=Germ. ch in See also:Buch), had previously represented the voiced sound of z (Fr. j) and the voiceless sound of (Fr. ch), which are still found in Portuguese and in the Castilian dialects of the north-west. The substitution of these interdental and guttural sounds for the surd and sonant spirants respectively did certainly not take place simultaneously, but the vacillations of the old orthography, and afterwards the decision of the Spanish See also:Academy, which suppressed x (= f ; x was retained for cs) and allows only c and g before e and i, z and j before a, o, u, make it impossible for us to follow, with the help of the written texts, the course of the transformation. S now has the voiceless sound even between vowels: casa (pronounced cassa) ; final s readily falls away, especially before liquids: todo los for todos los, vamono for vamos nos. The principal See also:sources of j (g) are—Lat. j and g before e and i (juego, j o c u in ; genie, g e n t e m) ; Lat. initial s (jabon, s a p o n e m) ; Lat. x (cojo, c o x u m) ; If, cl (consejo, c o n-s i l i u m ; ojo, o c'1 u m). The sources of z (c) are Lat. ce, cj, tj, s (cielo, c a e l u m; calza, c a l c ea; razon, r a t i o n e m; zampona, s y nip h o n i a). As regards the spirants f and v, it is to be observed that at the beginning of a word f has in many instances been replaced by the aspirated h (afterwards silent), while in others no less current among the See also:people the transformation has not taken place; thus we have hijo (f i 1 i u m) alongside of fiesta (f e s t a). In some cases the f has been preserved in See also:order to avoid confusion that might arise from identity of sound: the f in f e e l (f i d e l i s) has been kept for the See also:sake of distinction from hiel (f e 1). As for v, it has a marked tendency to become confounded, especially as an initial letter, with the sonant explosive b; See also:Joseph See also:Scaliger's See also:pun—bibere est vivere---is applicable to the Castilians as well as to the Gascons. II is now nothing more than a graphic sign, except in See also:Andalusia, where the aspirate sound represented by it comes very near j. Words beginning in See also:hue, where the h, not etymologically derived, marks the inseparable aspiration of the initial diphthong ue, are readily pronounced gue throughout almost the whole extent of the domain: glide for huele (o I e t) ; gueso for hueso (o s). This See also:vie extends also to words beginning with bue: gueno for bueno (b o n u m). Inflexion.—There is no trace of declension either in Castilian or in Portuguese. Some nominative forms—Dios (anciently Dios, and in the Castilian of the See also:Jews Dio), See also:Carlos, Mdreos, sastre (s a r t o r)—have been adopted instead of forms derived from the accusative, but the vulgar Latin of the Peninsula in no instance presents two forms (subjective and objective case) of the same substantive. The article is derived from i 1 1 e, as it is almost everywhere throughout the Romance regions: el, la, and a neuter lo; los, las. The plural of the first and second See also:personal pronoun has in the modern language taken a composite form—nosotros, vosotros—which has been imitated in Catalan. Quien, the interrogative pronoun which has taken the place of the old qui, seems to come from q u e m. Conjugation.—The conjugation of Castilian (and Portuguese) derives a See also:peculiar See also:interest from the archaic features which it retains. The vulgar Latin of Spain has kept the pluperfect indicative, still in current use es a secondary form of the conditional (cantdra, vendiera, pariiera), and, what is more remarkable still, as not occurring anywhere else, the future perfect (cantdre, vendiere, See also:portiere, formerly cantdro, vendiero, partiero). The Latin future has been replaced, as everywhere, by the perirphasis (c a n t a r e h a b e o), but it is See also:worth noticing that in certain old textr of the 13th century, andin the popular songs of a comparatively ancient date which have been preserved in See also:Asturias, the auxiliary can still precede the infinitive (h a b e o c a n t a r e), as with the Latin writers of the decadence: Mucho de See also:mayor precio a seer el to manto Que non sera el nuestro " (Berceo, S. Laura, str. 70), where a seer (h a b e t s e d e r c) corresponds exactly to sera (s e d e r e h a b e t). The vulgar Latin of the Peninsula, moreover, has preserved the 2nd pers. pl. of the imperative (cantad, vended, partid), which has disappeared from all the other Romance languages. Another special feature of Castilian-Portuguese is the See also:complete See also:absence of the form of conjugation known as inchoative (intercalation, in the present tense, of the syllable isc or esc between the radical and the inflexion), although in all the other tenses, except the present, Spanish shows a tendency to See also:lay the accent upon the same syllable in all the six persons, which was the See also:object aimed at by the inchoative form. Castilian displaces the accent on the 1st and 2nd pers. pl. of the imperfect (cantdbamos, cantdbais), of the pluperfect indicative (cantdramos, cantdrais), and of the imperfect subjunctive (cantdsemos, cantdseis) ; possibly the impulse to this was given by the forms of future perfect cantdremos, cantdreis (cantarimus, cantaritis). The 2nd persons plural were formerly (except in the perfect) -odes, -edes, -ides; it was only in the course of the 16th century that they got reduced, by the falling away of d, to ais, eis and is. The verb e s s e r e has been mixed, not as in the other Romance languages with See also:star e, but with seder e, as is proved by older forms seer, siedes, sieden, seyendo, obviously derived from seder e, and which have in the texts sometimes the meaning of " to be seated," sometimes that of " to be," and sometimes both. In old Latin charters also s e d e r e is frequently met with in the sense of e s s e: e.g. "sedeat istum meum donativum quietum et securum" (See also:anno 1134), where sedeat=sit. The 2nd pers. sing. of the present of See also:ser is eres, which is best explained as borrowed from the imperfect (eras), this tense being often used in Old Spanish with the meaning of the present ; alongside of eres one finds (but only in old documents or in dialects) sos, formed like sois (2nd pers. pl.) upon somos. The accentuation in the inflexion of perfects in the conjugation called strong, like hubieron hizieron, which correspond to habuerunt, fecerunt (while in the other Romance languages the Latin type is e r u n t: Fr. eurent, firent), may be regarded as truly etymological, or rather as a result of the assimilation of these perfects to the perfects known as weak (amdron), for there are See also:dialectic forms having the accent on the radical, such as See also:dixon, hizon. The past participle of verbs in er was formerly udo (u t u s) in most cases; at present ido serves for all verbs in er and ir, except some ten or twelve in which the participle has retained the Latin form accented on the radical: dicho, hecho, visto, &c. It ought to be added that the past participle in normal Castilian derives its theme not from the perfect, but from the infinitive: habido, sabido, from haber, saber, not from hubo, supo. Additional information and CommentsThere are no comments yet for this article.
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